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iPushPull Update: New Dashboard plus improved navigation and editing

We’ve been busy improving the iPushPull user experience and now we’re ready to go public with the new updates! This release adds a new dashboard to our web app with quick access to support and the latest company news. We’ve also made it easier to navigate around your folders and pages and improved page editing on our desktop and mobile sites. We’ve added comprehensive help for each new iPushPull update to the iPushPull Support Site.

New Dashboard

Several customers have asked us if we could make it easier to access support, product update information and company news from within the web app. So we’ve added a new dashboard to the site – see the picture above. The dashboard features quick links to useful support information plus the latest company news and tweets. You can also customise the dashboard by adding shortcuts to your favourite pages. Click on the following links to find out more about the Desktop Dashboard and Mobile Dashboard.

The dashboard will be displayed each time you log in, unless you choose your default folder and page instead (see this link for instructions about setting defaults). You can also display the dashboard by clicking the Home button in the top left corner of the web app.

New Navigation Bar

Our new Navigation Bar groups links to the dashboard, your personal profile settings and our support pages together in a single place. On desktop you can find it on the top left of the screen, under the iPushPull logo – for full details click here. On mobile it’s displayed at the top of your Folder List and Page List screens – click here for details.

Improved Navigation between your Folders and Pages

We’ve made it easier to drill down into your pages and move back up to your folder list. This is particularly useful when you have access to more than one folder or when you’re using our mobile site. Details about the desktop site here and the mobile site here.

Easier Page Editing

We’ve reduced the number of steps you need to take when editing your pages, and simplified the edit menu without reducing functionality. The result is a more streamlined experience, particularly when you’re using the mobile app. For more details click here for the desktop site and here for mobile.

We hope you like these improvements as much as we do! If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at support@ipushpull.com.

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Enrich your live iPushPull pages by adding links

Link your iPushPull pages to each other, to external websites, and to phone, email and SMS apps

Have you added links to your iPushPull pages yet? You can add links between iPushPull pages and to external websites, and links that launch your phone, SMS or email applications directly from your live data pages.

Adding links between your iPushPull pages lets you build rich, deep and LIVE websites, and our Microsoft Excel Add-in lets you add them quickly and easily. Links let you structure your data exactly the way you want to – with index pages and high level summary reports connected to detailed breakdowns, allowing your colleagues and clients to drill down to exactly the level of information they need. None of this compromises security – each user can still only access just those pages you’ve granted them permission to see.

One of our financial markets customers uses the iPushPull mobile app to keep their risk manager up-to-date with the latest market moves.  The summary page displays constantly updating headline information about each of their traders’ positions, risk and P&L. Each row links to an individual page showing detailed activity data for the particular trader, so the manager can dive in whenever he needs more information. Another customer has built a set of pages linking the latest stock levels in their warehouse to delivery schedules. In both cases our customers are pulling live data from external systems (trading and ERP, respectively) into desktop Microsoft Excel, and pushing it to iPushPull directly from their spreadsheets. They’re using iPushPull as a live Content Management System. Try doing that with Google Sheets!

Drill down into trading history from portfolio screen

We’ve embedded a simulation of a live stock portfolio being generated by an iPushPull-enabled spreadsheet below. Click on the underlined links to see the trading history for each stock, and click Back to return to the portfolio page.

To view this in our web app on desktop or mobile click here. Please note that we’ve made these pages public for demo purposes – if this was your portfolio they would be protected by iPushPull’s award-winning security and encryption!

Launch your Email, Phone and SMS apps direct from your pages

With iPushPull links you’re not limited to creating connections between iPushPull pages. You can add links to external websites, and create links which launch email, phone and SMS apps with the email addresses and numbers you’ve specified when they’re tapped or clicked. Build a shared directory page for your team, or create live data pages for your clients and let them contact you directly from the page with no fiddling around switching apps or looking for numbers.

Here’s one we prepared earlier, quickly and easily, within Microsoft Excel using our Add-in. Click on any of the links to see what happens:

To view this in our web app click here. It’s best experienced on a mobile phone or similar device with phone and SMS capability. We don’t recommend you try calling any of the numbers!

For detailed instructions how to create links in your iPushPull pages, read our excellent support pages:

Why not sign up for a free trial and try it for yourself?

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Link global teams, aggregate global figures and create live reports in minutes

Case Study: Global Retail Company using iPushPull to aggregate figures and to create weekly reports.

The company has more than ten offices across the globe, from Australia to South Africa to the USA. Each of these sites generates sales figures and forecasts in MS Excel spreadsheets and submits them to head office in the UK.  They used to do this by emailing the spreadsheets around – a laborious process, involving lots of manual cutting, pasting and cross-checking. Now they simply link global teams with iPushPull.

