Basecamp 5 preview for current Basecamp 4 customers

Hey there, my name's Jason Fried. I'm

the CEO here at Basecamp and today I'm going to show you Basecamp 5. The

primary purpose of this video is to get you ready to get you used to the changes we're going to be making here. So, when they show up in your account, you will be ready for them. Okay, so I've got a lot to show you. I'm going to move through

it fairly quickly just so you get a pretty big, you know, 10,000-ft view of what's new and what's changing. Um and if you have any

changing. Um and if you have any specific questions, you can always get in touch and ask us about those.

All right, we're going to start here on the home screen. This is the brand new home screen in Basecamp 5.

Right down the middle, we've got two columns. These are for your projects.

columns. These are for your projects.

These are the same kind of tiles you had in Basecamp 4. Now, they're just in two tight columns. On the right-hand side,

tight columns. On the right-hand side, you now have activity.

This is very handy. In 4, you didn't have activity, so the home screen was a bit more static and more of a just a directory. Now, the home screen is a

directory. Now, the home screen is a directory down the middle, but also on the right-hand side, you have a sense of what's been going on, which projects have been touched, who's been here recently, that sort of thing. It's a

really nice, wonderful extra peek at information deeper in your account.

You've got your logo here, some buttons which we'll get through or go to in a minute, and then this wonderful search field and jump field which you're going to see everywhere in Basecamp. It's a great way to get

Basecamp. It's a great way to get around. So, I can just jump directly to

around. So, I can just jump directly to a project name if I know the name of it without having to go scroll for it or find it. Um for example, if I want to

find it. Um for example, if I want to jump into the uh I don't know, accounting project, I can start typing the word accounting, and there there it is, accounting team. I can hit return and jump directly there if I want to. I

can also search my entire account for this word by just searching for it here in the same field. And over here, we just have

same field. And over here, we just have some buttons for things you might want to create a new project, a folder, that sort of thing. But, this is the new home screen. Now, there's a little small,

screen. Now, there's a little small, tiny secret detail. There's a little color dropper down here. I'm not sure if you can tell, but my background is sort of a very, very light green. I can cycle through a few different colors depending

on what I want, what mood I'm in. I tend

to change mine almost every day, which is kind of fun.

Um I'm going to go back to the green just for this demo.

All right. Now,

calendar. This is a brand new feature in Basecamp 5. Let's take a look. So, if I

Basecamp 5. Let's take a look. So, if I click the calendar, we now have a full-blown, full account-wide and project-based calendar system in Basecamp 5. I can decide which projects

Basecamp 5. I can decide which projects I want to look at, all of them, just my starred projects, which are projects I've I put a little star next to, right here.

Um and I can see just just me or everyone's um events, you know. Uh I can also say just events or even assignments, so

everything can also adds like assignments for to-dos and card tables and that sort of thing. You can see you can have a lot of stuff. So, if I just want to get back to just just my stuff and just my events that I'm part of, I

can just do that.

I can also hover over a project name and it's going to highlight those events on the calendar, which is a really nice little touch. This has been a

little touch. This has been a long-requested feature and we are so glad to finally be able to bring it to you in Basecamp 5. So, yes, we have a calendar now. Now, how do I get around

calendar now. Now, how do I get around Basecamp 5? Well, we were just on home,

Basecamp 5? Well, we were just on home, of course, and home has the search field, my projects, these buttons, including activity. But, what if I'm on

including activity. But, what if I'm on the calendar? Do I need to go home to go

the calendar? Do I need to go home to go somewhere else? You do not. In Basecamp

somewhere else? You do not. In Basecamp

5, we have a single unified Basecamp menu at the top of the screen. Just hit

this or, by the way, command J will pop it open from the keyboard, but I'm just going to hit that and this is basically that same menu you saw on home, but carried through on every single screen

in Basecamp. So, I can get to anywhere

in Basecamp. So, I can get to anywhere from anywhere without having to go somewhere else first. This is a big improvement. And

first. This is a big improvement. And

the search jump filter field is focused.

