TeamGantt Webinar with Kitchen Sink StudiosSo, again, thank you for taking the time to join our webinar today. This is going to be kind of a special presentation from Kyle Gilbert. He's the Production Manager at Kitchen Sink Studios. They're one of TeamGantt's long time customers. This is the first time we've done a webinar like this. You've probably been on other webinars that we've done-- or that I've done. We do a lot of features, like TeamGantt 101, TeamGantt 201, or kind of TeamGantt centric webinars. And we thought we'd try something different this time, and just take the opportunity to have one of our customers actually share with you how they're using TeamGantt, and just allow them to be candid and to let you know the benefits they get from it, why they chose TeamGantt. Maybe that will help you if you're deciding whether or not you'd like to sign up if you're on a trial or even if you're using TeamGantt and you're just looking for extra tips, hopefully it'll help you be able to determine that or to better use Team Gantt in the future. Also, it is the first time we're doing a customer webinar like this. So if you like it and you want more, be sure to let us know, either in the questions feedback at the end, or you can write in to support@teamgantt.com and just say that you thought it was good, and helpful, and then we'll try and continue to do more of these. OK. So for the agenda today, I'm going to spend about five or six minutes just giving you a brief overview of TeamGantt as a company and then also just tell you what's new on our software platform, basically give you the overview of all the features that we have. It should not take more than five minutes. We don't want to inundate you with slides. I know you're here probably to hear Kyle talk more than you are to hear me. So after that, we'll spend maybe 10 or 15 minutes. I'm going to pass it over to Kyle. He is going to have a presentation of some slides. And I think he's actually going to show you some of his actual projects and how he set them up in TeamGantt. And then finally, we're going to have questions and answers at the end. So if you have questions at any time, feel free to write them into the questions section of the GoToWebinar control panel. We're seeing those as you write them in. And we're going to spend whatever the remaining time is to answer all those questions. I believe we'll be able to get to all of them. So, feel free to write those in and don't think that we're forgetting about them. We see them. And we'll get to them at the end. OK. So for those of you who aren't familiar with TeamGantt as a company, we were actually founded in 2009 by John and Nathan. They're the co-founders and the current owners of TeamGantt. They went live with it in 2010. Over the last five or six years, we've actually added thousands of customers. Some of the larger customers are listed up there on the slide. We go from anywhere from divisions of large corporations to mid-sized design agencies, like Kitchen Sink Studios and all the way down to individuals and small consulting agencies. So there's not really one specific vertical or one specific size company that uses TeamGantt exclusively. It's more of a one size fits all tool when it comes to verticals and size. So our customers, when we talk to them, there's a few reasons why they've told us they choose TeamGantt most commonly. Three that are most common, that I see over and over again are first of all, the ease of use. They just think it's really easy to use, easy to learn. And that really helps them to get their teammates and their users on-board and actually using the tool on a daily basis, which of course is usually the hardest challenge with a project management tool. It's not that it doesn't have the features you want. It's just that your team does not use it. We really tried to overcome that by just making it very simple, very easy to use. So, the second thing would be their features. You know we're not going to talk a ton about the features right now. On the next slide, I kind of go over the features. But we just give you the ability to go from planning a project, to managing the project, and then reporting and tracking on the projects. So all steps of managing your project, that's available in TeamGantt. And finally, people like the design. They like how it's clean. It's easy to understand what's going on in your project. And it's just nice when you're presenting to your management, or presenting to other customers, to be able to see your project in the best possible light. So, if we fast forward to today, we're still privately owned by John and Nathan, the same co-founders. They deliberately decided not to seek outside investment when they were creating the company. We've been a profitable company for five years. So almost from when they started the company, it's been profitable and growing. And those two things really allow us to be product focused and focused on what our customers want. We don't have any pressure from outside investors to grow rapidly or to increase sales. Our main focus is just to grow sustainably and to continue to add features that our customers are actually requesting. OK. So, let's talk about the TeamGantt platform real quick. So I split it up into four main areas of project lifecycle, project management lifecycle, more or less. So the first one is planning. That's probably how a lot of you found TeamGantt initially. You were looking for a way to plan out your charts in an online Gantt chart. So, of course, we offer you the Gantt chart in a list view to be able to see your projects. We allow you to design dependencies between tasks to make sure your projects are occurring in the correct order and that the critical path is being met. We allow you to assign resources and users to tasks, so you can do resource planning. And we allow you to do hourly estimation as well, where you can assign