During these 30 minutes, we’ll be upgrading our infrastructure to better support our customers.  We’ve tried to select a time when as few people as possible will be impacted.  Once the maintenance is complete, you will be able to return to using the service as you normally do.

Thanks for being a PBworks user, and for your patience throughout this process.

This week, we release two enhancements that improve the overall polish and experience of the business product.

First, we improved the “Create Page” experience.  Previously, clicking the “Create Page” button brought you to a separate web page.  Now, clicking “Create Page” brings up a standard dialogue box.  We’ve also given you much more control over the page creation process.  Previously, if you wanted to create a wiki page in a particular folder, you had to navigate to the folder before initiating the page create.  Now, you can select the folder during the creation process.  In fact, you can even select the workspace in which the page will reside (though we will default you to the current workspace and folder).

Here’s a look at the new “Create Page”:

Second, we’ve improved User Profiles.  Our usability testing showed that many new users had trouble figuring out how to edit their user profile.  This wasn’t their fault; all the user profile actions were linked to from a dull block of identical-looking grey buttons.  Even if they found the “Edit Profile” button, finding the nearly identical “Save Profile” button was a usability nightmare.

Our improved user profile adds much more visual distinction between the different actions, and makes it very clear how to edit and save your profile.

Here’s the basic view:

And here’s the view after you click “Edit Profile”:

Watch for more such improvements in the months to come!

Unfortunately, 30Boxes has become an “orphan” product.  Its creators have moved on to other projects, and last week, the entire service suffered a 1-day outage.  While service has since been restored, it seems clear that without future investment of resources, it is likely 30Boxes will become less viable.

While we could simply keep 30Boxes as a plugin and simply offer it on an “as is” basis, we don’t feel that this is good for our user experience.  Therefore, we have decided to phase out the 30Boxes plugin.

The first step, which we have already undertaken, is to disable new insertions of the 30Boxes plugin.  We cannot in good conscience allow people to add a service we fear will not be reliable in the future.

The next step, which will take place on June 30, will be the disabling of the 30Boxes plugin.  After that, existing insertions will stop working as well.

We’ve chosen a date more than 90 days in the future to give our users plenty of time to seek alternatives.  This may involve using our HTML/JavaScript plugin to insert the calendaring service of their choice, or using other features within PBworks as an alternative.

For Business users, here is the relevant HTML/JavaScript documentation.  And here is the equivalent HTML/JavaScript documentation for our Personal and Education users.

UPDATE:

It sounds like 30boxes is a key part of many of your wikis.  As a result, we’ve come up with a compromise solution that will lessen our exposure to any potential 30boxes shutdown, while allowing you to continue using the product.

On July 1, while we will no longer support the embedding of the 30boxes calendar, any existing embeds will link to the same calendar on the 30boxes.com website.  This way, you can maintain access to 30boxes if you wish to continue using the product despite the warning signs, but we can prevent a 30boxes outage from affecting the wiki pages on which they’ve been embedded.

Therefore, we’ve improved the tagging interface by making it both more consistent and easier to use.  Tags now appear between the content and the comments:

This placement puts the tags next to their closest relatives, the comments.  We’ve also improved the tagging interface.  Now, rather than relying on commas to delineate your tags, you can add them (and remove them) one by one.

For more details on how to work with the new tagging interface, visit our user manual.

A number of our customers told us that they wanted to use PBworks as a place where their employees could store their stuff–files, documents, brainstorms, etc.  One customer even went so far as to dedicate a member of their team to creating a “personal dropbox” for every one of their employees.

To meet this need, we’re introducing Personal Workspaces.

Every business user now has their own Personal Workspace.  While each Personal Workspace includes all the key features of a regular workspace, like wiki pages, folders, and files, they also include special adaptations for their specific purpose.

1) Personal Workspaces are accessible from any screen.

Just go to the Account drop-down menu, and your Personal Workspace will be the first link shown.

2) Personal Workspaces are personal.

While you can access your Personal Workspace from any screen, no one else will even see it.  Network Administrators can join a Personal Workspace, but doing so will alert the owner of the Personal Workspace to the intrusion.

3) You can move items from your Personal Workspace to other workspaces.

Thanks to Move Between Workspaces, you can move a page or file from your Personal Workspace to another workspace.  This lets you use your Personal Workspace for rough drafts or private work, then move the finished product to a more public location.

To learn more about Personal Workspaces, visit our User Manual.

Our user profiles are an important part of PBworks; Network Administrators can add any fields necessary to allow the members of their organization to share their skills and find one another.  One drawback, however, has been that each profile field could only accept a single value.  If you created an “Office” profile field, each person had to choose whether they belonged to New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, even if they split time between more than one.

Today, we’re enabling multi-value user profile fields.  Now users can add multiple values to a single profile field, and this information will show up in search results.

Don’t worry; we’ll still support regular single-value profile fields; Network Administrators can choose whether or not to enable multi-value profile fields, and how they’re configured.

In the words of the classic advertising slogan, now you can select both “Tastes Great” and “Less Filling”!

Multi-value User Profile Fields are available on all business products, including Business Edition, Agency Hub, New Business Hub, and Legal Hub.

Take our latest feature, Network Folder Settings, for example.

PBworks began by allowing you to set up a single workspace for collaborating with your team.

We built on this by allowing you to bring together all your workspaces in a single network.

As the number of workspaces in networks proliferated, we allowed you to create network folders and subfolders to organize them.

Now we’re taking the next logical step by allowing you to edit your Network Folder Settings.  For some time, you’ve been able to write descriptions and upload a logo for each workspace.  Network Folders, on the other hand, were limited to a simple name.

Now, you can do the same with Network Folders.

If you’re using your network folders to organize the projects you’re executing for a key client, you can now upload that client’s logo and add a description.

If you choose not to many any changes, PBworks will continue to work for you just as it did before.