So, if I know I want to go straight to Cycle One Marketing project, I can say command J, cycle, there it is, one marketing project, hit return, and I am right there. If I clear that out, I get

right there. If I clear that out, I get again a full list of my projects with my starred projects at the top.

Very very very handy. So, from the calendar, I want to show you another brand new feature called everything.

Everything are these sort of aggregate views of a certain type of content from across all of your projects all on a single screen. So, previously, if you

single screen. So, previously, if you want to see all the messages in your account, you'd have to go to each individual project into the message board of each individual project and look at those messages. With the

everything view, I can just go to all messages, and all messages pulls in every message post from across every project and puts them all on a single screen. I can of

course scroll endlessly if I have a lot of messages. You'll see the message name

of messages. You'll see the message name is here, and the project it's from is over here, and I've got this filter field again. So, if I'm just looking for

field again. So, if I'm just looking for stuff for uh that references, I don't know, Austin, Texas, I can type the word Austin, and these are all of the posts that have the word Austin in the project, in the title, in the

description.

Um or if I want to show like show me everything that Kimberly wrote, I can type Kimberly's name, right? And these

are all of Kimberly's posts. So, no

matter which project they're in, no matter where they're coming from, they're all pulled together here, and I can very very quickly find them.

Incredibly useful. Didn't have this in Basecamp 4, this is brand new in 5. I

can do the same for documents, and it's really special for files.

So, I have now I have an aggregate view of every file that's been uploaded to my account pretty much anywhere um across any project in one place.

And I can say just show me the PDFs, or just show me the images, or just, you know, give me all files, but I'm only looking for the ones that have Bohemian in the name, right? And

so, there we go. I've just filtered that down, or just show me the ones that a particular person has uploaded, right?

So, you can do a lot of filtering, slicing, and dicing on these everything pages, and they're incredibly useful and and wonderful, especially when you don't care to know where something started, but you just need to get to it.

So, that's the everything view.

Now, at the bottom of the screen, I'm sort of jumping around, just hitting all the all the high points here for you. At

the bottom of the screen, you're going to see a new bar, which we call the my bar.

It used to be in Basecamp 4, there was a a my stuff item in the in the menu bar.

You'd hit my stuff, and you'd get another menu, and then you could pick from things to go somewhere else.

There's a lot of like menu, selection, choice. Menu,

selection, choice. Menu, selection,

choice.

And you had to kind of leave where you were to get somewhere new. There was a lot of bouncing around. In Basecamp 5, just like the unified menu is always available, so is this menu bar at the

bottom. And this holds all of your own

bottom. And this holds all of your own stuff. So, no matter where you are in

stuff. So, no matter where you are in Basecamp 5, if you want to see what your assignments are, just click my tasks.

There they are.

They just slide up from the bottom of the screen. If you want to see your

the screen. If you want to see your events, these are your upcoming events for the next week, basically. And then,

of course, there's a link to see all future events, as well, on the calendar.

Um all your bookmarks, just click bookmarks, and you're going to see the bookmarks come up like that.

Very, very easy. Before, again, in Basecamp 4, you had to go to my stuff, my bookmarks, go to a whole different page. You had to leave where you were,

page. You had to leave where you were, go three steps to get anywhere. Now,

it's all instantly available.

And we have a brand new feature also located in the my bar called my notes, which is basically just a scratchpad.

It's a It's an empty text field for you to write whatever you want, and it just saves. So, you could jot some notes

saves. So, you could jot some notes down, jot some notes. You can make some to-do's for yourself, whatever you want.

And by the way, you'll love to know this that we now support markdown.

So, um you can use markdown codes, if you know what those are. And um like to make this bold, I would just put two asterisks around it, and now it's bold.

If I'm pasting in markdown from somewhere else, it's going to drop it into Basecamp and format it beautifully.