hours to users for projects. And you can just make sure that your hours are all lined up how they should be. The second stage would be managing the project. For that we offer a My Task dashboard, which is just a dashboard where users can come in and see everything assigned to them and basically work out of that dashboard. Second thing would be the ability to communicate to request progress updates. That kind of goes to the third stage as well, communication and collaboration. So, it's one thing to be able to plan and manage the project. But it's also extremely valuable to be able to pull all of your team members and your employees and have them collaborate on their parts of the project, and then be able to communicate as that's going on. So, for that we have full ability to comment, that's integrated with your e-mail, the ability to upload documents and to be able to see all your conversations in one place. And finally, tracking and sharing, it's great to be able to take baselines of your project and be able to compare that back to-- or see how your project ended and compare that back to the baselines that you took along the way. We offer time tracking, which is currently in an open customer beta, which is the ability to actually have users track time that they're working on tasks, and then gives managers the ability to report on that and export that in a CSV file. If you are interested in having time tracking turned on for your account, you can write in to support@teamgantt.com and just say you'd like time tracking turned on. And we'll turn it on for you. Again, it's an open customer beta. So it's pretty much the final product with maybe just a few tweaks before we do a general release. And it's free of charge. It's included with the TeamGantt platform. So if you're at all interested, just go ahead and write in and we'll turn it on for you. Finally, under tracking and sharing, we have the PDF export and the public link, which allow you to share TeamGantt with people outside of TeamGantt, who aren't necessarily users. OK. And with that, enough of my slides, we're going to get to the part that I'm sure all of you are here for. Kitchen Sink Studios has been a long time customer. I think over three years of TeamGantt. Kyle Gilbert's a production manager over there. They used TeamGantt pretty extensively. And so I'm going to pass it over to him. And he's just going to give you guys a little presentation on how they're using it, kind of some of the highlights, and show you some of the projects in TeamGantt that they have set up. All right. How's it going everyone? Thanks for taking the time to tune into the presentation today. My name is Kyle Gilbert. I am currently with Kitchen Sink Studios. I serve as the production manager over here. So basically I am the project manager for the entire agency, as well as serving as a production manager for the film team, and making sure all our film projects go smoothly. So, I use TeamGantt on a daily basis to set out all our projects and keep track of-- keep track of their work flow. So today, I'm going to give you a little bit of insight more on the project manager side of things and show you how I use TeamGantt and its benefits. So, a little bit about Kitchen Sink Studios, Kitchen Sink Studios, we're located in Phoenix, Arizona. We are a creative and design consultancy in downtown Phoenix. Kitchen Sink Studios currently consists of about 20 employees. We call ourselves Kitchen Sink Studios because we offer everything within the kitchen sink of creative and advertising of products. So anything from branding, print design, web design, development, renderings, animation, illustration, copywriting, photography, film, and social media. Currently, we all offer all of that in-house. And we have dedicated teams to all of those sections of the business. So, you can see TeamGantt actually is a perfect platform for us, because all of these different sections of the business work at their own pace. Therefore, the timeline feature of TeamGantt is extremely crucial to see how those projects relate to each other and how they overlap in the scope for a client. So, I'm going to get into why we chose TeamGantt in the first place. As Aaron said, we've been a customer for about three years now. And we've been extremely happy with the results of TeamGantt, both on our end and we've seen extreme happiness from our clients and the way that we share our Gantt charts with them. I'm going to switch back and forth between my presentation and my Gantt charts today, to just kind of give you guys an insight on to these bullet points. So, the first point I want to make about why we chose TeamGantt is the visualization of timelines. So, I don't know if any of you are familiar with Gantt. But this is the basic platform of Gantt. As you can see on the left side, I've created sections for each part of the business. So, we have a web development section, a film section, photography, branding and identity, graphic design, and then even a little bit of account management. So, basically what I will do is I will set out a Gantt chart for the entire scope. And this lets me see how each of these sections of the business relate to each other. And it's a perfect visualization of these timelines, to see how many weeks they span over and where different parts of the scope are overlapping. It really helps. So if say a graphic designer is delivering a graphic element to the film team, they can go into the Gantt chart. And the film team can see when that graphic is supposed to be coming from the graphic design team. So it helps both for me and for all of our employees to kind of visualize when they're getting stuff done, how many days they have to work on it, and what other departments and tasks are dependent on them. And I'll get a little more into that later. Another thing I really like about Gantt as a project manager is it gives me a quick