Using iPushPull to streamline the collation of their global sales figures they’re saving up to a day of tedious work each week. In fact, iPushPull has made the task so effortless that they’ve been able to move from weekly to daily reporting.

iPushPull let them automate this process with no disruption to their business.  Here’s how they did it:

  • First, they created individual live data pages for each of their offices.
  • Next, each office installed the iPushPull Excel Add-In and modified their existing spreadsheets so that they push the key sales figures to their live pages the moment they’re entered.
  • Meanwhile, the users back at head office updated their master sheet so that the figures from the remote offices’ pages are pulled into it automatically.
  • The master sheet aggregates the global figures and generates a senior management report that’s always up-to-date and accessible on iPushPull’s desktop and mobile websites.

Link_global_team_sales_forecasts

Our Access Management means that each office only has access to the data they need. And our audit tools let head office know when each office has updated their data and who’s updated it.

This approach has eliminated the manual work that was required to generate the sales reports, and it was achieved in about the same time it used to take to collate the weekly figures by hand! And since it’s been in place it hasn’t needed any maintenance – it just works. Having said that, should they want to modify the type of data they are sharing, iPushPull will make it easy. A new remote office opening? Add a new live data page and update the master sheet to include it. A couple more columns of information required from each site? Extend the ranges on each spreadsheet to include them and start pushing the data. All done quickly and easily with no development work or IT department involvement required.

Because iPushPull is such a flexible system with a broad range of potential applications, we always love to hear about the particular uses our customers are putting it to. Do you have a story to tell about how you’re using iPushPull? Please send it to us at support@ipushpull.com!

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Link Excel spreadsheets so no more email attachments

Link_Excel_Spreadsheets

If you scroll down your email inbox I’ll bet you’ll see a fair few paper clips, highlighting those emails that arrived complete with their own attachment. Let’s take a look at a few, shall we, and see what’s attached? Ah – here’s an MS Excel spreadsheet with those sales forecasts you were waiting for. And here’s the updated pricelist you were expecting from your supplier. And timesheets from your sales people out on the road. And…

Let’s open one of these emails. Done? Right – download that attachment. Then try to work out where it’s been downloaded to. Found it? OK, fire up Excel, open the sheet and scan through it to find the particular range of cells you’re actually interested in and finally copy them into your master sheet. Job done?

If you’re lucky that might be the end of your work. But perhaps you have to generate a company-wide sales report from separate sheets submitted by all your branch offices, or maybe you have to process time sheets from all your remote workers. As companies spread and more staff work remotely, more and more spreadsheets will be dropping into your inbox. And the alternatives to sharing this way are not much better.

You could try a shared sheet on a cloud drive like Dropbox instead. But do you really want everyone working on the same sheet? Should your New York office be able to see London’s figures? Has everyone updated their bit yet? Who’s got the file open now? Which version are we working on again?

There is a better way.

Link Excel Spreadsheets with iPushPull

iPushPull lets you link Excel spreadsheets, whether they’re in the same office or on opposite sides of the world. So every remote office or worker can update their own sheets independently without blocking anyone or accessing anyone else’s data. The instant they make their changes they’re pushed to iPushPull. And the moment the changes are pushed to iPushPull every linked sheet will be updated automatically – there’s no need to save or refresh anything.

Here’s a head office report that consolidates key figures from every branch office in a single place. Each row of the report is linked to a remote sheet and updates whenever the remote sheet is changed:

Sample_Global_Sales_Report

The Time Updated and Who Updated fields show when each remote site updated their data and who did it, so it’s easy to see who deserves a pat on the back and who needs a gentle nudge (hurry up, Eddy!). Each office can only access its own data so only you can see this big picture. And because you can view your live iPushPull data securely on your mobile phone, you can check it on your way into the office. So you’re ahead of the game.

iPushPull works with all versions of Excel from 2007 onwards and it’s easy to integrate it with your existing spreadsheets. You don’t have to change your business processes – just make them much faster and simpler.

So if you’d like fewer paper clips in your inbox in future, why not try iPushPull free today?

iPushPull – link Excel spreadsheets

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iPushPull Update – Simple Page Access Management

We had to smile when Dropbox recently announced that they’d finally added User Groups support to their business package, as iPushPull has featured User Group access control from Day One. It makes it easy to manage the access each team within a business has to different pages – when a new team member joins, just add them to the team group, and when someone leaves, remove them. It’s a feature that’s very popular with our enterprise customers as it enables them to model their iPushPull page permissions directly on their organisational structure.