Long time coming, and here we have it now. There's markdown in Basecamp

now. There's markdown in Basecamp everywhere you see a text field.

The other thing you can do, by the way, and I'll I'll show you this elsewhere, but you can now make tables.

Actually, let me show you that. I'll

save that for a minute, cuz this I'm running out of space here. Of course, I can scroll this. This will go on and on and on forever. But, let's just come back to this later. Um, I'll show you the table somewhere else. So, I'm going to just click away. By the way, if I go

back, you'll see everything I just wrote is here, and this is available everywhere in Basecamp. Extremely handy.

Um, okay, let's jump into a project though. I'm going to go over into this

though. I'm going to go over into this project, um, the GH Designs logo redesign.

Actually, I'm going to turn something on that I turned off.

Um, okay, this is what it looks like inside of a project.

Projects have been sort of redesigned.

They're familiar, but they're refreshed in a lot of different ways.

The tools have all been redesigned.

Familiar tools, same tools as before, but cleaned up, reorganized. The layouts

are better. Information density's been improved. You can see more stuff on the

improved. You can see more stuff on the page now. Um, [snorts]

page now. Um, [snorts] and like to-dos are all cleaned up.

Everything's just been cleaned up.

Before, with to-dos, we used to show a bunch of completed to-dos on this list as well, which sort of got in the way of the work that you still needed to do.

Now, we collapse all the completed to-dos under a single thing that says three or five or 20 completed to-dos. I

can just click that and expose them if I want, or I can just hide them. And of

course, if I go to a list, um, they will all be open.

The breadcrumbs are now up here, nice and tidy. Before, we had like another

and tidy. Before, we had like another back sheet before uh, behind that, which took up more vertical space, so you could see less on the page. Now, it's

all a nice tidy single bar at the top of the screen. Get right back to the

the screen. Get right back to the project.

Um, the top of the project now, we also have activity, which is a nice little peek into what's been happening in this project. Before you had to go all the

project. Before you had to go all the way to the bottom of the screen to see activity. Now we have a preview of it at

activity. Now we have a preview of it at the top and if you want to see all of it, you can just click the view activity link right here. And as I showed you earlier, um you can also turn activity off on a

project. So,

project. So, it'll still track activity globally, but if you don't want to see it on the project because it's not a project where activity really matters. Maybe it's more of a reference project or something like that. You just can turn off, so it's

that. You just can turn off, so it's even cleaner than before.

At the top, if you use the move the needle feature, you're going to see your needle up here. Clicking on that will take you to your needle page, shows you all the progress you've made on your projects.

Um and also the start and end date for a project will show up up here as well.

Got this little widget bar at the top.

All the people in your account are here.

Again, you can invite them very, very easily. Now, here, over in the sidebar,

easily. Now, here, over in the sidebar, you don't have to go to a separate page, which is what we used to have before.

Basecamp 5 puts it all on a single page.

You're going to see this over and over and over in Basecamp 5.

Things are just more direct. They're

more where you expect them. They're

right there. You don't have to go somewhere else. What are my tasks? Boom,

somewhere else. What are my tasks? Boom,

right there, right? I don't have to go up here, pull a menu down, pull another menu down, select something.

Everything's just kind of where you expect it, where you want it. Quick

peek, put it away. Quick peek, put it away. Really, really handy.

away. Really, really handy.

Uh we've redesigned the docs and file section. Um better organized now. You

section. Um better organized now. You

can, of course, go into a folder by clicking on the name of the folder or you can click the folder itself and get a little peek of what's inside. So, you

can open folders from this view and sort of see inside the folder without having to first open the folder, again leaving where you were to go somewhere else. So,

again, another example of just making things a lot more direct. You can also just filter things down by file type.

You can filter things down by typing them in. Really, really wonderful

them in. Really, really wonderful improvements here.

Um again, yes, we have a calendar for the project now.

