Frequently Asked Questions

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Yes - Download our "BlockedApp Getting Started Guide" here.

Work item tracking tools help understand what work to do and where it "sits" now. Some allow you to block items, but that is the depth of blocker features. No analytics. No pro-active "get it unblocked." No urgency ordering or escalation.

"Blocked" focuses on the reasons flow of work stalls (avoidable and unavoidable). The item itself is often irrelevant to these delays. It's a key employee on a well-earned vacation, a global pandemic meaning we are all working remote, it's a new version of a code dependency that has broken the build. If we rely on work item tracking tools, we miss capturing the real issues.

AND as crazy as it seems, NOT everyone outside of IT, like legal, HR, accounting departments that write needed contracts, hire your team, and pay consultants - USE YOUR JIRA. Yet, you are still blocked by them, and they need to know. Email is not a tool of choice!

We are not dissing Jira or other tools (we allow you to link to the Jira items URL if you have it) - BUT for capturing, managing, and analyzing blocked work and dependencies, you need a more flexible tool with awesome analytics that help solve Blockers in all parts of the organization.

These integrations are being built out, here is our status -

JIRA:

1. JIRA issues flagged (as impeded) when a Blocker is opened, and un-flagged when resolved.

2. Comments and links added to JIRA issues when a Blocker is opened, updated or resolved.

3. Coming soon: Blocker opened when a JIRA issue is flagged, and resolved when un-flagged

Azure-DevOps:

Coming soon. We aren't exactly sure how this will work until we dig into the API. Email us at support@focusedobjective.com if you have feedback.

Zapier:

This will be our catch all. Once we have stabilized how to integrate with Jira and Azure DevOps, this will follow shortly thereafter. Zapier that allows integration with hundreds of tools through an online interface. This will not only allow you to sync between "Blocked" and your tool of choice, but it will also allow you to send emails, text messages, slack messages, etc. to whoever and however, you want. After we stabilize and learn how people integrate using Zapier, we will make native integrations to match. At the moment, we have a lot to learn, and if you are passionate about integration please contact us, we NEED you help: support@focusedobjective.com.

When you register and create a new organization at the welcome screen you will notice the title-bar says "LEARNING MODE." We wanted to make sure you initially see "some" data rather than a blank screen so you can play safely. Our goal is that you can create, resolve, explore without polluting your real production data (we are all about the data). When you are ready and want to start using it on real data, just open the side-menu (click on the hamburger icon topmost-left) and slide the LEARNING Mode slider off. You can turn into and off whenever you want, and the data you create and resolve are kept separate. When you have Learning mode ON, you can have up to 10 teams without a subscription, in production mode you get your first team free to solve blockers there, and when you are ready add more teams by purchasing a 10, 25 or 100 team plan.

Every organization has an invitation code. Anybody can register and join your organization using that code. To send an invitation, open the side-menu (click on the hamburger icon topmost-left) and click on the "Invite users to this org" button. Copy the invitation or email it from the dialog box.

We license by the number of TEAMS, not USERS! It's $99/ month for 10 (TEN) TEAMS! That could be 100 users for all we care - invite EVERYONE!

First of all - using "Blocked" in production for a single team is FREE. You just register, create your organization, and invite your team members through the invitation link in the side-menu. When you want to collaborate with other teams to manage dependencies and external blockers, you create those teams and invite members from that team to your organization (again using the invite link). We sell plans of up to 10, 25, and 100 teams. The cost you pay per month or at a discount per year is for TEAMS, not users. You can have any number of users (don't go mad) in a single team but the benefit of seeing your team's blockers is limited. Why are we so generous? Because we don't want you to have a second thought about adding collaborators, inside or outside your organization or team, and feel putting a price on per-user will limit the use and value of our product.

Your data is securely stored and only accessible to users you allow by invitation to your organization. The data is backed-up in a way that allows us to restore to any point in time. We plan to offer an automated export data function "soon," but if that's important to you right now, we can download your data as a backup if you are on a paid plan (or ask nicely if you are not). If you have concerns, we offer self-hosting options where we help you create a custom instance that YOU and ONLY YOU can control where and how the data is stored. Just contact us.

We know many teams use Slack and/or email to keep in touch day to day. "Blocked" integrates with Slack and sends messages to a team's channel or email alias whenever a blocker is opened, updated, or resolved. The messages can open those blockers or open that team's view of blockers and analytics in app.BlockedApp.com directly. This is just another way to accelerate the blocker resolution process. Teams will know a Blocker is opened on them without having ANOTHER tool open.