Archive for the 'Mobile Document Worker' Category

Together Everyone Achieves More (TEAM)

Published July 13, 2010 Mobile Document Worker , New Features Leave a Comment
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As the title indicates, teams are a great productivity multiplier. You’ve probably heard this at some point in your business career. We firmly believe in teams at Soonr and spent a lot of time updating the new version of Soonr to make it easier to work with teams. In fact, the “TEAM” tab has appeared as a top level item in the Soonr UI. Click on this tab and you will see pictures of all your team members. You’ll also see them whenever it makes sense as you interact with them. It’s nice to put a face to the people you interact with as it makes the interaction more personal.

The Team tab shows all your fellow co-workers or collaborators.

You can quickly see your relationship to a user by clicking on their picture. In the example below, I click on Peter to see what we are working on together.

Clicking on an individual shows the unique activities they have been working on with you.

There are tabs for the Projects that we have shared with each other. In the “Latest Activity” tab I can see the most recent things that Peter has done. Also since I am the administrator for my team, I have a “Computer” tab so that I can monitor the backup status of Peter’s computers. Never has it been easier to understand your interactions with the people you work with.

The team also takes front and center when you are working on a project together. When you go to into a Project and click on the “recipients” button to see who has received invitations to collaborate on this project, a hierarchical list of team members will appear.

Inside a Project clicking on the recipients shows the individuals who are working on this project with you.

The top of the list includes the project owner as well as the administrators. The rest of the team members are below. Once again the focus is on the team you are collaborating with.

Finally, when team members leave you a comment or change a project, the desktop agent will pop up a message that now includes a photo of the team member. Even when members are half a world apart, we want them to feel as part of the team working to achieve more!

AT&T’s new data plan not so bad

Published June 4, 2010 Mobile Document Worker , Mobile Markets Leave a Comment
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If you’ve been following the buzz the past days, you know that there’s a lot of bellyaching about AT&T’s new data plan pricing for the iPhone. Everyone seems to be complaining how this is going to stifle innovation and not thinking about how it will make it a lot more affordable for most people. Heresy you say? Let’s take a closer look.

I have an iPhone that I use every single day. I run lots of apps, do email, watch videos, Skype, everything.  Sometime I have to charge my phone midday since it’s been onso much. I use a LOT of data. So how would it affect me? I got a snapshot of my data usage over the past months. Here it is below.

I never went over 2G in past 6 months

 

Under the new plan, I would only be paying $25 a month! This is a savings over what I pay now. Only in Feb when I was travelling did my usage go past 1GB – and I tether my phone. (That’s theorhetical of course). How can this be?

The fact is that wifi is so prevalent now that it’s available everywhere I am. Hotels, restaurants, starbucks, airports, and other places I visit all have free wifi. So I really don’t have use data over the cellular network. So this plan works out well for me.

Another example of this is my Virgin mobile pay-as-you-go broadband modem. When I first got it, I purchased a 1GB data package for the month. I never got close to using it up. I even lent it out to friends. The fact is, leaving it connected all day in the office would consume about 80MB. It takes a lot of surfing to eat up 1GB. The one caveat is if you watch videos. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to watch a lot of videos in transit.

So that’s my experience. What are you seeing? Do you know what your data usage is? You can get a usage graph like I did right from your online account. Go take a look and understand how you use your data.

The Four Levels of Backup

Published May 18, 2010 Mobile Document Worker , New Features Leave a Comment
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Every 15 seconds a harddrive is lost! Protect your data!

Everyone knows that they should be backing up their data. A computer disk fails every 15 seconds. It could be years before yours fail, but when it does happen it’s a catastrophic event as all your accumulated information can be lost. If you are running a business, it could spell the end of the business as 70% of small businesses do not survive a data loss event. (See footnote for details).

There are four (4) distinct levels of backup available today. Let’s take a quick look at each one.

1. Manual Backup:

This is when you copy your data files onto a CD/DVD or an external harddrive. You got that 1TB drive for $100 and plugged it into your machine at some interval (when you have time) and then copy over the folders to the disk. This method is very inexpensive and rather time consuming as you have to monitor the progress and plan a block of time to take care of it. Problems? People have the best intentions, but often their backup frequency drops over time. It’s just such a drag to do this by hand. Of course if you don’t make time, nothing is backed up. Also, this method doesn’t cover physical damage to the hardware or business (fire, flood, theft).

2. Interval Based Backup:

Ok, maybe you leave the usb drive plugged in and have a program which will backup your disk at a given interval. Let’s say you are aggressive and tell the program to backup every day at midnight. This sounds good, but you can still lose a days work in a hard drive failure. Oh, and what happens if there’s an error and the backup didn’t complete? And you still have the physical damage problem. Interval based backups are one step above manual backup, but if you’ve tried this, you’ll notice that they still require lots of manual intervention and verification.

Also understand the risks of having a solution that is not offsite. No on-site solution can protect your data from fire, theft, or other physical damage to your hardware. Pick an offsite solution that utilizes Real Time and Active Backup.

3. Real Time Backup:

Now we are moving into a really effective system. A Real Time Backup system utilizes a program that runs in the background and will detect changes to your files and automatically backup the file when it detects a change. The more advanced systems will only backup the parts of the file that change instead of the whole file. This is important if you are working on a large file and saving often. It’s sometimes impossible for a large file to be saved before it’s changed again. Real Time Backup is the best way to protect you from disaster. Soonr is based on Real Time Backup.