However, we thought that it might be a bit heavyweight for our smaller customers, so we spoke to some of them and came up with the new feature that we’ve released today: Basic Page Access Mode.

ipushpull_basic_access_mode

Basic Page Access mode simplifies the management of user access for businesses with a smaller number of users and pages. Page access permissions are displayed in a matrix showing which user has access to which page, and what level of access they have (Read/Write, Read Only or no access at all). Each square on the grid can be toggled between the three states by clicking it (or tapping it on mobile). The Transpose button lets you switch the horizontal and vertical axes if it better suits your particular set up.

Basic Access mode is now the default for customers on the Free Trial and Business plans. Enterprise users will be able to switch between Basic and Enterprise modes using the Page Access Mode dropdown on the Folder settings tab:

page_access_mode_select

 

Note that your Enterprise mode settings are retained when you switch to Basic mode, and vice versa, so you can return to them by switching back. If you have any questions please contact our support team at support@ipushpull.com.

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Five things for SMEs and Startups to consider when applying for InnovateUK SMART grants

One of the highlights of the past year at iPushPull was winning our first SMART award from InnovateUK. Winning the second was even better (well, it was a lot more money!). Both grants have helped us fund our ground-breaking research and development work in the fields of security and encryption. We’re aiming to integrate the results of these projects into our existing product line, expand our offering into new areas and hopefully gain some IP in the process.

InnovateUK (formerly the Technology Strategy Board) is the branch of UK government responsible for funding, supporting and connecting innovative businesses. They run a wide range of funding competitions, many of which are targeted at specific technologies or problem areas. If you can’t afford to wait for the perfect competition for your product, the SMART awards for SME innovation might be right up your street. These competitions are run every two months.

Since we won the awards a number of people have asked us for advice about the grant application and management process. There is plenty of information on the SMART website and I advise you to read it all. But here are some things a start-up should consider before applying:

  • Applying for a grant is simply a matter of completing an application form. This form is fundamentally an exam paper, with each question worth a set number of marks. So pretend you’re back at school, read the questions carefully and make sure you answer what you are being asked (especially the questions about finance). The system rather laughably suggests that the form will take around an hour to complete – set aside a week or so to get it right.
  • There are three types of award, each for a different stage of a project’s lifecycle. A Proof-of-Market project leads neatly into a Proof-of-Concept, which leads in turn into a Development-of-Prototype. You can apply for any of these in isolation but, if possible, think strategically and maximise the amount of grant you can claim by starting with a Proof-of-Market project and taking it from there. And make your application for the next stage easier by shaping your project’s deliverables to match the inputs InnovateUK wants for the next project stage.
  • On the topic of deliverables – InnovateUK will want sight of the deliverables you tell them you will produce, even if they are just internal reports. So consider what is going to be valuable to your business and don’t over-promise.
  • SMART grants are a great way for start-ups to get investment without giving away equity. But they can only part-fund your project – you have to provide a significant proportion of the money from your own company funds. So perform a cash flow analysis up-front to make sure you’ll complete the project before running out of money. And don’t forget that…
  • Winning a grant may reduce the amount of R&D tax credits you can claim. The rules are complex – ask your accountant for help!

I hope this article doesn’t put anyone off, but I hope I’ve shown that applying for a grant is a more nuanced decision than it might seem at first. Good luck!

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Nail-biting climax to the Bournemouth University Trading Competition

Bournemouth University Business School students at the trading competition

Last week the iPushPull founders took a day trip to the seaside for the climax of the Bournemouth University trading competition.

Students from the University Business School have spent the last three months competing against each other to make the biggest pot of virtual money, while trying to stick to prudent trading strategies. The competition has been organised by our friends at Quest Futures and has used iPushPull’s live data distribution platform to give the participants real-time access to their latest portfolio valuations on their mobile phones.

So, on a bright and breezy day we found ourselves crammed into a darkened room for a final hour of frenetic trading. The competitors were really engaged – discussing market events and strategies, and also trying to game the competition rules!

It was great to see iPushPull being used as such an integral part of the competition. At one end of the room a giant screen displayed the live leader board on an iPushPull page. And because the university IT budget doesn’t stretch to the multiple screens found in professional trading rooms, many of the students were using iPushPull on their mobile phones as a second screen to keep an eye on their current portfolio valuations.

At the end of a hectic final session the overall winner was Abdul Odhud, who made a highly-creditable paper profit £162,100 in the three months from January, with a Sharpe ratio of 0.79 – indicating that he had followed relatively low-risk trading strategies. Matthew Haynes from Quest Futures presented Abdul with the £500 prize, which he told us he was going to use to repay a car loan rather than squander in the student union bar!

The competition has been a great experience for iPushPull as well and we’ve had some really useful feedback about the system. We’re already looking forward to the next competition when the new students arrive in the Autumn.

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iPushPull Website Update – Templates!

