Entering new clients, projects and tasks can be tedious if you need to enter a number of sub-projects or tasks every time. We've been considering how to approach this problem for quite a while before finally settling on a solution that is simple and flexible.

The duplicate feature can be used to create a copy of a client, project or task, including its properties, user assignments, billing rates, and all of its children. You can use the duplicate feature in conjunction with a set of data you keep around as a template, or you can use it ad-hoc to duplicate any of your active assignments.

Look for the Duplicate link in the Manage pages next to any of your clients, projects or tasks:

Duplicating works just like a copy / paste operation:

We developed this feature as part of our major upcoming update but decided that we could easily extract it into an earlier release. We hope it takes some of the tedium out of entering new data.

In preparation for some major updates coming to Syncd in 2012, we're changing our browser support policy. Beginning January 1, 2012, we're going to officially support only the most recent two versions of the major desktop and mobile browsers.

As of the time of this post, these browsers include:

• Firefox 7+
• Chrome 16+ (auto-updates)
• Safari 5+
• Internet Explorer 8+
• Mobile Safari in iOS 4+
• Android 2.3+

Although Syncd may work well in other browsers, these are the only ones we will test and officially support. We may display warning messages for specific browsers which are known to cause problems (e.g. Internet Explorer 6 & 7).

Modern browsers are not only more secure and responsive than their predecessors, they also provide a number of capabilities, loosely defined as HTML5, that enable real advances on the web. Capabilities such as offline data storage, drag and drop file uploads, geolocation, and push communication will allow Syncd to behave more like a native application while still enjoying the advantages inherent in a web application.

Because of the scope of the changes coming soon to Syncd, we'll be explaining many of them in detail before they are released. We know some features have been a long time coming in development, and we sincerely appreciate everyone's patience as we try to get them "right".

We're making a big move this Sunday. We'll be changing our hosting facility and bringing online a whole new fleet of servers to better serve Syncd to you.

Our new servers and hosting facility should provide better performance. In testing, we're seeing improvements of over 50% in the time to complete processing-intensive requests, such as reports. In addition, our new host's infrastructure has significantly improved response times.

Our new server architecture is fully redundant so that downtime can be minimized. Although we've had better than 99.98% uptime since 2008, we hope to improve upon this.

We've also got room to grow with our new host, where we'll be able to bring more servers online quickly to serve growing demand. We will also be able to bring new capabilities to Syncd, such as file storage.

We think that the only downside to our move is that we expect some downtime on Sunday. We're starting the move at 8am EST and expect it to take between 2-4 hours.

Therefore, please plan for Syncd to be inaccessible from 8am - 12pm EST (GMT-4) this Sunday, September 18th.

We'll be tweeting our progress on Sunday to keep you informed. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns, either through Twitter, a comment below, or using the contact form in the Help section of Syncd. Thanks!

Update: Thanks to everyone for your patience. The upgrade was completed successfully and slightly ahead of schedule. We've already heard from some users who are happy with the improved performance. Please let us know how everything is working for you. Thanks!

It's a fairly common problem: after tracking your time against a couple different projects, you realize that you'd like to consolidate those projects into a single one. Until now, Syncd has not provided an easy solution for this problem, which used to require reassigning all your time entries from one project to the other before deleting one.

We've just added a more straightforward solution: the ability to merge data in a single step. Merging is available for the following data types:

• Clients, projects and tasks
• Activities
• Billing rates
• Expense categories
• Payment methods
• User groups

Look for Merge links in your account's Manage pages. For instance, the Merge link for a project is highlighted below:

Merging works a little differently for each data type, so we spell out exactly what will happen beforehand:

We hope that the new merge feature helps you keep your data organized and clutter-free.

We appreciate being entrusted with your valuable data and take every reasonable precaution to keep that data secure. For instance, we make full backups of every account's data and copy those backups offsite several times every day. However, we recognize that your data is your own, which is why we've just re-released a feature from LiveTimer: the ability to backup and download your account's data.

You may now backup your account once every 24 hours. Backup files are in XML format, which is plain text and easily readable, and include almost all of your account's data. Notably missing are user passwords and memorized reports, which will be preserved if possible during a restore.

You may download your latest backup file at any time. Backup files are zipped along with a signature file that verifies the authenticity of the backup.

Disaster recovery on your terms

While it's nice to be able to extract your account's data in a backup file, it really is only one half of the safety net for your data. We've decided to also provide the other half: the ability to restore your full account from one of your backups.

We always keep your latest backup file on our servers, which makes it especially easy to restore your account from this file. However, we also allow you to restore your account from a backup file that you've downloaded in the past.

Peace of mind

In order to access these new features, account administrators should click on the Account tab, and then Backup / Restore.

We hope that you enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having more control over your account and direct access to your data.