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Have you ever been in a critical situation where you needed to obtain a client’s home phone number from
your mobile phone or check a co-worker’s schedule from your Palm® VII in order to confirm a meeting?
Have you ever wanted the ability to announce the “big sale” company-wide from the road via your laptop?
Have you ever wanted to run up to the minute project status reports from your Microsoft Windows®
powered pocket PC during a client meeting? It’s all possible… at WorkArea.com.
WorkArea.com is an ASP (application service provider) that offers business productivity tools to its
subscribers via a PC web browser or wireless Internet enabled device such as a mobile phone or PDA.
It is WorkArea.com’s mission to become the operating system of choice for growing businesses. The
WorkArea.com “operating system” will make the traditional operating systems of today’s PCs, mobile
phones and PDAs irrelevant. System specific features such as the file storage in PCs, calendars in PDAs
and address books in mobile phones will be disregarded as all of this information can be stored within
WorkArea.com and accessed in real time from virtually any wireless device. Furthermore, the painstaking
process of synchronizing data between PCs, phones, and PDAs will no longer be necessary.
WorkArea.com (“WorkArea” or “the Company”) is the property of and is managed by WebLinc LLC
(“WebLinc”), an Internet software development company. WebLinc’s client list includes Half.com,
Crayola, Urban Outfitters, and ABN AMRO.
Background
In order to better manage its professional services business, WebLinc developed
an extranet with a series of Web productivity tools. At the heart of the
system was a time tracking application that had served as the basis for
WebLinc’s payroll and client billings since its development in 1998. Other
tools within this extranet included a company wide address book, employee
directory, Web-based access to corporate email, collaboration tools, and
document storage.
The productivity tools worked so well in-house, increasing WebLinc’s profitability
and simplifying administrative duties, that a decision was made to
offer them to the small to mid-sized business market. After modifying its proprietary
technologies to allow for multi-company use, WebLinc launched
WorkArea.com in June of 2000. Its goal was to provide the first Web-based
management and productivity tool suite that was platform/device independent.
In doing so, WorkArea.com broke new ground to become one of the
first ASPs to offer tools that are accessible via wireless Internet enabled
devices such as a mobile phones and Palm® VII PDAs.
Current Features
WorkArea.com has developed a complete suite of productivity tools aimed at simplifying time
tracking and administrative duties for small to mid-sized businesses and freelance professionals.
These tools use a combination of our own and commercially-available technologies. What follows is
a detailed description of the productivity tools WorkArea.com currently offers its users.
Time Clock
The Time Clock allows users to track their time
in real time for any combination of prespecified
clients, projects, and tasks, replacing inaccurate
and easily manipulated methods such as paper
time sheets and punch clocks. This feature is
available via a PC, wireless PDA, and WAP-enabled
mobile phone.
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Time Sheet
A "webified" version of the classic paper time
sheet. The Time Sheet allows users to specify a
client, project, and task combination, a FROM:
date and time, and a TO: date and time. There is
also a free-form text field to further define a task.
This feature is available via a PC, wireless PDA,
and WAP-enabled mobile phone.
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Expenses
The Expenses feature allows users to submit
expenses incurred for a specific client/project
and run a report on the status of the expenses
they have already submitted. Once submitted, an
administrator can create reports for expenses
pending reimbursement and update the records
accordingly. This feature is available via a PC
and wireless PDA.
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Current Sessions
The Current Sessions feature allows users with
the appropriate permissions to view all users
currently logged in and tracking time on
WorkArea.com. It shows what client, project,
and task they are working on and how long they
have been working on that particular time entry.
This feature is available via a PC, wireless PDA,
and WAP-enabled mobile phone.
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Company News
The Company News feature displays internal
company information to all users via the first
page of WorkArea.com after login.
Administrators can enter this news as text or
HTML. This feature is available via a PC and
wireless PDA.
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Personal Reports
The Personal Reports feature allows users,
regardless of system permissions, to report on
the time they logged within the system. Users
can filter these reports based on client, project,
task, billable/non-billable, and date. This feature
is available via a PC.
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Company Reports
The Company Reports feature allows administrators
to create aggregated time reports.
Administrators can filter these reports based on
client, project, task, user, billable/non-billable,
and date. Reports can be ordered and sub
ordered by any of these filters and include totals
and sub totals. These reports can be printed
from a printer-friendly version or downloaded in
an Excel® spreadsheet. A simplified version of
company reports is available via a wireless PDA
and WAP-enabled mobile phones.
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Email Reports
Personal and Company Reports can be sent to
any employee or client with an email address
and a web browser. Email Reports allows a
user to specify recipients or choose them from
their WorkArea.com address book. An encrypted
URL is sent to the specified email addresses;
the reports themselves stay on the
WorkArea.com secure servers. The recipients
can then click on the URL to view the printer-friendly
report. This feature is available via a PC.
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Address Book
The Address Book allows users to keep track of
their client contacts, co-workers, and personal
contacts in a centralized location. Co-workers
are automatically added to the Address Book
when they are added as a user and their information
is shared company-wide. Client contacts
can be added and viewed by users with the
appropriate system permissions. Personal contact
records are only viewable by the user that
creates them. This feature is one of the first of its
kind to allow users to share data company-wide
as well as catalog personal contacts. These
addresses and phone numbers can then be
accessed via a PC, wireless PDA, and WAP-enabled
mobile phone. |
Account Administration
This is the area where administrators can add,
edit, or delete clients, projects, tasks, contacts,
users (including user permissions), and company
news. This is also the area where expense
administration, company expense reporting, and
company time reporting is done. Additionally,
this area allows the primary administrator (the
person who signed up for the company account)
to update company information and includes an
area to upload the company logo for display on
the time clock and the header of every
WorkArea.com page. This feature is available
via a PC. |
Excel® Export
The Excel® Export feature allows users to export
Personal and Company Reports to a Microsoft
Excel® spreadsheet. This feature is available
via a PC. |
For more information contact:
bizdev@workarea.com
340 N. 12th Street, 7th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-925-5993
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