Innovative technology ideas being developed in the Red River Valley

It’s hard to believe that our scrappy little app is all grown up. It was around this time a year ago we were putting the finishing touches on the website and apps, and preparing to launch. There were a lot of revisions early on. From this, to this, then this, don’t forget this one, and finally this. Even our early iOS and Android apps were far from perfect. But we all kept plugging away, fixing issues, updating the look and feel of things, taking suggestions from users, and just trying to improve things even more. And here we are today, 1 year old.

We were going to take Simple In/Out to Chuck E Cheese, but we figured 3 grown men sitting around with laptops would probably not be a smart move. So we decided to do what we always do when we need to talk about work stuff… we head to the bar. Yes that’s right, the majority of this app we developed under the influence. How else can you explain this?

I don’t ever recall a year of my life that has ever had so much happen in it and have it go by so fast. While Simple In/Out may not be made of flesh and blood, it is our baby and it is a product of our blood, sweat, and tears. (Ok, maybe not tears, we are men after all. And probably not blood, this is just software development. And come to think of it, our office is air conditioned… you know what, you get the idea) We have been excited to work on this app for ourselves as much as for everyone that uses it. We have some ambitious plans in store for the next year and we hope the 2nd birthday is as exciting as the first.

Hey everyone a small update to Simple In/Out was just posted to the Android market. This update primarily contains bug fixes and some data optimization. 

We have a shiny new update for our iOS users today. Sorry for the delay. We discovered a couple issues at the final hour and had to fix those and resubmit to the App Store. Here is what we have in store for you.

2.3 What’s New:

• New Account Settings – Now you can edit yourself. Previously only admin users had the ability to change user information
• Geofence updates – We have been working hard to make our best feature even better.
• Misc bug fixes

We have a lot of exciting new features in store for our users. We want to thank our everyone for all the great suggestions. We value your opinions very much and take all ideas seriously. So please keep them coming.

We have another release for android that is available today.  This update allows users to update some of their information from the application itself. As always our ears and inboxes are always open for suggestions or comments so keep them coming!

Hey everyone great news. Android version 2.2 has been released to the Android Market. You’ve commented, we listened. With this update comes the ability to favorite statuses and delete statuses from your list. Its very easy to use just click the star to favorite a status and click it again to unfavorite it. To delete simply swipe from left to right to remove it from the list. Like always we want to keep to the simple in Simple In/Out.

Since we launched Simple In/Out about 11 months ago, we’ve received a lot of great feedback from our users.  These great ideas have led to some popular new features, like Reports, Full Screen Mode and CSV Export.  Keep that feedback coming! But to this day, our number one requested feature by far has been for a way to manage One Click Updates.  For those not familiar, One Click Updates allow users to reuse their last 9 unique status updates.  This is a handy feature on iOS, Android and the website for things like “At Lunch” and “Working Hard”.  This morning, this feature looked like this:

 This works well and requires no user setup or management, making it a simple solution right in our wheelhouse.  But, some of our users want to spend time curating their list of One Click Updates.  They want to remove the ones they know they’ll never use again instead of staring at them until they fall off the list organically. We’ve listened and more importantly, we’ve put on our thinking caps .  How can we allow our users to curate the list without requiring our users to curate the list?  The solution eluded us for a while, but I think our answer tonight will make our users very happy. First, we’re introducing One Click Update Delete.  Now, you can remove those updates you know you won’t use again.  This can be done with a swipe on our iOS and Android app and a couple of clicks on the web app.  For users that want to eliminate those one-time status updates, you now have an option. But we didn’t stop there.  We’re also introducing Favorites.  With Favorites, you can choose One Click Updates that you always want to remain on your list, no matter if you use them often or not.  By touching the star on our iOS/Android app or a couple clicks on the website, you can guarantee a One Click Status is always available. For users who don’t want to curate their One Click Update list, the system works the same now as it did yesterday.  While any status favorites will never leave your list, all the other statuses will be added and fall off the list organically just as they always have.  We’ve even brought the number to a round 10 One Click Updates instead of the cryptic 9. Now, on the website at least, here’s what you’ll see with a few favorite One Click Updates:

 This is available right now for the website and our Android users.  For our iOS customers, Apple has the update in review and it should be out in a day or two.

Simple In/Out just turned 1! Hard to believe that just a short year ago we were just 3 guys and an idea. Today, we are releasing a big update with features you have been asking for. Here is a rundown of what you can expect in this release. Add Favorites: – This has been a big request from our users. You now have the ability to tag your status updates as a favorite so it will stick at the top of your quick list. Just tap the star, and you’re done. Simple! Delete Statuses: – By far, this has been the most requested feature for Simple In/Out. Now you can remove unwanted statuses from the quick list. Just swipe, and delete. Simple! Major Renovations: – We have been working very hard to make Simple In/Out fast, secure, and stable. With this update, we think we’ve done an even better job than before. Here are just a few of the things we’ve worked on.

ARC conversion (code optimization) Geofence optimization Hard to find bug fixes Login security Bug fixes

From everyone here at Simply Made Apps, we want to thank you for using our product and service. We also want to thank you for all the great suggestions that keep making our app great. We really couldn’t have done it without you. The Simply Made Apps Team

Another small update for the iOS platform. Nothing to worry about, this update addresses a few minor bug fixes.

We have several new features in the works. Stay tuned, they should be ready within a couple weeks.

Hello again.

Yesterday, we shipped our first comprehensive reports for Simple In/Out.  Today, we’ve just added the ability to export that same report as a CSV (comma-separated values).  CSV files are important, they can be read by Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, Numbers and more.  Now, all of our administrators can export their “in” user data to software of their choice to aid with charts, payroll, you name it.

Enjoy!