Author Stephane Grenier loves Highrise and writes in to tell us why:

Thank you very much Highrise for making such an amazing product. I'm using it with my assistants to manage the contacts for the marketing of my new best selling book Blog Blazers. Not only does it allow us to manage who's who, we also use it to manage who's been sent books to review, who to follow-up with, and when to follow-up with them. Basically it's a great tool to keep track of our marketing efforts for the book. I can't imagine being without it!

What's also very exciting for us is that we use HelpSpot to manage internal emails, and they've created an integration plugin for Highrise right into their products. So as we email people, we can do what's called a "Live Lookup" right into the software and get the benefits of Highrise with our email client.

So not only are we able to leverage the power of Highrise to manage our contacts, we're also able to leverage the power of their web services!

Thank you to the fine folks at Highrise, I can't imagine launching my book with any other tool!!

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

We recently conducted a survey of our Backpack customers. We got some great feedback — including that 97% of our customers would recommend Backpack to a colleague, friend, or family member. Thank you! 

While reviewing, we noticed some suggestions about things that Backpack already offers. In "Backpack: Some things you may not have known," we pull out some of the more common suggestions and show you where you can find these features in Backpack. We hope you find these tips helpful!

The author of Setting Contexts has published a couple of posts about using 37signals products:

How Backpack is Saving My Sanity talks about using the entire suite of 37signals tools:

Living a Virtual Office Kinda Life talks about the web-based tools the author uses at work to stay organized and keep in touch. Among the list:

Basecamp - we use it for project management and have just started to share with our clients. It took a full day to reorganize the existing account when I started - I also put together a couple of screencasts for our team to learn how to use it. I’m also planning to do a couple for our clients so that they feel comfortable using it.

Backpack - we use this as our own intranet. Anything internal (not project-based) goes here. This has been really successful in terms of adoption - everyone has been adding to pages as well as adding their own.

Highrise - we’re using this for our CRM solution and to track our new business process. As of right now, only the crayonistas involved with new business have access.

Read the rest of Living a Virtual Office Kinda Life to see the other tools listed (Twitter, iPhones, etc.).

Design Connection's Jamison Kissh on how his company uses Highrise.

What does your company do?
Our company is a home design and plan provider based in Thomaston, Connecticut. We began by providing custom home design services to the local building industry in 1985. Since our inception over 20 years ago, we have grown into a nationally recognized plan service providing house plans and garage plans in a variety of styles and sizes. From the beginning, our mission was to provide unique, quality, economical home plans to consumers and builders. 

Why do you need Highrise?
I use Highrise to keep track of all sorts of people; those that advertise on our site and even people that call us and ask some questions. This way it allows me to keep all their information together since sometimes it may take days to gather answers to a caller’s questions.

How do you use Highrise and why do you like it?
I use Highrise to keep track of prospective customer’s emails to me as well as remind me to follow up with them if need be.

Which features do you use the most?
Well that would have to be the dropbox followed by a close second with notes.

What did you use before and why did you switch?
I tried a few programs as well as just a simple spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was a mess and nothing else offered anything nearly as useful as Highrise.

Get specific. Tell us a story about a project or situation where Highrise helped you out.
Highrise proves its self everyday when I receive an email or phone call with someone that I had been in correspondence with but had forgotten about. I quickly open Highrise and search their name in the nice fast search utility. This way it reminds me of their information and allows for a personalized phone call as well as eliminating the need of asking them to remind me who they are. Another way this helps me out is if my boss loses a phone message that I had provided him I still have a backup of the numbers, addresses, and any other information provided to me during the conversation.

Any tips or tricks for other customers?
Not really anything that’s not self explanatory. Other than use my favorite tool the dropbox often.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

Ciaron Dunne of Broadband Genie on Basecamp:

Broadband Genie, the broadband comparison website, has been going since 2003 and we're old-time Basecamp aficionados. Right from the start (just like at a lot of internet companies) the Broadband Genie team has been scattered far and wide across the UK because we needed people with the right skills more than people in the right places. Remote working and collaboration tools have therefore been unimaginably important to us; we just wouldn't exist without them.

Everything in one place
We fell for Basecamp after a brief and misguided flirtation with Microsoft Sharepoint and some experimentation with open-source solutions such as NetOffice. The biggest thing straight away was quite simply the ability to upload graphic designs, specifications and so on and have everybody comment on it in one place, then iterate and so on. Attempting this sort of thing with a large group via email is pretty much a non-starter and can end badly. What Basecamp gave us was a single place where everybody could see everything that was going on, and (just as importantly) a record of what had gone on previously.

Working at different times
Another benefit was that Basecamp facilitated people working at different times. We had programmers and designers who only came out when the sun went down, and it was beautiful to get up in the morning and see a whole load of progress without cluttering up my inbox.

