What's New

We are happy to announce what is a small but important feature requested by managers of provider companies. Some banks in our top provider countries like Ukraine and India require a memo along with a wire that helps provide some information about the payment, titled “remittance information”.
As requested, the wire transfer option in the withdrawals page now includes an optional field called “Remittance Information”. This field takes 35 characters, will be included with the transfer, and should appear in your bank statement.

In order to improve the relevance of provider search results, we’ve decided to set “Search titles only” as checked by default. So for example, if you search by the keyword “Java”, the default provider search results will only return those providers who have opted to include “Java” in their titles. Of course, you can always widen your search by unchecking the “Search titles only” checkbox.

As a company manager, you now have a lot more control over how your company is seen by potential oDesk partners.

The biggest change is for Provider Companies:

– You can set a company “tagline” and full description, in HTML
– You can more easily upload your company logo
– We show more statistics about your company
– We show your company managers and up to 10 Affiliated Contractors, so your potential buyers can see who they will be working with

See a sample here:

Any team member with Admin privileges may edit your tagline, description, and logo on the Team Admn -> Team/Company Info tab (link)

Buyers: Now you can market yourself as well

Buyers, you can now display your company name, logo, tagline and description in each of your job openings. The setting applies to all of your job openings. It is of course completely optional, and the default setting is complete buyer anonymity.

We’ve just launched the oDesk Readiness Test for providers. It is a brief tutorial, designed to educate new providers on oDesk policies and best practices. Providers who have recently billed hours on oDesk are by definition ready to work and will be granted the “oDesk Ready” designation without having to pass the oDesk Readiness Test.

The oDesk Readiness Test has the following specifications:

• 25 multiple choice questions
• Open book
• 90% correct to pass
• Should take less than 30 minutes to complete

Test topics include:

• Following oDesk Policies
• Getting Hired
• Working on Assignments

In two weeks, only providers who are oDesk Ready will be able to apply to jobs. Therefore, we highly recommend all providers who are not yet oDesk Ready to take the oDesk Readiness Test before June 4th.

We have overhauled the display of the search results for both jobs and providers.

For Jobs, we are now showing much more information about the buyer, including how much work they have billed, and how many of their job postings have resulted in hires. We are also showing more information about the job, specifically how many providers have applied, how many providers the buyer has invited to interview, and how many interviews the buyer has set up. Finally, we are displaying the buyer’s payment method verification status. Browse jobs.

For Providers, we are similarly showing more information about the provider’s history on oDesk, and also showing the first section of the provider’s self-description, so the buyer can more easily tell whether he is interested in contacting the provider. We are also showing the provider’s Company, if he is affiliated with one, including the name, logo, and feedback score. Browse providers.

Oh, and we think we’ve made both search results look a lot better too…

The long-awaited “Create Team” feature is finally here.

All users (except non-admin ACs) can now create as many teams as you want. Buyers can create multiple Teams, and Providers can create their own Company as well.

Buyers and Provider Company Managers: add Teams to your Company

Why would you want to do this?

• Separate your providers into Teams with separate SVN and Bugzilla instances
• Have providers work on different projects or for different clients, and generate financial reports divided by Team
• Separating billing, i.e. pay for different work with different credit cards
• Separate your ACs into different teams, managed by different Staffing Managers

Independent Contractors: create your own Company on oDesk

Why would you want to do this?

• Become a Buyer – hire some oDesk providers to work for you
• Create a Provider Company – subcontractor work to your Affiliated Contractors and earn even more money

Do you already have multiple accounts?

We can merge all of your accounts under one User ID for you. Just file a support request and include all of your User IDs.

Learn more about creating Companies and Teams and grow your oDesk business!

We have added the following 3 ways to help Buyers discover Providers with Portfolios (and to help Providers get noticed!)

1. A “Portfolio” indicator in Search Results shows how many portfolio items a Provider has. This links directly to the portfolio tab in the Provider’s profile.
2. A new item in the sort dropdown allows search results to be sorted by the number of portfolio items.
3. A new Advanced Search option, “Has Portfolio,” has been added.

This is just one of many features we are releasing to help Buyers and Providers find the perfect match. Let us know what you think!

We have released three new screens for Staffing Managers to help manage their companies on oDesk:

Each Staffing Manager in your company can now view and manage all of the candidacies of your Affiliated Contractors (ACs). On the “Team Candidacies” tab you can view all of the active interview invitations and candidacies for your ACs. You can accept or reject interview invitations, or end a candidacy, on behalf of your AC. With the “Team Assignments” tab you can view all of your ACs’ active assignments, end assignments, give buyer feedback, and give a refund.

The Staffing Manager Console is a central place to manage your roster of ACs. You can see a list of all of your active ACs, with links to their Provider Profile, candidacies and assignments. You can also see their (hourly) last date worked, the rate that appears on their Provider Profile, and their Profile Visibility setting.

Most importantly, you can change their profile rate and profile visibility – just select the AC(s) you want to change, and select “Change Profile Rate”.

We’ve redesigned the Work Diary to make it easier for you to use. We think you’ll love these great new features:

1. The new Work Diary will open within the main navigational window instead of popping up in its own window.
2. The left navigation section can be hidden so that users with narrower screens and/or lower resolutions can see the entire row of screenshots without scrolling.
3. The new Preferences bar allows you to toggle the following settings:
   • Time Zone between yours, the user’s, or GMT
   • Time Format between 12- and 24-hour
   • View between Thumbnail and List format
4. If you are a member of multiple Teams, easily switch from one Team’s Work Diary to another using the new Team selector drop-down menu in the upper left.
5. If your Team has multiple members, easily switch from one user’s Work Diary to another using the new user selector drop-down menu in the upper left.
6. In your own Work Diary, you can now edit memos in-line one at a time or simultaneously change a whole batch of memos using the checkbox selectors and the Edit Memo button in the upper right.
7. Offline time can be added using the Add offline time button in the upper right. You should add a memo to your offline time when you create it. Memos on offline time may also be changed in-line or in a batch. (Don’t forget to get permission from the buyer before logging offline time.)
8. The Work Diary URLs are now in a more logical format: www.odesk.com/workdiary/team/user/date

You can find the new Work Diary in My oDesk > Work with Your Team > Work Diary (Beta):

http://www.odesk.com/workdiary

Check out these new features plus many other refinements that add up to a cleaner, clearer, faster user experience.

If you run into any problems, please let us know. (You can use the “Classic” Work Diary in the meantime.)

And we’d love to know what you think! Post your comments here:
http://www.odesk.com/community/node/2837