Um the card table has been improved.

Design is a little bit better. Colors

are much better. You can also now collapse columns if you Yeah, I don't have that many, but if I had 12 and we have some projects in our company where we have many many many, um it'll do that. By the way, I don't know if you

that. By the way, I don't know if you noticed this, but as I was talking, this little announcement came up at the bottom.

If I have something that's starting in the next 15 minutes that's assigned to me, I'm going to get a little preview right down there at the bottom, and I can click join Zoom in this case to join the Zoom call. So, Basecamp is letting

me know there's something happening soon for me.

It's not in my way. It's a small little thing. It only shows up 15 minutes ahead

thing. It only shows up 15 minutes ahead of time and gives me a direct link to jump into Teams or Zoom or anything like that.

Really really quite nice. You also

notice, as we're going through this, this is going to change sort of from red to green, so the closer you get, the greener it gets, signaling that this is about to happen. It's about go time. So,

Basecamp 5 is full of tiny little details like that, which are really wonderful.

Let me jump into another key feature here um in Basecamp 5. Actually, two two things I want to show you.

Um voice notes. Listen.

voice notes. Listen.

Hey uh I just got back. I've got a bunch of thoughts. We'll talk about it at the

thoughts. We'll talk about it at the meeting at 2:00.

I hope you could hear that. I'm not sure if you could on the demo, but basically, now people can leave me voice notes in chats, in pings, as comments. There

You're going to see a little mic here.

You'll just hit the mic. You'll record

your voice note just like this. You'll

hit stop. You can hit play to preview it. You'll record your voice note just

it. You'll record your voice note just like this.

And if you want to post it, just hit post or delete it and re-record or whatever you want. But now we have voice notes everywhere you have a text field, you have voice notes. So, again, I can go into, let's say, a message. I'll jump

here. Let me like go down to a here and then let me leave a voice note, right? I can do that right here.

right? I can do that right here.

I'm not going to, but I could if I wanted to. I'm just going to delete that

wanted to. I'm just going to delete that out. But the other thing I can now do is

out. But the other thing I can now do is add tables. Another big huge improvement

add tables. Another big huge improvement Basecamp 5 people been asking for for a long time. In a text area, any text area

long time. In a text area, any text area where you see this formatting bar, I can hit this little icon here and it's going to give me tables. I can add columns. I

can add rows. Um I can format things however I kind of want. Let's go down a row.

Um and I can have tabular data. So, you

know, 1 2 3 or 4.

I'm well, not counting very well, but you get the point. Um I can tab through these things. I can also by the way, if

these things. I can also by the way, if I had a comma separated file and I just copied it in my clipboard and I pasted it in here, it's going to format that table. Um

or put that data in a formatted table, which is really really quite nice. So,

we have markdown and we have table support and we have voice notes now in our text editor.

Really really really nice.

Um let me go back to the project again.

Um now, you'll notice that you might be wondering like what happened to my notifications? Where are my

notifications? Where are my notifications in Basecamp 5? Well, few

things.

First of all, we give you more control over notifications. So, at the top of

over notifications. So, at the top of every project, you're now going to see a little section here called notifications on or off or whatever. And if I select this, um I'm going to have some options.

Notify me, basically loop me in whenever something major happens, a new message is posted, that sort of thing. Or only

notify me when I'm part of a thread, so I can just change that setting and now it's changed here. Very very quickly I can change these things on and off depending on whichever project I'm in as quickly and as frequently as I like to.

But where are the notifications actually? Because in in Basecamp 4 or 5,

actually? Because in in Basecamp 4 or 5, yeah 4, sorry, we had a hey menu and we had a pings menu. Where are those? Well,

now they are in a sidebar. So, let me show you how that works.

Maybe you noticed this earlier on, but we have this little indication down in the lower right-hand corner. In this

case, I have two faces, meaning two people people have pinged me, and I have three, meaning there's three unread notifications.