judgment of capacity. So a lot a big question I always get from our business development people is when they can bring a project in. And in order to gauge that, I always use Gantt. So I have my Gantt chart right here. What I can do when the account manager comes to me, and they ask me-- say they ask me, the month of March, how busy we are on the web development side? I have my developers down here, which I can assign them tasks in Gantt. And it shows me the number of tasks they have on any given day. This synopsis is great, for the fact that I can click on it. It shows me exactly what they're working on. And the more towards the color red a box gets on any given day means how packed they are. So, if the account manager came to me today and asked me when we could take on some development work, I would gauge by clicking on one of these boxes, seeing how long I think those tasks are going to take them. And depending on how big of a project is, I may move-- tell them that we might want to consider bringing on a development project not till mid-April. So, it's a great judgment of capacity and lets them know a quick answer to tell the client on when we can take in their project. Also, another great thing is the customer interaction with Gantt. So, we always are completely transparent with our Gantt charts with the clients. At Kitchen Sink, we believe in transparency. And we believe in the client being part of the project. What I will typically do is after I've set out a scope like this in TeamGantt, I will typically, as Aaron said before, there is a PDF feature. So what I can do is I can go in here to the Gantt chart and I can export a PDF. It asks me multiple questions as, what paper size I want to do, how I want to show the date, what resources I want to display. And then also there's advanced options, as to if I just want to show a segment of the Gantt chart. What I'll typically do at that point is I'll click view PDF. And then it will create a PDF for me. It's also very visually appealing with our logo and very professional. So what I can do is I can send this over to the client as their version to kind of know what they can expect for the scope of this project, and when they can expect things on their end. To touch back on that as well, I will also set out client feedback due dates in Gantt. So, the way we do things over here at Kitchen Sink is typically we will have different rounds for projects. As you can see right here for this landing page, we have one round-- we have two rounds of wire frames. I'll also build in there a client feedback stage. I find this effective because part of a project is always client feedback. And I believe that you should build that in, in order to account for those days that your clients need to review things. It also helps bring your clients in on projects. And it gives them due dates so the project is fair. And you're holding them accountable as well. The great thing about this is I have this set out for client feedback. And as Aaron said, with the dependencies, each of these little marks between the tasks are dependencies. So if a client doesn't deliver feedback on Sunday, I can push this whole timeline over, so they deliver it Tuesday. And that way the client knows that this timeline has been pushed back that far, and they have to expect that, since they weren't true to their due date, the project gets pushed back. And typically this open transparency helps. And clients really appreciate it. And usually they're OK with that push back. The other thing, and a big point Aaron made, is TeamGantt is extremely user friendly. As I go in here, I have multiple options. I have my projects. I can assign people to those tasks. And then I can create boxes. A new task is as easy as typing something in, and then Gantt gives you-- right here it creates a timeline. From there, you can drag and drop and create how long you want the task to take. And you can see a start date and the end date. Once you assign someone to the task, that task is assigned to that person, comes into their task bar, as well as shows up as a new project in their daily amount of active projects on the capacity screen. So, I know that was quick. But I also want to move along and tell you guys kind of where we were before Gantt. So before Gantt, we had tried other project management softwares, such as [INAUDIBLE]. And they were great for managing tasks and seeing when things were due. But people really never knew when they were supposed to start on stuff, how many days they had for the project, and what other projects were being dependent on them finishing their tasks. Even before that, we were using things like email to send back and forth due dates. We were keeping Excel spreadsheets of projects that were going on. And then we would hold a weekly meeting called Picket Fence, where we would basically talk about what departments had what going on in the week. So you guys can see that before Gantt, where I've summed everything up into one software, we were using three separate forms of keeping track of projects. And it really just wasn't working out. And it became messy very quickly. So how Gantt has helped us. Gantt is great for accountability of timelines and scope of work, both on our end and on the client's end. One thing I always do with all my creatives when I set out a timeline is I make sure that they are OK with that amount of time I have set out. And once I get that verbal approval, they know and I know that they are accountable. And they can get that work done in time. It's also great for planning. As you can see, I'll pull up this. So this is actually a Gantt chart that has multiple projects open. This is actually all of our film projects in the next couple months. The reason this is great for planning is I can see where we have shoot dates, where we are doing pre-production for shoots, and where we are in post-production. So I