Creately Blog

Yesterday, after a busy couple of weeks we pushed out a new version of Creately to our private beta users. Just in time so the team can take a well deserved break, as Nick gets married on Thursday. We’re really happy for Nick and Nadisha, and you’ll hear all about it next week after the festivities are over. But for now we want to share some exciting new additions and fixes we’ve introduced in this release.

We’ve got some great feedback from our testers and we really appreciate the time you folk have taken to help us refine Creately. And I want to stress how we want to continue to drive adoption of support.creately.com as the focus of our communications with our new users.

Here’s a quick list of changes we’re introduced.

• A new web based Login that’s integrated into the Creately.com site. We hope you like this.
• Improved pop-up window management. This was getting to be a problem with users using different browsers, but we’ve smoothed this out for a better user experience. Drop us a note if you still find this to be a problem.
• The old data window has been replaced with a less cluttered data/property view area on right side of the application. Now, instead of having to manage multiple data view windows in your workspace, Creately automatically updates the data view area with all the properties of the selected KObject. You can still get to the old data window if you need by clicking on the contextual KObject menu.
• A properly optimized and documented deployment architecture for Creately on Amazon Web Services infrastructure. This will hopefully help us save some money as we expand our user base over the next month.
• Tons of bug fixes that will now make your design and drawing tasks smoother with Creately.

Interested to give it a go? Sign up for our beta now.

So with the dawn of a brave new year, we’ve announced a new Private Beta release of Creately with a brand new look. We’re really excited about this new release, as we’ve spent a good amount of time and energy adding some great functionality. As Chandika wrote in his last post, we’re introduced some great features that will make Creately really easy to use and help you get more out of your designs and diagrams.

I’ve blogged about some on the new features and enhancements we’ve made to Creately on the Cinergix blog, so I won’t repeat myself here. I’d rather talk about how we’re really excited about this new release and all the energy and excitement we’re picking up with the beta launch.

The launch has really helped us push through those little niggly things that often get forgotten (or ignored) when the team is in full development mode. Those emails that get sent out to new users, the product site, content to seed the application and new templates that are essential in driving adoption for Creately. These are the little things that really count and go to show your customers that you care about them and how they perceive your product. After all these months of working away in our R&D lab with scant outside contact, its pretty nerve wrecking to put your creation out to the world. We believe its important to release early and release often, and although we’re anxious to hear what you have to say, we’re confident you’ll like what you see.

We’ll be giving out 100 new accounts throughout January, so sign up now and tell us what you think.