Today we're excited to announce a series of feature improvements coming to Gimlet. I’m thrilled about the future of Gimlet and you should be, too.

We’ve spent a great deal of time analyzing customer service requests and we’ve talked directly with several clients to build a solid vision for how we can add the most value back to the software.  This post is going to provide an overview of the work we're undertaking, with more posts to follow providing detailed information on each of these major new features.

Okay! Here’s the list of coming improvements:

Improved Search

One of our principal design goals in this round of updates is to give you better access to your data in Gimlet.  To that end, we’re adding a faceting search engine to allow you complete control over how you query your data.

Features

  • Facets for limiting your results to particular category values
  • Full support for complex, nested Boolean queries
  • Improved phrase and proximity searching

Search Results

Improved Reports

Our new search engine will also power our next generation of reporting tools.  Doubling down on this new technology will allow you to query and facet directly within reports, providing you all the means to analyze your data in great detail with rich, ad-hoc control entirely at your command.

Features

  • New downloadable charts and graphs
  • Compare data between date ranges
  • Facet or query directly within reports

Comparison Report

Awesome Mobile Support

We know a lot of Gimlet use occurs at a traditional service desk, using a standard desktop computer. We also know your staff use Gimlet throughout your library on a wide variety of devices.  We’ve designed the next version of Gimlet to be mobile-first, and fully responsive, to create a user experience that’s natural and optimized for any device.

Features

  • Use Gimlet on any device, anywhere.
  • All the power desktop Gimlet on your phone
  • Speech-to-text entry on mobile devices

[caption id=”attachment_111” align=”alignnone” width=”207”]Mobile question form Mobile question form[/caption]

Speed Entry

New clients are always worried about how much time it takes to use Gimlet.  It’s dreadful for them to imagine typing each question verbatim into the question form. PLEASE DON’T.

It’s always been our recommendation that people only write question and answer text into Gimlet if it's worth searching for again in the future.  Many times (perhaps most even?) it’s not worth adding that text, but you still need to record the transaction.  Enter speed entry.

Here’s how it’ll work:

  1. Choose a question type
  2. Add tags (optional)
  3. Save! :)

[caption id=”attachment_114” align=”alignnone” width=”300”]Speed entry Speed Entry - Choose a question type, optionally add tags.[/caption]

That’s as quick as entering data can be.  You’ll be able to switch between Traditional Entry and Speed Entry on-the-fly, so select whichever makes the most sense for you at the time of need.

Okok, that all sounds wonderful! When are these updates coming?

That’s a really good question.  The new search engine is a large and important update for us.  We’ll be moving that tool into production first and before we release any other changes. In fact, when the new search engine upgrade occurs you won’t even see anything different in Gimlet.

All of the user-interface improvements described here are next. These upgrades are significant, so we're stilling working on the details for how we'll release them. More information will follow in the coming weeks, but for now, we felt it was high-time we shared a glimpse into the future of Gimlet.

Do you have any thoughts, concerns, or feedback? Please drop a comment below! Thanks.