What a massive year! 2016 was something of a tipping point for Fuseworks as customer numbers grew and customer requests dominated an extensive product development program.

A cluster agreement with national sporting organisations early in the year was followed by a similar deal covering State sector organisations a few months later. Together these agreements, combined with a big jump in new clients referred from existing customers, made for a constantly busy period that stretched right up to Christmas.

Almost all parts of the Fuseworks product saw love and attention during 2016.

As in 2015, reports were a major area of focus. Email reports continue to be the primary way that most clients experience Fuseworks – so we’ve been constantly iterating to make them even better.

In May we launched the single biggest change to how we manage reports since Fuseworks launched – creating a custom reports centre for all Fuseworks customers (who receive email reports). It was introduced as a free extra, allowing anyone within a customer organisation to subscribe to shared reports. Subscribers just need to verify their work email address.

In the same release we created a way for separate, but related organisations to share reports using Fuseworks – which has proven particularly handy for State sector organisations.

Other changes to reports made during the year include: Streamlining multi folder reports so that stories only appear in one section, new options including additional report frequencies (4 and 6 hourly) and custom subject lines.

Enhancements to our popular news distribution product included creating a way for customers to distribute statements via Fuseworks using email (ie: clients can now email starred@send.fw to immediately distribute a media release to all of their starred distribution lists) and a new way to ‘Follow’ articles (giving customers a one click campaign report for their own releases and a simple way to track any developing story).

Newsletters were introduced in late 2015 as a drag-and-drop way to build curated reports within Fuseworks. In 2016 we refined and enhanced the newsletter experience further, introducing a way for customers to share newsletters via their custom reports centre and allow people within their organisation to subscribe, or manage their subscription. Other enhancements include enabling links within newsletter intros and introducing a way to edit story snippets (ie: to add commentary).

One of the most requested features going into 2016 was a ‘batch tagging‘ option, so customers can tag multiple stories at the same time. That’s now been added to the core Fuseworks interface, significantly speeding up the creation of bespoke media analysis reports.

All that and hundreds of other small changes made 2016 one of our busiest development years yet. Looking at the roadmap for this year – 2017 is going to be even bigger.

We are enormously grateful to our customers for their feedback and support during 2016. Thanks to our clients, the product continues to go from strength to strength.

Here’s to another huge year in 2017.