can-- if a account manager comes up to me and asks me about if I can take on a film project, I can quickly pull everything up. And I can tell them where we can take in projects and where we can't. Also, I've noticed that as we use Gantt, and we use it on a regular basis, and we keep up with managing it, it allows for better company morale. The reason being is everyone knows what they're accountable for. They can go into their Gantt screen every day, and they see their tasks and their progress on them. And then they have me hounding them for projects every single day. And they know what they can work on, and come in and just get to work right away. So, I want to talk about the creativity on how we use Gantt. One way we use Gantt in a creative way is for our accounting. I do not currently have that accounting chart open. But the way we use that is we actually have our accountants work remotely here. And what we will do is because we are a creative agency and our scope usually gets paid within a couple segments throughout the project, what one of our partners will do at the agency is they'll set out a Gantt chart for accountants. So if you can imagine this is of the scope of a project, he'll do different rounds of payment periods and assign it to our accountants remotely. What that tells the accountant is what days they need to send out the invoice for the client, how many days that client has to bill-- has to pay that, and when the check should be coming in. There's also a great feature over here is a comment section. So he could have conversations back and forth with the client-- with the accountant. And he can choose who to send it to if he wants to loop anyone else in. And that way they can have full conversations and be on the same page through Gantt. Also, another quick integration we use is with Basecamp. So we currently use Basecamp more for our discussion side on our clients end. However, I'm certain to feel that Gantt can fulfill all of this. But a great thing that Gantt does with Basecamp is I can move any line over, and of that timeline signifies the due date in Basecamp. So when I move that over and I refresh, it syncs with Basecamp. And I can go in here and all my tasks and bars, all the end of the bars become tasks in Basecamp. It also syncs up with who is assigned to those tasks and the due dates, as well as any comments that are assigned to the tasks. So, some advice I would have with Gantt. Typically when I create a Gantt chart, the process is the account manager gets in the scope of work. So we, for example, we'll be told this client wants a landing page, a film, photography, branding and identity, and some graphic design. The account manager and I will sit down. And we'll create a Gantt chart based on this capacity and how long we think it will take the creatives to do it. Once we set out that chart, I will actually pull in all the creatives working on the projects. And we will sit down and have a Gantt kick-off. That way if there's any issues with the creative thinking that maybe they can't get this logo done in a week, and maybe they think that-- maybe the account manager thinks the client is going to take longer than two days to give us feedback. We can adjust those timelines. And then we can all go off and start on our project. And everyone is accountable from there forth, because they've given us their word. And they have kind of been part of setting out those timelines themselves. Also, I encourage everyone on Gantt to have it open on their screen all day. This encourages them to go back and forth and make sure they're not missing anything, and to see anything new that may pop up during the day. Also, if you're going to manage Gantt, I would recommend to appoint one person to manage it. The beauty of Gantt is it's very collaborative. But here at our studio, and with our business model, I am the only one that is in charge of Gantt. And therefore, if timelines get moved, it's only by my hand. And I know. So with that I want to go in, because I know it's pretty quick, and show you kind of some of my Gantt charts. The first feature I'd like to talk about a little bit more in depth is the dependencies. So I will, depending on the project, create these dependencies between tasks. That way if anything changes in the project, I can move this over and it will move the whole timeline. The other great thing about these Gantt charts is they can get quite lengthy on a project. So if I just want to see the film component of this, I can go in here and I can collapse. And it makes it a little more easier on the eyes. Notice you still have these gray bars, which are great because you get to see the overall length of the scope you've set out. The other thing I want to talk about with Gantt is how you can make your bars different colors. So I said that a big portion of our business is film production. And typically what I do with film production is I will do different stages of the process. So blue is pre-production. Purple is the actual shoot dates. And orange is post-production. You'll notice this little diamond. What the diamonds are are milestones. So these are quick visual representations of when the whole scope is done. Another great feature to make it a little easier on the eyes, and if I just wanted to judge how much post-production we can handle, I can go up here and I can search by color. So this is our whole post-production schedule. It condenses as it-- condenses it a little bit more and makes it a little easier on the eyes. You can also filter by team member. So, for example, Michael Tippett is one of our graphic designers here at Kitchen Sink Studios. And if I just want to see everything Michael's working on, I can go up here and see everything that's been assigned to him. This pulls up a quick synopsis for this scope of what Michael's working on and where he should be at. Another filter option is to see when things