Archive for collaboration
Microsoft SkyDrive-New and Improved
Posted by: | CommentsWithout any fanfare, Microsoft updates Windows Live SkyDrive with some impressive features. Let’s dig in to what caught my eye.
New Microsoft SkyDrive Features
- 25GB of free storage (not new, but worth highlighting)
- no annoying ads anymore – thanks, Microsoft, this is much appreciated
- All your stuff in one place in an explorer-like presentation with folders listed alphabetically
- Sort through your SkyDrive stuff by clicking on ‘Documents’ on the left-hand navigation section and you’ll have a neat list of folders containing only documents
- Same thing for Pictures – click on ‘Pictures’, and instead of file folders, get ready for a really beautiful presentation of all your picture folders (I have illustrations below)
- The explorer-like interface also shows how large each folder is, the last time it was modified and who it’s shared with
- Now included on your main SkyDrive page are the Microsoft Office icons – just click one of them to start creating a Word, Excel, OneNote or PowerPoint document…don’t have Office, no worries, you can use the free Microsoft Web Apps to create, email or share your on-line documents
- Easily upload or create a new folder right on your main SkyDrive page
- If you have more than one Live ID, you can easily switch between or among your IDs by going to the upper right and clicking on your name and you’ll see a drop down menu, easily switch to another Live ID (not new, but useful)
- No more Silverlight – Microsoft has programmed this site all in html5 – this is a very big thing, although I couldn’t really tell you why
SkyDrive vs. Dropbox (observation)
Even with all these great features, I still have and regularly use a Dropbox account – why? It’s much easier to get to, open up and I can save any type of document from anywhere on my computer right into my Dropbox.
It’s so useful having the little Dropbox icon in my system tray and I don’t have to sign into it every time I want to use it. It’s also easier to send someone a share invite from Dropbox. When I’ve tried to share folders or documents from SkyDrive, with people, there always seems to be a glitch and they have problems. I can ‘pin’ my SkyDrive to my start menu (using IE9 only), but I still have to sign in—tiresome, but it is so much more secure.
I find I use SkyDrive more for storage and backup than for frequent document retrieval. Perhaps Microsoft will some day make SkyDrive as easily accessible as Dropbox. I use Dropbox for non-sensitive documents.
The benefits of SkyDrive outweigh the inconveniences. I’ve been using it for several years now and I like the easier uploading and I especially like how easy it is to get my photos from my Live Photo Gallery on my computer into the clouds.
Microsoft Small Business Live – Open, Share & Save Documents From Your Computer
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Microsoft has been refining and upgrading their ‘Live’ series of offerings the last few months. This article will focus on recently revamped ‘Microsoft Office Live – Small Business’. Just visit the Office Live site and you’ll be introduced to a cornucopia of options. You can set up a website, set up an e-commerce store, purchase a domain name and then set up various e-mail accounts using the new domain name. There is a contact manager, an e-mail marketing feature and newsletter creation and mailing (paid subscription for these).
We will focus on a free and very useful function I found while exploring this site—the ‘Share Documents’ feature. Looks like Microsoft is competing with Google here as they are offering a place to store, share and collaborate on Microsoft Office documents. From the above menu of items, click on the ‘Share Documents’ and you’ll be taken to your Workspace site where you can upload documents for sharing, collaboration or storage. Check this out for full details on everything you can do with your workspace.
I liked the fact that I can upload multiple documents at once by clicking one file, holding the shift and selecting consecutive files. It does not upload folders, however. Once I’ve gotten my documents uploaded, I can create different workspaces to share with different groups (or just a single person). It’s easy to move my documents to new workspaces and flag documents for sharing. As you’re setting up to share, you decide if the recipient will be an owner, editor or viewer. I really like the choice I have to send my invitation to someone and they don’t have to sign in or create an account to view the documents. Don’t you just hate getting something from someone and in order to see it, you have to get your own account!
I like this interface much better than Google Docs. It seems to be more intuitive and just makes more sense, at least to me. Over on the right side of the document screen, you can check out the activity in your space. You can see who has made changes or uploaded any more documents – very handy. Click on the ‘Comment’ box and leave a note for a co-worker.
Microsoft has a collaboration feature they call ‘Shared View’. You can read more about this application, which you can download and use without using the Live Small Business site. Click on the ‘Share’ button and select the option to share your screen with someone. You’ll have to have the app installed on your computer—you’ll be prompted for what to do. After it’s installed, you can initiate a sharing session with anyone right from Word, Excel or PowerPoint – nice.
I’m saving the best for last! The coolest feature and a huge timesaver is that you can save a document directly to your on-line live workspace right from your local Microsoft Office application. This means when you’re working on a document in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, click the save button and you’ll have the option to save either to your local drive or your small business live workspace in the clouds. You do have to install this add-in to be able to do this. It works with Office 2003 & 2007. It’s really great – can’t do that with Google Docs!