If I click down here, it's going to open my notification sidebar.

And this is amazing, because this keeps all of my notifications in my sidebar, and I can move through the product looking at this, that, or the other thing, and still have my notifications

open.

So, I can actually have conversations while I'm working in other areas.

Um I'm going to mark a couple of these unread, just so you can kind of see how this looks, also. Um

Okay. So, in this case, I've got six the these are events, so I'm just going to close these out really quick, right? But, I've got three unread

right? But, I've got three unread messages.

And um from from people from a variety of different projects. And so, um I can close the sidebar, and and hide all that, right?

Hit the X, gone, and go about my day.

Or, I can open that. And by the way, there's a keyboard command for this. So,

I can just open the sidebar. I'm going

to move my mouse over here again, so I can open it and close it, and open it and close it really, really quickly.

Peek in, peek out, or keep it open.

Now, what's cool about this is I could be working on a to-do list, for example, and I could be having a ping conversation with somebody else at the same time.

Now, in Basecamp 4, you couldn't do that. If I want to have a ping

that. If I want to have a ping conversation, I'd have to leave where I was. In 5, you can leave it open and

was. In 5, you can leave it open and have that conversation while I'm looking at something else. So, we could be talking about something, like new draft is done. How about some thoughts? I can

is done. How about some thoughts? I can

click on that link. It's going to load it up on the left-hand side, and I'm still in my ping. So, I could be like, cool, we'll check it out, whatever.

Um right? And I can still get to work, and

right? And I can still get to work, and I can just go back and see my other unreads. What's really nice about this,

unreads. What's really nice about this, as you can imagine in the morning you get in, you log into Basecamp, you've got 12 unread notifications, they're all going to be listed right there in the sidebar, and you can just click on one, it's going to open on the left. You can

click on the next one, it's going to open on the left. So, you can knock out all your notifications very quickly, very easily. They're all

just going to load and and then once you've read them, they move down here into previous, and so you can see what you have left, and you can knock things out one after the other after the other after the other without having to go up to the menu again and selecting something, go up to

the menu again, select something, go up to the menu again, select something.

It's just a way more efficient, way faster way to work. And as you become more and more proficient in Basecamp and learn all the keyboard commands, you can jump and you can open the sidebar, and you can go to the calendar and do all

these things without even having to move your mouse. You really start to realize

your mouse. You really start to realize like just how powerful this is.

Okay.

Uh let's see if there's anything else.

Let me check my notes here um that's worth checking out and worth showing you. Uh um I didn't show you this

you. Uh um I didn't show you this before, but I'll show you briefly here um to-dos. Not only have we cleaned this

um to-dos. Not only have we cleaned this up considerably, but now we have a way just to add to-dos to a page. I don't

need to add them to a list. I can just add a to-do. Like, here's another to-do.

Right? So, before you had to make a list first and add things to a list, now we can just add things.

And I can also decide like it's almost like a staging area. I'm like, just add my to-dos at the top, whatever, and I can drag them down later. I can say, I don't know if this one even belongs in this list. Let me just stage it up here

this list. Let me just stage it up here for a while and then get back to it later. And you know what? I'm looking

later. And you know what? I'm looking

for a to-do with the word variations in it.

And just filter it down, it's going to filter my entire list and just show me matches with variations in it. So, it's

a really, really wonderful improvement on to-dos and pretty much again, anywhere you have text where you can filter and just filter things down very, very quickly.

Uh uh one more other thing we've just added to Basecamp 5. There's just so many things. There's so many things. I'm

many things. There's so many things. I'm

I don't want to It's 20 minutes into this video, and I know you're probably a bit impatient cuz this is a long one, but there's just so much to show you. We

now have subtasks on to-dos, which is something people been asking for for a long time. So, not only can you, of

long time. So, not only can you, of course, add to-dos, but now you can add subtasks in your to-dos.

Again, another big, um, request. And you

can assign the subtasks as well.

