SaaSGenius News Digest August 5, 2022

Intuit sends out critical alert to its QuickBooks users

Intuit, in their goal of maintaining their stand as a leading financial software provider, sent out red flag alerts to users of their QuickBooks software this week, notifying them about the phishing emails that may appear to be from the company.

It appears that there have been recent phishing mails making the rounds amongst QuickBooks users. However, over the last 24 hours, QuickBooks and general Intuit users have received official mails from the SaaS giant, informing them of possible phishing emails purporting to be from the company.

In their warning mail, Intuit explained that the phishing emails will appear to be authorized messages from the Intuit Company, especially with the use of logos and all. However, it will go on to inform the users about alleged issues with their account which may include being unable to verify some information and asking them to click a link that collects personal data.

The company expressed that they will never use emails to ask for “software update” or attach any form of “software download” attachment. They also pointed out that neither will they send an email asking the recipient to send sign-in or password details, or ask for confidential personal and financial information like bank or employee details.

Salesforce closes Hong Kong office, and inclines towards its Alibaba partnership in China

World giant CRM provider, Salesforce, has decided to close down its Hong Kong office and reposition itself in China as it looks to expand the reach of its customer relationship management software in the country.

The company is fast-tracking its strategic partnership with Alibaba, and since Alibaba has been the exclusive provider of the American giant’s software across Greater China, the partnership is only expected.

As a result of this, Salesforce is working towards optimizing their business structure to better serve the Greater China Region and open new roles while eliminating some others.

A quick look at the company’s career page shows that it’s currently hiring a product management director and a senior software engineer in the southern Chinese city Guangzhou, where the tech team is located.

Microsoft Teams’ improvement over the last month

Users of the Microsoft Teams platform can testify about the several features that were rolled out through July.

From Logi Dock and the other Teams certified devices that came out, to the improved integration features that now allow organizations to receive better feedback, Microsoft Teams is finding better ways to improve collaboration amongst users.

First, for better meetings, Microsoft replaced the Forms app within Teams with the Polls app. This allows for easier feedback, especially since the new UI improvements allow users to hide or show the panel, view results more easily, and work with suggestions at the bottom of the side panel.

Also, it’s now possible to check out for Microsoft Teams panels and for Teams-certified devices to turn cameras on or off as needed. The other updates range from chat and collaboration improvements, specifically the LinkedIn integration, to specific security, compliance, and privacy.

There’s a long list of new improvements and you can check them out here.

Google Workspace adds new marketing features to Gmail

Marketing teams gained a couple of valuable tools from Google Workspace last week. The Google development team added new Gmail features that speed up the timeline for creating and sending emails, newsletters, and announcements to mass audiences.

Here’s an overview of the new features:

Layouts

With Layouts, users will be able to brand their emails using pre-made templates containing buttons, text elements, and images. Users can further customize these templates with logos, footer texts, links, and personalized color schemes.

Multi-Send

Users won’t have to use BCC anymore with this feature. Now it’s possible to send mass emails by adding up to 1,500 recipients into the ‘To’ field. The emails will, by default, include a unique ‘Unsubscribe’ link to each recipient. Also, the feature doesn’t reveal your mass mailing list — yes, even though it’s in the ‘To’ field.

Additional Admin Settings

Last, Google Workspace developers added a new admin setting that allows admins to switch the previous two features on and off for users within their workspace. Note that layouts are ‘on’ by default at the domain level, but admins have control within specific groups, org units, or domains. On the other hand, multi-send is only available by default for non-profit customers and Google Workspace Business users.

Here’s the full list of users that can use these new features:

Google Workspace Business Standard
Business Plus
Enterprise Starter
Enterprise Standard
Enterprise Plus
Education Standard
Education Plus
Workspace Individual customers

Sorry, but it looks like legacy G Suite Business users are out.

Asana expanding HQ

Many tech companies are in the midst of layoffs and restructuring following global economic leanings towards recession. But Asana seems to be going in a different direction.

The San Francisco Business Times reported this week that the company is expanding its headquarters by a whopping 71,000 square feet — in San Francisco, no less. Asana recently signed a sublease on offices in the SoMa — South of Market — neighborhood. The location formerly housed Macy’s San Francisco offices, but they left in 2020.

This move is surprising many in the tech and SaaS industries as companies like Twitter are focusing more on decreasing size and pushing remote work. They recently backed out on an expansion in Oakland and are making moves to decrease their SF HQ. And Etsy is closing its San Francisco offices in September.

However, Asana has a different focus and is looking to create a modern hybrid workspace. We’ll see how things play out with this move in the coming months. As of this writing, the company hasn’t revealed their layout or full intentions with the space.

GitHub’s newly introduced Project intensifies debates amongst existing users

GitHub has remained a major topic in the news in recent times, and this isn’t surprising as the IT service management powerhouse recently launched their new and improved version of Projects powered by GitHub Issues. However, since the launch last month, there have been a number of debates on its acceptability in the developer ecosystem.

For already existing GitHub developer users, the new features make the tool even more useful, specifically for their project planning processes.

The functionality of the new features includes bug tracking, feedback, idea and task tracking, and automatic handling of mundane tasks like issue updates.

Existing GitHub users have so far been impressed with the features. The question however lies if it’ll also attract those outside the GitHub ecosystem, especially those using similar application lifecycle management tools.

GitHub seemingly intends to build a seamless platform for development and DevOps professionals. With time, however, experts opine that GitHub will get significant traction due to the added value that Projects brings forward.

Zendesk and Momentive collaborate on new GetFeedback integration

It’s not surprising to see collaborations between software companies, and it’s for that reason that the new integration introduced by Zendesk and Momentive is one to look out for.

Formerly known as SurveyMonkey, Momentive has released its first integration called GetFeedback, and it’s a solution that seeks to give businesses access to comprehensive data that can extensively improve their customer experience.

Before the release, Momentive ran a good number of customer surveys and research that showed that at least 61% of CX experts believe that real-time customer insights are very vital to success, but about 32% of them could count on their existing CX solution to meet that need.

It was on these premises that Momentive collaborated with Zendesk’s customer data to uncover blind spots in customer interactions and create a single source of customer insights – GetFeedback.

ManageEngine releases SaaS version of Analytics Plus

ManageEngine has confirmed that its recent Analytics Plus products can now be gotten as a SaaS offering. The vendor claims that the launch will help companies to easily deploy analytics on either public or private clouds such as Azure or AWS.

They also believe that the move will help users to set up a fully functional, integrated analytics platform “anywhere in under a minute”.

The company is pushing the narrative that the Analytics Plus’ new cloud offering will create a new “foundation” for integrations.

This new update is supposed to integrate with more than 40 business apps and 30 IT apps.

Zoom introduces relationship intelligence with Affinity Meetings

One important point worth noting this week is that Zoom has delivered a new app called Affinity Meetings, which allows for improved relationship insights that will keep teams aligned, drive them forward, and save more dealmaker time.

The newly introduced app is in collaboration with Affinity CRM, a relationship intelligence platform that seeks to provide users with better meeting experiences. With the new app, there is a better meeting experience and a higher chance of closing deals faster.

Affinity Meetings is available to clients with Affinity Premium and Enterprise licenses.