Routing issues affecting web traffic to our servers through Telstraclear and Xtra network

We have been experiencing a number of intermittent outages and a noticeable slow down in service on the site over the last 24 hours due to a fault occuring on Telecom's network overnight.

We apologise for any inconvinience and frustration that this may have caused.

For those wanting a more technical overview of the issue the following is an update from our Upstream provider.

There are still congestion issues on national and international Internet sites as a result of the fault occurring on Telecom's network which occurred last night. Telecom has dispatched engineers to resolve the issue.

These routing issue are affecting traffic from Telstra Clear, Paradise and Xtra network. We have advised our Upstream provider's technicians on this matter they are working on this as we speak.

***UPDATE*** 1.32pm ***UPDATE***
Connectivity to Telecom has been restored but we are still aware of some intermittent problems. We will be implementing interim measures to mitigate these problems until Telecom fully restore service to normality.

Customers can anticipate some occasional high latency due to CRC errors encountered over the Telecom link.

Telecom will be performing diagnostics on this circuit at 6:00am (NZT) tomorrow morning on Thursday 7th June, 2007. We anticipate that customers will not notice any issues as a result.

We are always looking for ways to provide an even greater experience when using GrpTXT and to ensure the decision to use us is a 'no-brainer'.  As more and more of us get use to the concept of Web 2.0 and SaaS (software as a service) we thought it was time that we enhance GrpTXT to allow you to take advantage of GrpTXT in the form of SaaS. 

What does this mean?  It means that you no longer have to pay 12 months in advance to take advantage of GrpTXT services.  You can now create a group and pay a monthly fee for the service.  When you no longer require the use of your group you can cancel at anytime.  This makes GrpTXT a logical choice for short-term campaigns, or for where you want to trial GrpTXT but do not want to commit to 12 months in advance. 

For those of you who know what you want and know your group is required for at least 12 months, you can still pay in advance.  In fact if you sign-up for 12 months, we will give you one month free, so you only pay for 11.

The 'four thumbs' think the change is great and we are sure you will to.  If you have any comments or suggestions, please don't hesitate to let us know.

We have a number of upgrades, enhancements and new features planned for GrpTXT over the next couple of months.  The first of these has just been released...

There's no longer any need to scroll for miles when viewing group members, transactions, sent messages etc.  We have introduced paging so that a maximum of 100 items will be shown on each page.  This has resulted in pages loading faster and information being a lot more manageable.  We think 100 items is a good number to start with, but will review this in light of any feedback.

The paging option is located at the bottom of relevant pages and is straight forward to navigate.

Let us know what you think, and we look forward to continuing the roll-out of features.

Watch this space!!

We are excited to announce our latest addition to the GrpTXT functionality - Message Scheduling.  When sending messages through GrpTXT you can now schedule your messages to be sent at a given date and time in the future.

Thanks to all those who have requested this feature and driven it to the top of the list.  We think it is a great feature with some great advantages and applications.  For example:

• Appointment reminders for doctors, dentists, hair salons etc.
• Personal reminders
• Reminders from personal trainers of upcoming appointments
• etc.

If you are a small to medium sized business there is no longer a need to invest in expensive scheduling software.  You can do it all from GrpTXT, and we wont charge you any extra.

Let us know what you think and keep those ideas rolling in...