Homecourt: An Interesting Spin on Your Usual Collaboration Software
Posted by: in General work pimps
Ever notice how most collaboration programs have limited one-way communication? It’s always service providers or product sellers telling clients what’s going on. Whatever happened to assigning deliverables to your client? After all, you’ll need some materials from them, their approval, as well as any additional information. Assigning deliverables to clients is something that doesn’t seem supported in most web collaboration tools.
That’s where apps like Homecourt come in. I’ve interviewed Homecourt’s principal developer, Aaron Vegh, to learn more about this handy new tool.
What’s the story behind Homecourt? How did it develop?
It started about a year and a half ago. I’m a web developer, working pretty much solo. I was looking for a way to work with my clients a bit more effectively. At any given time, I might have five to ten active clients on the go, so keeping in touch with them, and keeping track of the separate projects, was proving to be a challenge.
I did some research online, assuming that there’d be some kind of web application that would let me exchange files, post URL locations, and have discussions. But there was nothing like that out there! Since I’m a web developer myself, I thought why not build one?
How has Homecourt changed the way you work with your clients?
It’s made me a lot more clear about what needs to be done at any given time. The chief principle of Homecourt is the assignment of responsibility. Its chief interface is the two courts: what’s for me to do, and what’s for “you” — the client, typically — to do. Below that, you’ll see a discussion area: this is where a given action can be discussed between client and agent. That leads to the other huge improvement in the way I work: everything’s in one place, so I don’t have to keep track of stuff in email.
How did your clients receive this new way of working/communicating with you?
I’ve a wide range of clients: some more experienced with personal than others. My goal thus far has been to acclimatize the ones who are more inclined to try something new, and for them this has been a wonderful advance.
Apart from keeping all communication in one place and assigning deliverables to both you and the client, are there other features that you’d like to point out that make Homecourt one-of-a-kind?
There’s also the ability to make the product your own. As an agency, I visulized Homecourt as an extension of my own website… in fact, the full name of the product is Homecourt Client Extranet, which recommends that it’s something that, as an bureau, you would link to from your own web site.
The application also provides some customization (albeit not a fantastic amount) in terms of placing your own logo and settting a background colour. You also get your own URL, such as yourcompany.homecourtx.com
Does Homecourt work with other desktop or on the web programs?
Not yet. We’re working on an API, so that other developers can extend its functionality, or integrate it into their own applications.
What features will you be adding to Homecourt in the future?
We’re working on OpenID integration, so people can be identified more readily when they sign up. As time goes on, we certainly want to add more features, and we’re always going to listen to recommendations from our customers.
We’re also going to add vcard support to let folks get contacts into the system more easily. In the future, users will be able to receive notifications via IM, SMS, RSS and Twitter, rather than just email
and we’ll be adding the ability to export all your data to an external format, like XML. So if you want to pack up your toys and go home, you can do that.
On a final note: is there anything else you’d like to tell Pimp Your Work readers about Homecourt?
The primary message about Homecourt is really for the people out there who work with clients. This can be anyone: web developers like me, photographers, designers, printers, building contractors, lawyers, accountants… and Homecourt is there to simplify and streamline the way you work.
The feedback I’m getting over and over is that it’s remarkably simple to use, and somewhat addictive: the ability to post comments and see them all in one place is a huge win for a lot of people who are used to email, phone calls and faxes (!).
The good news is that it’s free to try, and when you find out that it works for you, we make it really easy to step into a paying plan starting from a measly $10 US /month.
Pic Credit: Images used with permission from Aaron Vegh of Innoveghtive.
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