Archive for How To
Highrise Authentication Token (API) How To
January 15th, 2009 • How To, Screencasts
Tags: api, api token, authentication token, highrise, howto, Progress, screencast
For Periscope Gadget to work with Highrise, a step needs to be taken in addition to supplying your username and password. As with Basecamp, an API switch needs to be flipped. In this case, the Highrise Authentication Token needs to be copied from your Highrise account and inserted into the settings for Periscope. The Token is 40 characters long and hexadecimal (numbers & letters A through F) — it’s an easy copy and paste. As always, we try to be as careful as possible when storing your sensitive information.
Here are the steps you’ll need to take, or just view the screencast below:
- Login to your Highrise account using your customized URL. It’ll look something like http://your-account.highrisehq.com/
- Click on the “My Info” link in the top right hand corner. You’ll be presented with the “User Account” tab of your own account.
- Click on “Reveal authentication token for feeds/API” which will show you a yellow highlighted 40 character long hexadecimal string.
- Copy this string to your clipboard.
- Login to your Periscope Gadget account at http://periscopegadget.com/login using your Periscope email and password.
- Add a new account by clicking on the “Add” link, or click on any of the pencils to edit a Highrise account that has already been setup.
- Paste the token from your clipboard into the field labelled “Highrise API Token”.
- Save your changes — you’re done!
Forgot your Periscope password? Password reset now live
December 27th, 2008 • How To, Progress
Tags: password reset, Progress
I’ve received a fair number of password reminder or reset requests lately. To help speed things along, I’ve added functionality now that allows you to reset your password. Remember, we store a one-way hash of your password (combined with some other goodies) so we’re not able to remind you of your password, since we don’t even know! If you have forgotten your password, just go to the password reset page, enter your email address, and we’ll reset it for you. We’ll then send you an email with more instructions…
Screencast: Add Basecamp accounts to Periscope
November 1st, 2008 • Everything else, How To, Progress, Screencasts
Tags: add account, feature, Progress, screencast, ui, update
If you’ve logged in to your account on the Periscope Gadget home page recently, you will have noticed that the look has changed and a new feature has been added. I moved the information around a bit on the My Account page so that it made more sense to me and so that it was a little cleaner. Hopefully, you’ll agree.
I also added the ability for any beta user to now add a second and a third Basecamp account to Periscope on their own. When you log in it tells you exactly how many accounts you have left to add, and clicking opens up the New account block. Punch in your Basecamp details, hit Add account and the new account will show up on your list of accounts on the right. It will also be immediately available to your gadget, so a gadget refresh will result in the new account showing up there as well. Be sure to enter your credentials carefully, or you will run into issues displaying the data!
Checkout the screencast for a full demo of the new layout and account functionality.
Full Gadget Tour Screencast with Functionality Showcase
October 24th, 2008 • 2 comments How To, Progress, Screencasts
Tags: functionality, preferences, Progress, Releases
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now: a screencast of someone (me) using the gadget, attempting to show all the functionality the gadget has at this point. This means a few things… firstly, that the screencast is loooooooong: around 11min. It also means that it runs the risk of being boring and of having you lose interest. Nevertheless, I thought it would be a good idea to do it anyway, so enjoy.
In the screencast I go through filtering by project, by Basecamp account, what each of the tabs does, submitting time with descriptions, starting and stopping the Periscope clock, as well as the preferences tab. I haven’t really pushed this tab very much but I hope to be putting even more things in there that will make Periscope even more useful. Right now you can control the number of items displayed as well as “compact edition” visibility — checkout the screencast, you’ll know what I’m talking about. (Compact edition was inspired by Rob Colburn’s note to me about a quick CSS hack that Gmail uses to do the same thing. Thanks Rob!)
Full screencast.
Enabling API Access in Basecamp
August 31st, 2008 • 2 comments How To, Screencasts
Tags: api, howto, screencast
To allow Periscope Gadget to function, your Basecamp account needs to have API access enabled. This is really easy to enable and only requires you to log in to your Basecamp account and navigate two pages. I’ve created a screencast how-to, so have a look at that for reference as well. Here are the steps:
- Login to your own Basecamp account. Your URL will be something like http://yourdomain.updatelog.com/ or any of the 5 domains that 37 signals owns (updatelog.com, grouphub.com, clientsection.com, seework.com, projectpath.com) and you’ll need to use the username and password that you chose when you signed up with them.
- Click on the Account (Upgrade/Billing) tab.
- Scroll all the way down on the new page.
- Close to the bottom is a “Basecamp API” section. Click on the check box that is labelled “I’ve read and agree to the Basecamp terms of service…” — you should actually click on the terms of service and read them.
- Click on the button that says “Yes, please enable the Basecamp API for this account” — wait a few seconds, and voila! You’re done! Basecamp API access is enabled!
Also, be sure to checkout the screencast for a more visual walk through of how to accomplish the steps above.