I first set up a Windows Live Account before I set up the Small Business portion and I was pleased to discover that I can access either of these areas by going to http://home.live.com/ and signing in. I did notice once I get into the Small Business section and I’m in the documents section, I don’t find a way to navigate myself back to my top level, or home page. This is annoying. I wish they would have some menu items at the top to get me where I want to be!
Next week, we’ll look at the ‘Outlook Connector’ and what that can do.
Calendar Collaboration
Posted by: | CommentsCollaboration with clients is a high priority with VAs. There are a bevy of tools out there that we all talk about and try, some of them actually work for us! How do YOU evaluate a collaboration tool and decide to use it?
I like to look at what those in my AssistU community say about them by posting some queries in our forum. This eliminates some and puts others in the forefront to be investigated further.
I’ve done several posts regarding Google calendar’s 2-way calendar sync and Plaxo with its many features. This week, I’ve also looked into SyncMyCal, OggSync, ShareO and gSyncIt.
Although this may not be my last posting on this subject (there are always new tools coming out), here’s a synopsis of the pros and cons as I’ve experienced them. For the purposes of this posting, I evaluated these apps for two criteria: ability to update/add to/change calendar appointments and the same for contacts.
Plaxo
This is my hands-down winner. What it does:
- ability to add or remove appointments via a web log-in and they will show up in my client’s Outlook calendar. Note: the client has to have Plaxo for Windows installed for this to work (of course).
- same for contacts. I update/add/delete a contact and it will sync with Outlook. Tasks will also sync, but I haven’t figured out how to put them in categories as you can in Outlook.
- A big plus with Plaxo is that it offers ‘sync points’. That is, if you or your client has a Yahoo, Google or other mail account, Plaxo offers these sync points you can set up where your calendar and contact information can be synced with Plaxo. The thing that we need to remember is that it is only a 1-way sync. That is it will read changes only from Google to Plaxo. In addition, it only recognizes and updates if you add or delete a contact. If you open an existing contact in Google or Plaxo and change a phone number, it will not be changed in the other application.
- If you have others in your address book who also use Plaxo, you will automatically get updated contact information on them whenever they update their own contact information. Nice.
Plaxo also has the increasingly popular Pulse feature – another social networking tool to use. There are many other features that remind me of Facebook.
Google Calendar
Since Google implemented their great 2-way calendar sync to use with Outlook, I can heartily recommend using this if you only need calendar syncing with Outlook (not contacts). What it does:
- Download the small program from Google and spend a few minutes getting the tool set up in your Outlook and you’re ready to go! Configure it to sync at intervals set by you and you can see the little icon working in your Outlook.
- It will sync only your primary Google calendar
- If you use Google calendar with Plaxo, you can add more than one calendar as a sync point (another plus for Plaxo)
- Contacts are not synced AT ALL. This means if you add a contact to your Google contacts, it will never appear in your Outlook contacts. You can do an initial export from Outlook and import your contacts into Google.
- Now, as you’ve already read above, if you use Google with Plaxo, you will have the 1-way syncing.
These next few I have never tried, so I really can’t review them, I’ll just give a little information based on my research.
ShareO
Check out their website. They say calendars, contacts, tasks and the inbox can all be shared. This is not a free program. This program got very poor reviews on the AssistU forums, so I’m staying away from it.
Oggsync
This is a program that syncs your calendar between Google and Outlook. It will also sync them with your mobile device. It will sync multiple Google calendars (which Google doesn’t do). There is a free and a pro version. It looked harder to set up—you have to go deep into your Outlook settings to get it set up. I really don’t need the mobile syncing part, so I just wasn’t interested in this one.
gSyncIt – updated on 7-26-2010 after receiving a comment from Dave at gSyncIt
I am the author of gSyncit and find that the Lynn’s take on my product is unjustified. She fails to draw her own conclusion of my product and opts to take the viewpoint of a _single_ user experience failing to take into consideration that the user perhaps didn’t configure the product correctly!
I encourage any user looking for a powerful and inexpensive sync solution to check out gSyncit. For $15 you can sync calendars, contacts, notes, and tasks with Google and ultimately with most mobile devices.
Dave, I’m glad you took time to write about your product. I’ve spent a little time re-looking at your website http://www.daveswebsite.com and see you’ve had quite a few software upgrades since I wrote about it nearly 2 years ago.
Doing several searches, I only found good things being said about your software – 2 reviews are below as well as I see you have links to reviews right on your home page.
http://www.thehypervisor.com/2009/09/review-gsyncit/
http://jeremywaldrop.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/synchronizing-blackberry-outlook-and-gmail-without-a-bes-server/
I’m glad your software is becoming more popular and I’m happy to post this update in my original column as well as here in the comment section.
Lynn Dye
This program looks very new and it says it syncs multiple Google calendars with Outlook AND it syncs the contacts as well. When something is that new and from a source I don’t know, I’m reticent to use it. One reviewer wrote in saying after he installed it, he lost everything on his calendar and instead got someone else’s appointments put in his calendar instead – sheesh!