The TO DO list
As Broadband Genie has evolved, I guess our use of Basecamp has changed. The TO DO list is the central project and task management tool for the whole country, and we seem to be able to use it for everyday thoughts and queries as well as for major projects. The ability the comment on TO DO items has really, really made this so much better. We barely use the message board functionality any more. We recently project managed a major web development for us - our mobile broadband comparison site - entirely through the TO DO list, co-ordinating a team of up to ten people.

"You name it, we manage it through Basecamp!"
It's also true that Basecamp has permeated other areas of the business. We also offer some internet marketing consultancy services, and so we just set up projects for our clients and give them access, while still being able to pull everything together into one uber TO DO list. Consultancy, accountancy (even my wedding) - you name it, we manage it through Basecamp!...

We've not seen anything on the market to touch it - so keep up the good work.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

We introduced email-reply to messages and comments in Basecamp a few months ago. It's been a huge hit. Today we're excited to be able to print this new feature to Backpack.

You can now respond to any message posted in Backpack via email.

Just make sure your reply goes above the...

--- Reply ABOVE THIS LINE to post a comment to the message ---

...line and it will appear in the message thread.

This means you don't have to log in to respond to a message or comment someone else posted. This new email-reply feature makes Backpack an even more useful internal communications tool. We think you'll love it.

Thanks again for your continued support.

Timepost is a project timer that automatically downloads projects and to-dos from Basecamp. Previously available only for Mac OS X, it is now available for Windows too.

"Using Timepost with Basecamp" offers more details:

Attention developers: The Highrise API now works with the new Deals feature. Here's an introduction to the Highrise API and here's more info on how Deals work.

Highrise has been on a roll lately. The new Deals feature has been a huge success. Let's keep the good news coming. Today we're excited to roll out two of the most requested features in Highrise: CSV (Excel) import, and exporting of notes/emails from contacts, cases, and deals.

CSV (Excel) import

You've always been able to import contacts from vCards, Basecamp, Outlook, and ACT!, but we didn't provide an option to import data from a CSV file. Many people keep their contacts in Excel, so now you can export those contacts from Excel into a CSV file and import them into Highrise. Here's how it works (from the Highrise help section). Jamis did a great job putting this feature together.

Export your notes/email

You've been able to export your contacts from Highrise in vCard or CSV format for a while now. But starting today you can also export your notes/emails from your contacts, cases, and deals.

Here's how it works.

First, click the "My Info" link in the top right corner of the screen. Once you're on the My Info screen, look in the sidebar for the "Export your data" option (highlighted in red for this example):

Click the "Export data" link. You'll then receive an email in a few minutes with a link to download your data.

The data is presented in a single zip file. When you decompress the file you'll see up to three directories: cases, contacts, deals.

Clicking into any one of them will then give you a series of text files. The contacts text files, as seen in the example below, will be named with the contact's name.

When you open one of those files you'll see all the notes/emails attached to that person. It'll look something like this:

The data is in YAML format which means it's both human readable and also machine readable. Special thanks to David for making this export feature happen. Yes, he still codes!

Note: You can only export data for contacts, cases, and deals that you have access to see. The export will only contain data that jives with your permissions.

We hope you find these new features useful

Thanks for the requests and we're sorry it took us a while to get these features done. But now that they've live we really hope you find them useful. Thanks again for your continued support!

VisioPlanning is a tool that integrates with Basecamp and lets you keep track of projects and employees in real time.

This video explains more:

Learn more about VisioPlanning.

At the Highrise Customer Forum, Peter V. asks the following:

Isaac, another customer, offers this thoughtful response:

Try Highrise or Basecamp.

Santiago Gomez, IT Manager at A. D. Williams Engineering, describes how the company set up large LCD monitors on the production floor to show the company's Basecamp milestones.

A monitor displays milestones at A. D. Williams Engineering.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

Tired of seeing that generic person icon inside Basecamp? Then you and your team should upload photos. It's a simple step, but it really humanizes things when can you see a person's face next to their words.

Here's how to upload or change the photo that appears next to a person's name:

Select the "My info" link that appears in the upper right of every screen. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page to the section marked "Photo." Then choose the file you want to upload from your computer and click the "Upload photo" button.

You can upload a small photo (GIF, JPG, or PNG), which will be resized to 48 pixels square (if it is not already that size). If you keep seeing an old photo instead of the new photo you've just uploaded, clear your browser cache and force reload the page.

For Highrise users, the process is similar. Just click on "My info" in the upper right of every screen and then select the "Contact and permissions" tab. Then select the "Change photo" link.

The team behind Beanstalk, a hosted Subversion system, discusses using Campfire when things go wrong.

Customer love for Beanstalk's support efforts in Campfire:

Three 37signals tools made the list at Ditch the backpack: 100 essential web tools for virtual students. Here's what the list is all about:

And here are the 37signals tools that made the cut:

Campfire. Set up instant chat rooms with your study group or classroom using Campfire and make communicating as a group much easier.

Writeboard. Create a web-based text document with this tool, then use it to either edit, share, or send yourself a text file of your document.