We’ve added templates to the latest version of iPushPull. Once you’ve created a page layout that you want to use frequently (e.g. an invoice or a report) you can designate it to be a template. Then the next time you create a new page you can pre-populate it from your saved layout.

Designating a Page to be a Template

iPushPull_template_checkTo indicate that a page can be used as a template, go to the Page Settings tab and check the This page is a template box and click Save Settings. Anyone who is a folder administrator can now create new pages based on this template.

 Creating a Page from a Template

create_page_iPushPull

Sharp-eyed users may already have noticed the change we’ve made to the Create Page form that lets you do this. If you want to create an empty page, just enter the new page name and hit return or click the plus sign as usual. If you want to create a page based on a template, enter your new page name, click the down arrow and select Create from template instead.

When you select this a list of all the templates you have access to is displayed (see below). This list will include system-wide templates that we have created for you plus any templates you have access to from the folders you are a member of. We’re going to be adding more templates as we go along so keep checking to see the new arrivals. I’m particularly excited about the daily sudoku template – watch this space…

iPushPull_all_templates

As usual if you have any questions or comments please contact us at support@ipushpull.com.

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iPushPull connects student traders with live data during educational trading competition

Quest Futures and Bournemouth University Business School are partnering for the second time in an educational trading competition with a growing number of participants. The competition is open to all Year 4 Finance Masters Students. Starmark Investment Services is providing the trading software and all participants are connected using the iPushPull platform from PushPull Technology, which enables them to access their portfolio data live on their desktop or mobile devices. iPushPull also lets the students check the live leaderboard at any time to see how other student traders are performing.

 

ipushpull_trading_competition

The challenge lasts 3 months and during this period the students are expected to effectively execute multiple trading strategies. The Starmark trading platform creates specific real-time economic scenarios (based on real world events) aimed to challenge the competitors’ decision-making processes. During the course of the contest they have had to face many challenging events, including the removal of the Swiss National Bank’ €/CHF cap and the start of the ECB’s programme of quantitative easing.

Students are trading on a pre-defined set of products and the winner will be based on the best trading profile according to Sharpe ratio. The winner will be announced at the end of the three month period and will receive £500.

The trading competition offers an invaluable opportunity to obtain hands-on experience on professional platforms using the latest technology. This experience will be a great asset in the student’s chosen future professional environment. These competitions give them a real sense of trading in real life and show them how captivating the markets can be.

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Finovate Europe 2015 Fringe Festival – it is time

As iPushPull is at least loosely a Fintech company, it seemed appropriate for me and my co-founder to head to Finovate Europe 2015  this week, when it rolled into London for its annual European bash. The ticket prices almost put us off, but a quick google threw up some discount vouchers which made them seem marginally easier to swallow. So on Tuesday and Wednesday, uncomfortably suited and booted, we pitched up at Old Billingsgate market to check out the competition.

Finovate Europe’s uniqueness lies in its demo-only format. Each of the presenting companies has seven minutes to peddle their wares to an audience of (mostly) big bank employees, without recourse to explicit sales pitches or Powerpoint. The presenters’ responses to this challenge range from cheesy improvs to wooden website run-throughs, but there were a number of gems on display.

So who stood out?

I loved the data visualisations from Misys and Strands Finance, who both took a genuinely innovative approach to simplifying and enriching personal finance data.Five Degrees demonstrated their middle office platform, which seemed to let you build your own bank using a drag-and-drop interface. And Avoka showed how customer experience should be implemented with their incredible frictionless loan application demo, which deservedly won them the best-in-show award. Who knew a loan application could be so gripping? Time to start saving up for some consultancy, I think.

Also memorable was Quisk, with their marriage of mobile and EPOS infrastructure to create a cardless payments system, who surely won the award for the greatest mismatch between apparent frivolouslessness of company name and deadly seriousness of proposition. And the not-sure-it’ll-work-in-the-UK award goes toTivitz, a platform for kids to save money for university by getting their grannies to sponsor them to play (admittedly educational) video games.

So an incredible range of tech on display, with the presenters split between those who wanted to work with the big banks, and those who wanted to destroy them.

Was it worth it to be part of Finovate Europe 2015?

For iPushPull, I think Finovate came too soon. Our fabulous product is not quite mature enough for this event, but maybe next year… If only there was a platform for the ‘ones to watch’?

This set me thinking. Each year I visit the Frieze Art Fair in Regents Park, which brings together the world’s top art galleries and the most active collectors. For the bulk of us punters it’s a brief chance to rub shoulders with the celebrities of the art world. But in the twelve years since it started, a number of simultaneous satellite fairs have sprung up to showcase up-and-coming talents while the big guns are visiting. So why can’t we do this with technology? The start-ups are here. The audience is in town. So who’s up for a Finovate Fringe festival?