are due. So you have a lot of options here when things are starting, when things are due, what things are overdue. So you can go to due today and it will bring up the tasks that are due today. So, I showed you guys this film section where I have multiple projects open. And this is a really, really great feature just for seeing things side by side and judging certain projects based on what kind of work goes into them. So I will do this with graphic design, film, web design, anything that similar projects are using the same team for. That way I can judge how busy they are. And I don't have to pull up all my projects. So what you do is this is your main dashboard when you go into Gantt. What I'll do is I will select just the projects that I know that have film with them. And you can go down here and open multiple projects. And it brings them all up. And you can condense like I said. And you're free to do so as you please. And it's very easy on the eyes, as you can see. Yes so Gantt is very easy. It's very visually appealing. The other thing is it's very satisfying seeing your projects laid out. And there's a certain comfort level with that. Everything is really easy to move, very responsive. I love the color features. The other thing that's great is you have a list view. So if you don't want to see the bars and you just want to see a more traditional list view, you also have that option. Here it shows the tasks, the overall group, what percentage is complete, the start date, the due date, and who is assigned to that task. Hey, Kyle, this is Aaron. That looks really good. Sorry to cut you off. But we are kind of into the time that we had scheduled. So at this time, I want to open it up for questions for any of the viewers. If you want to write any questions in to the section in GoToWebinar control panel that says questions. If you write those in, we'll start answering those in the order that they're received. I know we're a little bit past time. But I think Kyle has a little extra time. And I definitely have time, so I think we can stay on and answer those questions for you. Of course. OK. So Liz wants to know, how can you get the task name on the bar? So, uh-- [INAUDIBLE] So, I believe that's in the preferences. Actually, you want to go to view. View? Yeah, not menu. You want to go to View and then Show Task Names next to Bars. One other thing I was going to say Kyle is I saw you collapsing and expanding those groups one by one. But if you go to View, you can actually expand all of them at once or collapse all the group at once. That's great. Just a little short cut for you. OK, so next question, excuse me, have you done any studies on how much time or money TeamGantt has saved you? Are you talking to me or-- Yeah. OK. Sorry, so next question, have you done any studies on how much time or money TeamGantt saves you? I would assume they're wondering if internally you guys have done any reviews or anything like that. We have not done any studies on money. However, it has saved us an immense amount of time. And I would say the part that contributes to that most is the client feedback due dates we set and incorporating our clients into our projects. I typically assign those client feedback sections to the account managers, so they are-- know when to expect client feedback. And by doing that, we really account for the whole scope. And we're not giving-- we're setting the client an exact amount of days they have to look at a project, and not just giving it to them and hoping they give it-- get back to us fast. So, I would say that portion is the biggest direct correlation of saving time on our part. Excellent. Do you-- just a question from me, when you invite clients to your projects, their permission level that you usually give them is it view only or update progress? Or how do you normally manage their permission? Typically, we don't give the client permission to move bars on there, and just because, for a comfort level of theirs, we'll tell them that, don't worry, you won't mess up the timeline at all. And it goes back to saying one person manages it. But we do give them full access. I would say most clients don't log on directly to Gantt. And they more refer to the PDF that we have. And if I change scope, I will send them a new PDF. That way it appeals to a wide variety of clients. Some of our clients are a little less tech savvy, so a PDF is more their comfort level. Got you. So, Maxime wants to know, is there a French option available? And I'll take that one. So, TeamGantt is a website. You can actually use Google Translate to translate all of the text in the website to whatever you want. So if you can go to Google Translate, you can set up your default translation language to be French. And then if you use that and you open TeamGantt, it will actually translate all of the text in TeamGantt to French. So I know that is one of the available options for you. And if you want to give that a try, and if it doesn't work, if you just want to write in to support, we'll walk you through how to set that up, Maxime. OK. That looks like all the questions for today. Kyle thanks again so much for taking the time to present, to show your company data to us and how you organize things. I really appreciate it. I think it was really helpful. If anyone has any feedback on the webinar, you can write that into support@teamgantt.com. As I mentioned, this is the first time we've done a webinar like this. And we'd like to continue doing them if you found it helpful. If you did, just write in and let us know. The recording will be sent it out in the next few hours if you miss something or you want to go back and take a look again, or share it with someone else who was unable to attend, you'll be able to do that. Thanks again, Kyle. All right. Thank you. And thank you everyone for attending. We appreciate it. TeamGantt Webinar with Kitchen Sink Studios 36:29