Backpack. This tool can organize anything from just your own studies to that of an entire class. Make pages, use calendars, post announcements, get email or text message reminders, and more.

See the full list.

Today we're excited to unveil an enhancement that makes using Highrise even more convenient: The sidebar search-for-a-person feature is now significantly faster than before.

Searching for a person or company from the sidebar on the Dashboard or a person/company's page is the most frequently used feature in all of Highrise. Highrise is about getting to a person/company's page so you can enter a note or look up a previous conversation or grab a phone number. Now you can do that a whole lot faster.

Watch this video to see it in action

Sam Stephenson, one of our developers here at 37signals, has been working hard to make this a reality. And now that we've launched it, he put together a video showing you the before and after:

We hope this helps makes using Highrise an even better experience. Thanks for your continued support!

If you use more than one 37signals product (or have multiple accounts within a product), you can make your life a lot easier with 37signals Open Bar. In this video, Jason and Jamie show how easy it is to set up Open Bar so you can switch quickly between your accounts.

Learn more about 37signals Open Bar or OpenID.

Mobile Maven, a site dedicated to cellphone tips, recently published "45 Mobile Resources Every Road Warrior Must Have":

Three 37signals tools made the list:

Campfire - Group messaging service that is mobile and iPhone compatible.

Basecamp - manage teams and projects collaboratively via web based interface.

Highrise - Online customer management tool from the folks at 37signals.

Check out Mobile Maven for more tips, tricks, and hacks for your wired and wireless life.

Adam Larson's Adam&Co. is a studio specializing in creative direction, branding, imaging, illustration and design. Adam loves Basecamp and wrote in to tell us why.

I run a design studio (Adam&Co.) and while I've used Basecamp via clients before, I never used it myself. I recently signed up and it has CHANGED my life for the better. It has made my work so much more manageable, has saved me incredible amounts of time, and has made my clients very impressed as well.

I not only use it for business projects, but I teach a class at MassArt and have used it with my students as well and they have responded VERY well to it.

The main reason I'm writing is that I've also used it to help organize during a family crisis. We recently had a major accident in the family, and my siblings and I live in different parts of the country. I put a project site together to manage everything and it is our one resource for keeping everything in check. It has been absolutely amazing!

So - A BIG THANK YOU! For such an incredible product with uninterrupted service. You guys are the best!

Adam even followed up with more praise:

Thanks Adam! Great to hear that Basecamp has helped you in so many ways.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

How to jump to a specific date/month in the Backpack calendar:

We recently introduced some changes to how we handle raw HTML input in Basecamp. 

In most of Basecamp, HTML input will remain the same. Messages, comments, to-do items, and the system Overview message still allow HTML as they always have.

But elsewhere in the app, we are now escaping HTML. That means HTML tags will not be interpreted by the browser. So if you type "<b>hello</b>", you'll see the tags in the message text instead of an actually bolded hello.

We made this change because HTML has often led to broken pages and it raises security risks. We appreciate your understanding and thank you for your continued support.

Trevor Squires on why he wrote Propane (coming soon) for Campfire: "Campfire is about immediacy. When you want to share a file, you just upload it. Seen a cool image? Copy in the url and Campfire shows it inline. With Propane I'm trying to take immediacy and turn it up to eleven. In a desktop app I can do stuff that a web app can't do."

When you drag an image from Safari and drop it into Propane, what are you trying to communicate? Sure, Campfire displays the image, but where did it come from? How many times have you been asked "where's that from?". Propane does that for you.



Same thing with text from a web page.

When you copy in a tweet url, why are you doing that? If you want to share the tweet, the actual message is what you meant to share - not some opaque URL. Propane turns it into a twicture because that's what's recognized as a great way to share tweet messages.



How many clicks does it take to upload a file? 3? This is supposed to be immediacy. Just drop the file on Propane.

Stay tuned for more info.

Deals, announced just the other day, let you keep track of proposals, bids, RFPs, and project sales right inside Highrise.

Rave reviews are already pouring in at Twitter:

And here are some of the positive comments from the announcement at Signal vs. Noise:

Learn more about Deals.

Today we're thrilled to officially announce a huge new feature in Highrise called Deals.

Deals let you keep track of proposals, bids, RFPs, and project sales right inside Highrise. Highrise has always been great for keeping track of the people you do business with, but now with Deals you can keep track of the business transactions as well.

Now you'll know which proposals/bids are pending, which you've won, and which you've lost. Enter notes about the deals, attach proposals or contracts to the deals, and keep a log of any changes. Now you'll know how much money a particular customer has paid you over time or how much you've left on the table from deals you didn't win.

The best way to demonstrate it is with a video:

And that's Highrise Deals! We hope you love it and thanks for your continued support.

Highrise lets you set permissions on people, companies, cases, and notes. It's a great way to select who gets to see what information. Keep your personal contacts private. Limit certain data so only, say, the marketing department can see it. Or open information up so anyone on your team can access it. It's up to you.

There are four levels of permissions for each item:

FAQs about Highrise permissions.