How it started
Six weeks ago, I passed along Seth Godin's Like your hair is on fire post to the rest of the Copilot team. We had been kicking around this idea of getting a new product out there to make it even easier for people who run help desks, or help their mom every weekend, to use Copilot. It was a huge chunk of new functionality.
- It had to be installed to make it work.
- It would need to talk to computers in our data center all the time so we could know if it was online.
- It would require a whole bunch of new UI on the website to create, control and organize the computers.
The list of stuff that needed doing was daunting, but as we thought about it, it became clear that we didn't need to do everything we had envisioned right from launch. For example, we didn't have to have a ghost mode that would allow system administrators to put OneClick into an image from day one. First, based on talking to our customers, we weren't sure that enough users wanted the feature. Second, and perhaps most importantly, it added complexity to the use of the product for people who might not even need the feature.
With some fastidious feature trimming, we got down to something that could be feature complete in just a few weeks. After six weeks of effort, we have a brand-new shipping Fog Creek Copilot product. That means:
- all-new clients (the part that runs on your computer)
- all-new reflector (the part that runs in our data center)
- all-new section on the website to control your OneClick computers
All of that in just six weeks time to give us Fog Creek Copilot OneClick.
What is OneClick?
Copilot OneClick gets installed on the computers of the people that you help most frequently and allows you to support them with a single click from the website once OneClick is set up. This streamlines the process of helping the same people over and over again (which a lot of our customers were doing) by allowing them to avoid the trip back to the website to create a new invitation or download the host. It is a feature for our subscribers as long as they have one of our unlimited plans. You can install Fog Creek Copilot OneClick on as many computers as you want for only $39.95 per month. If you want to try it out, sign up for a free trial.
It was a singularly spectacular experience working on this product with Ben and Tyler (the two studs from the Aardvark'd movie) and Alison (our absolutely awesome QA analyst). We worked hard, learned a ton, and managed to have fun while doing it.
We will be sharing the lessons that we learned along the way right here, so check back over the next week or so if you are interested.
What's Next?
Rock Band, and lots of it! Then we have a few things that we are thinking about, but it would be great if you would let us know what you want to see in the product by giving us feedback.