We're excited to share the next itteration of MeritBuilder. The great thing about working on a web based product is that product improvements and rollouts are much less complicated than with a traditional piece of software. Since our development cycle is constant, that means you see features right away instead of waiting until a major release (with upgrade fees, headaches, etc...). Check some of our new features out:

We're making it easier to say thank you.

We are always looking at new ways to be able to capture thank yous. After all, that is the primary purpose of our product.

Right on your profile page, you'll see a box right at the top that asks people visiting to say thank you. You can see an example on my profile page.

We hope that this help emphasizes that the only thing people need to say thanks to you is an e-mail address. We believe that even if people do have an account, if we can make it easier for them to give thanks, we will. 

Speaking of feedback...

Voting Up Skills.

One of the more social features we've added revolves around skills profiles. Now I know when I was in HR, it was always hard to get people to do these skills inventories. They've sometimes involved hundreds of scantron bubbles categorizing and ranking each skill. And some of these skills? Why was I ranking them? Who can't file something? Who can't answer a phone?

So we added skills in our last release. It was a hit. Then we thought about how we could improve it. What if people could vote up a skill? So if I am actually very good at blogging, someone could come in and vote that higher so that not only do I have skills that I say I have, I have skills that others have said I am good at as well. And if I missed a skill, other people can suggest a skill too.

The cool thing is that this is right on the front page of your profile. If you haven't added skills, I encourage you to do so!

Job History

One of the things we got asked about early on is a way for people to display their job history easily. It was one of those things that was in the back of our minds so we finally decided to add it in this release.

The cool thing that happened here is that you can truly use MeritBuilder as a catchall online profile. And not only that, we allow you to capture side projects (or large projects for you independent contractors out there) and give them the context of your thank yous and accomplishments.

Celebrate Wins

We've completely revamped the dashboard (login and take a look) but the big thing that has been brought to prominence are wins.

What are wins? Wins are the merits and achievements of those whom you are a fan of. It is a nice snapshot to stay in the know about what people are being thanked for and what they are achieving.

What's next?

We don't want to give away too much but we are working on a couple of things that will continue to help you use MeritBuilder easier and promote your profile as well.