So, I can just get that one to Chad. Chad's going to get a notification about it. It's going

to show Chad's name next to it. That

sort of thing. Really, really, really nice.

Um, all right.

Let's see. I think that's probably pretty good. So, we covered the new

pretty good. So, we covered the new project page design, some of the new tool designs, um, making a project. Actually, let me show you how easy it is to make a project.

This is the last thing I'm going to show you.

And, uh, hopefully, um, you can understand my rapid talk. I'm just

trying to get through all these things for you cuz I'm very excited about it, and I want you to see as much as I possibly can show you in a reasonable amount of time. Making a new project in Basecamp 5 is so much simpler than in Basecamp 4.

In Basecamp 5, you just hit make a new project. And by the way, I went home to

project. And by the way, I went home to do this, but I'm going to show you you can do this from anywhere. So, I'm going to jump into a project.

I'm going to hit command J to pop that menu, and I'm just going to type new project. Right? Make a new project. See

project. Right? Make a new project. See

that first option? Just hit return.

So, I can be in another project, make another project instantly. Let's name

it um a fun demo, right? Just hit return.

It's going to then create a sample project for me, or I'm sorry, a blank project for me. Um, it's going to start for me, so it shows up at the top of my list, so I don't lose it. I can always unstart if I want. By the way, I can do that by just

clicking it again. Now, it's not starred, or I can star it.

Um, and now I get to add the tools that I want. So, this is quite a bit

I want. So, this is quite a bit different from Basecamp 4. In 4,

what you would do is you'd make a project, and you'd have five or six tools automatically added to the project.

Then, you feel like you might have to clean up after yourself cuz you only want to use three, not all six, or not all five. So, you have to go find the

all five. So, you have to go find the way to remove the tools, and it was just a whole dance. It's totally unnecessary.

In five, what we do is we start you out with an empty project, and then you choose what you want. So, let's say in my head I'm like, "Okay. I want I know I want a uh uh a card table.

I want a chat room and a calendar." So,

I just hit plus.

I go card table.

And plus, let's do a chat room.

And plus, let's add a calendar.

Now, you're going to see these are sort of these outline sketchy versions, because there's nothing in them yet.

This is sort of a blank slate. But, now

I have a card table, chat, and a calendar. And I can quickly rename this

calendar. And I can quickly rename this to like schedule, right? And this can be like um well,

right? And this can be like um well, chat's probably pretty good. Uh card

table, I can call this like uh report issues here, right?

And now I've got a really nice quick project made. Report issues here, card

project made. Report issues here, card table, chat, schedule. Um if I'm like, "You know what? We don't need a schedule yet." remove that. Don't have that

yet." remove that. Don't have that anymore. Now, I've got report issues

anymore. Now, I've got report issues here, card table, and a chat room. You

know what? We should actually have two chat rooms. Actually, you know what?

Yeah, let's do that. Let's have chat room. Let's like call this one like

room. Let's like call this one like urgent urgent stuff. Now, I've got two chat

urgent stuff. Now, I've got two chat rooms in the project and a card table.

Super easy. I can also, of course, um add external links um to other other services, Figma, whatever it might be, uh Google Docs, that sort of thing. I

can add all sorts of other things as well. Um and that's just how you create

well. Um and that's just how you create new projects in in Basecamp 5. It's so

much nicer, so much faster, so much simpler and clearer, as well. Okay.

I've gone on long enough. I think I've shown you all the key stuff. Um

this is coming soon to your account.

I'm very excited. Our whole team is very excited. We've been putting a lot of

excited. We've been putting a lot of time and effort into this. It's based on so many customer requests. We made it faster, more elegant, quicker to do all sorts of things, more direct. Um I can

go on and on and on. I'm going to stop here. Thanks again for watching. I hope

here. Thanks again for watching. I hope

this was useful and interesting and Basecamp 5 is coming to your account soon. Stay tuned.

soon. Stay tuned.