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Back in June we launched Harvest for Google Apps. One of the most interesting things about this integration is our contextual gadget for Gmail. Contextual gadgets provide a powerful way for applications to display relevant functionality to an email recipient based on the subject or content of the email.

In our case, a timesheet reminder email triggers a timesheet to be displayed right below the email. Recipients can then quickly enter and submit their timesheet without leaving Gmail.

Today we’re delighted to mention that Google is featuring this integration on their Enterprise Blog as part of their effort in spreading awareness about the powers of contextual gadgets. Check out the post to learn more about this and other contextual gadget integrations. Google is also hosting a webinar on these types of integrations on Wednesday, September 8th.

In case you missed it, here’s a quick recap on how Harvest works with Google Apps:

1) Enter and submit your timesheets directly in Gmail
2) Export timesheet reports from Harvest into Google Docs
3) Sign in to your Harvest account automatically with Google Apps

It’s been a successful launch and we look forward to working with Google to make it even better in the future!

While Harvest provides powerful reports sometimes nothing beats having all of your data in a spreadsheet.  Unfortunately, the defacto spreadsheet tool (Excel) has some tricky file formats, making programatic export more difficult than it should be. We recently made improvements to how we handle Excel exports in Harvest, and I’d like to share a few options for exporting spreadsheets with Ruby.

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Last year, we activated SSL on all Solo, Basic, and Business accounts.  As we continue to ensure the highest standards of security, we will now automatically enforce SSL on all plans, starting September 1st.  This means all trial and free accounts, as well as paid plans that previously did not take advantage of it, will now have SSL enabled by default. We want to share how this will affect you, your Harvest account, and any Harvest add-ons you may rely on.

For the non-technically inclined, HTTPS (SSL) is a security layer which ensures that the server your browser is communicating with belongs to Harvest (and is not an impostor) and also encrypts your communication with Harvest servers, to prevent eavesdropping.

What does this mean for you?

For the majority of Harvest customers who access Harvest using a modern web browser (Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 and above, Chrome, Safari, etc) this change should be totally seamless and you’ll not need to do anything.  Depending on which browser you use, you might notice a new hint in your address bar that your connection to Harvest is now secure.

Here is an example of an HTTPS hint in Firefox 3

Do you use one of our Harvest widgets?

• If you use the Mac widget, you don’t need to do anything differently, it’ll work the same as it does now.
• If you use the Yahoo widget, you’ll need to check the “SSL” checkbox on the widget options after we make the change September 1st.
• If you use the Vista gadget, you may actually need to re-install the Vista gadget after we make the change September 1st.

Have further questions?  Feel free to contact us.

Technical Information for Harvest API integrators and authors of Harvest API clients

For Harvest customers who have integrated Harvest into other systems using an API client we need to make sure that your integration continues to function properly. We’ve begun reaching out to authors of popular Harvest API clients already. Many thanks to Zach Moazeni, Brian Glass and Matthew Denton for helping test their Harvest API clients so far. We will update this post with any update news on these clients.

If your Harvest API integration has in the past communicated over HTTP (ie: not HTTPS) with Harvest, from September 1st onwards these requests will be met with an HTTP 302 redirect to the HTTPS location of your Harvest subdomain. Your API client will need to support SSL as well as follow these HTTP 302 redirects, to continue to communicate with Harvest. Please open a support ticket if you need any help with this, or have any questions about supporting SSL.

Technical note: Why are we using an HTTP 302 redirect and not an HTTP 301 or an HTTP 303? We suspect there may be API clients which will follow a 302 and may not follow a 301 or 303. An API client which will obey any redirect on the 3xx class is a good idea. Please contact us for more details on this issue.

Developers, have any further any questions? Please visit the Harvest forum.

For the second year in a row, Harvest was pleased to sponsor BizConf, which took place at the Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island, Florida. With fewer than 100 attendees, there is plenty of opportunity to get to know everyone in attendance, and our own Prime Hacker Barry Hess and Systems Administrator Warwick Poole went down to scope out the scene. The location and food were outstanding (outstanding), but the people were what made BizConf remarkable.

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Like many good ideas, Streets United began as an inspiration over a few beers.  It has grown into a business that is a resource base for street sports, music, art, entertainment, and community programs.  We got to talk with the Streets United crew about extreme pogo stick freestyling, inspiring the youths of Aston Prison through street sports, and how Harvest allows their consultants to take responsibility for their own projects around the globe.

Here’s some of  the startling and diverse street sports they’ve been introducing the world to:

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We’re excited to announce that you can now manage retainers in Harvest. Here’s a short video of how the feature works:

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We have heard from many customers who need to track retainers in Harvest. You can invoice for a retainer today in Harvest – say, you invoice a client for $5,000. That works, but there’s no easy way to invoice the hours you worked, and draw from that $5,000 and keep track of remaining balance.

Today, we’re excited to announce a new feature to support retainers is coming this week. Here is what it will look like:

Our team has been hard at work on this feature for well over a month. The goal is to make it simple to track retainers, while at the same time offer enough functionality and information to make it useful.

How Will The Feature Work?

To start, there will be a new Invoices > Retainers section. You can create a retainer by creating a retainer invoice, and when you collect a payment on that invoice, the amount will go into the retainer funds.

To invoice the client later and draw from the retainer, you will simply create an invoice for the project hours, like you normally would. Harvest will show you a list of retainers to draw from. All you need to do is to choose the correct retainer, and Harvest will automatically draw from the funds, and update the retainer balance.

We’ll let you know when the feature is available later this week, and we’ll have a video showing exactly how to utilize it.

La Grande is a small rural community in Eastern Oregon struggling with city and state funding, school programs that are are getting cut, and a downtown that has been ghostly for years. We got to chat with Chris and Mike, the engine behind La Grande Life, about how they are connecting a town with limited resources by way of social word of mouth, so that people can join in on all of the things happening in their own community, and how Harvest keeps them on track for those crucial, but non-billable, hours.

What was the inspiration for starting your company?
Once we got Cold Coffee Media off the ground to give local businesses (and beyond) the most gorgeous and intuitive web presence available, we said “Man, I wish there was a hub for all the cool things going on in our home town of La Grande.  A place where people could find out where the live music is, where the good bike trails are, what movies are playing, who’s teaching a workshop or organizing an event, or sharing their thoughts: and have it be all local, by the people/for the people”.  So we created lagrandelife.com to be the local social networking hub we wanted to use ourselves. Continue Reading »

We’re excited to announce that we’re now able to bring all of the benefits of our Google Apps integration to our existing customers!

You can read the full description of the Harvest Google Apps integration on our previous blog post about it, but here are the highlights:

• Single sign on for all employees via their Google Accounts
• Submit timesheets directly from Gmail
• Export timesheet reports into Google Docs
• Get Quick links to Harvest in relevant emails

The installation process is much the same as what we outlined previously for new customers, and you can watch the video to get an idea of what the the signup process, and the overall integration, will look like.

To enable your Google Apps integration, go to the Harvest Google Marketplace Page, and click Add it now.  Enter your Google domain information, and you will be led through the integration setup process from there.

A few things to note:

• Once you sign up, anyone who is on your Google Apps domain and has a Harvest user account will automatically have the Google Apps integration enabled.
• During the setup process, you’ll be prompted to import new users from Google to Harvest, which will allow you to create new Harvest users from your Google users.

We’re thrilled to expand our Harvest Google Apps integration, and as always, don’t hesitate to share your feedback and suggestions with us.