SyncMyCal
Here is another program that will sync your Google to your Outlook calendar. There is a free lite version and a paid version. With the paid version, you will get 2-way contact syncing. SyncMyCal has been around for awhile and seems to have pretty good reviews.
To summarize – it seems to me that these last three programs really aren’t necessary with the advent of Google’s 2-way calendar sync unless you have multiple Google calendars you need to sync, or you need to keep your contacts synced between Outlook and Google.
Plaxo will sync calendars, contacts and tasks – all for free. There are premium features you can check out though.
For myself, using Plaxo in conjunction with Google calendar works pretty well for me. I realize there are other possibilities out there as well – feel free to share.
Microsoft SharedView – File and Collaboration Tool for Small Groups
Posted by: | CommentsIt seems like there are more and more collaboration tools cropping up. Here’s one from Microsoft called Microsoft SharedView. And no, you don’t have to use any Microsoft products in order to use it! Well, except for the OS. There is a small software download that is accessed here. In order to start a session, you need to use your Microsoft Live ID–what– you don’t have one? You’ll need one. The program and the Live ID are both free. You can join a session without an ID.
Using this app, up to 15 people can be invited to see and actually work on a particular document. To start a session, you will open the program and then click on ‘start session’. A pop-up box and a handy button to click on will open an email complete with URL, password, etc. for you to send out to one person or a group. Then you simply click on ‘Share’ and a list of everything open on your computer will pop up. Select the document or anything else on your desktop you want to share and begin sharing.
There is a Personal Mouse Pointer feature to make each participant’s identity visible to everyone. When this feature is turned on, each mouse pointer displays a text identifier to indicate who the mouse pointer belongs to. You can also turn on the tracking feature in Word so you will see who made changes to the document. It is stressed many times to be aware of the fact that when you share whatever is on screen, others in the group can make changes just as if they were sitting at your computer. If you have chosen to share your entire desktop, someone can access anything currently open on your machine and they can even go to your start>programs and get into anything on your computer. It’s nice they point this out, but with everyone else seeing the same thing, it would be pretty evident if someone was up to no good.
After you’ve installed the program, you can launch it from Windows Live Messenger or Office applications, such as Word. I think I saw there’s even a Firefox Add-in to make things easier.I found SharedView pretty intuitive, although there is a help section here if you need assistance in a particular area.
There is a nice IM chat feature included, which is handy for short comments. No audio with this program — you’ll need to dial in to speak to one another.
If you are the organizer of the meeting, you’ll have the ability to add new people to the group, eject someone from the group, stop sharing a particular document and post handouts others can download to their machines.
Besides using this for document collaboration, think of other uses:
- software training/demo – get a conference call number and invite up to 15 people for a demonstration of new software
- Have a meeting! Instead of traveling, invite your far-flung colleagues via e-mail and present from your own office
- Computer troubleshooting – send an invite to a client having computer problems and they give you control and you can fix the problem or walk them through how to fix the problem
- Fun/leisure activities – show pictures or share home movies, youtube videos, etc. with your friends and family
Web Based Office Apps – Google Docs & Spreadsheets
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle Docs & Spreadsheets is a popular web-based Microsoft Office alternative probably because of the Google name front and center. Google developed the spreadsheet program on its own, but bought out Writely in March, 2006, to use as their word processing program.
Take a short tour of the product here, www.docs.google.com.
Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a totally free service, you need only to sign up for a free google account.
Google allows most common file formats to be imported and edited including; DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, without losing formatting and formulas. Users will see the familiar toolbar icons for bolding, underlining and summing making the web-based application pretty easy. Files can then be saved back to your hard drive into the original file format.
Collaboration is a key feature with Google. After uploading or creating a document, click on the collaborate tab and fill out the required information. Documents can be edited in real time by multiple people with the application keeping track of who changed what and when it was revised. A on-screen chat is available when working on spreadsheets.
Some handy features are the ability to post a document as a web page – no knowledge of html necessary, and an option is available to post a document directly to your blog.
Google is painfully aware they have no presentation application to offer. They hope to remedy this by summer ’07, utilizing technology designed by Tonic Systems.
An offering launched in February this year is Google Apps Premier Edition. The site says, “With Google Apps, you can give your organization Google tools like Gmail on your custom domain (jsmith@example.com), Calendar, and Docs & Spreadsheets. You and your colleagues can check email, schedule meetings, chat in real time, collaborate on documents, and more. Google Apps is accessible via the web, so you can connect with others in your organization 24/7, no matter where you are. And it’s all hosted by Google—there’s no hardware or software to install or maintain—so you can get up and running quickly.” You can check it out here - http://www.google.com/a/.
For small biz owners, they have a suggested package of tools which may be of interest. Click the above link and read more or take an on-line tour.
I was interested to see the rumor mill was perking away last December when it was said Google was in talks with Korean-based ThinkFree to acquire them. So far,ThinkFree has said thanks, but no thanks.
Next, we’ll do a comparison of ThinkFree vs. Google and will compile a list of several other alternatives to Microsoft Office just to make things more interesting. Happy computing!