One minute or one year, Soonr backup keeps you protected

4. Active Backup:

You might have seen this mentioned in the Soonr website. An Active Backup system allows you to use your backed up files while they are stored. The idea is that if your hardware fails, you can still continue using your files for business. You don’t have to go through the time consuming process of getting a new computer up and running and then downloading your backup set before you can use the files. Whether it’s to edit a document, send a proposal, fax an invoice, or print a presentation, an Active Backup system leverages online web services to accomplish what you need. Any changes that are made on the web are then synchronized when you get a new machine online.

Of course Soonr utilizes the most advanced Real-Time and Active Backup system. When you are considering a data protection solution for your company, consider the advantages of being able to be productive at all times no matter where you are or what happens to your computers.

Reference: Impact on U.S. Small Business on Natural and Made Made Disasters, 2007

Add a Backup Folder

Published May 11, 2010 Mobile Document Worker , New Features Leave a Comment
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One of the key functions that Soonr provides is real time backup. When you installed the desktop software (you did install it right?) you were asked to choose a folder to backup. If you are a Windows user, the default folder of “My Documents” is chosen for backup. This will get your documents, pictures, and even videos if you are using XP. If you are a Windows Vista user, it will just get your documents, exactly as indicated by the title.

There may be other folders that you want to protect that are outside of the “My Documents” folder. It is very easy to add a folder(s) to your backup set. In fact, you can even specify file types that you don’t want to backup such as temporary files or log files. Let’s take a look at two ways to add folders to your backup set.

Opening your Desktop Agent

The first thing you need to do is to open the desktop agent program. Find the program icon on your status bar and right click to get a local menu. Choose to “Open” the program or double click on the icon to open it up. There’s a quick overview of your backup status and a few buttons along the right side. Click on the “Settings” button to get a window displaying a list of all the folders that are currently protected.

Add a folder using Drag and Drop

The easiest way to add a folder is to simply drag it from Windows File Explorer and drop it into the Soonr desktop agents’ list of protected folders. You’ll see the folder appear in the list and in moments the backup will begin.

Drag and drop folders from File Explorer to the Soonr desktop agent

Choose from the Folder Tree

If you want a more visual way to do this, click on the “Manage Backups” button on the lower right of the “Settings” window and you will see a window showing the folder tree on the left and pie chart on the bottom showing your backup status. Browse your folder tree and then select the folders that you would like to backup. That’s it!

When you see a green checkmark next to the folder, this means the folder has been selected for backup. Note that all sub-folders are also included if you pick a top level folder. If the box is a solid green color, this means that there is a sub-folder selected for backup, but the folder is not selected.

Select folders and exclusions using a familiar folder tree interface

Include or Exclude File Types

At the right is an area where you can choose what types of files you want to include in your backup set. You can choose any combination of the common file types listed. By default ALL files are protected. There is also a button to “Exclude Types” of files. This is normally used for temporary files or files that change so rapidly that it wouldn’t make sense to keep backing up versions continuously. This might include database files that are never closed or log files that constantly grow in size as entries are appended to them. For most users, these file types will not be an issue since they won’t choose system folders where these kinds of files usually reside.

When you are done click “Finish”, “OK” and then close the desktop agent. Within moments the Soonr icon in your task tray will begin to pulse green to show that there is activity. You can see the progress in real-time by looking at the Backup Status. Right click on the Soonr in the status bar and choose “Backup Status” to see the details.

Check the real-time backup activity

Your files are being protected now!

Restore files to new computer

Published May 4, 2010 Mobile Document Worker , New Features Leave a Comment
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Last week you saw how easy it was to get a deleted file back with Soonr. That’s great if you are sitting at a computer when the problem occurs, but what if you lost the whole computer? Unfortunately this is not an uncommon occurrence. Whether the hard drive crashes or your laptop is lost or stolen while travelling, you may find yourself without any of your files!

Once again, Soonr makes it easy to get your data back and even keep working in the process! In this post well cover the “DefCon 4” use case where your computer is stolen while you are on the way to visit a client. Your computer/laptop contained all your presentations and documents that you were working on with your team. What do you do?

First: Deliver the presentation anyway

Soonr has backed up all your documents and has fully rendered copies that can be displayed in any browser. When you arrive at your client’s office, ask to use any computer and log into your account to view the presentation.

Second: Disable access from the stolen machine

Log into your Soonr account and find the computer in BACKUPS section of the Dashboard. When you mouse over the machine, you’ll see an option for “lost computer”. Click on that and verify that you want to disable access to your online Soonr account from that computer.

Mouse over the computer's section and the options appear

Third: Restore your folders

Only Soonr lets you restore your data to a remote machine. Before you leave your client’s office, you can start restoring files back to a computer at your main office or home. Just find the folder of files that you want to restore and choose the “restore” option.

Use the folder's action menu to restore its contents

You’ll then be guided through a few steps to determine which computer and directories the files will be copied into. If you want, you can track the progress of the restoration in the computer details screen. After the restore is completed, you can even choose to get an email or SMS notification!

Notice you can target any computer associated with your account. If your team needs to update a proposal after the client meeting, just restore the necessary files to a machine in the office. They can get to work immediately.

Final step in the restore wizard is to choose the restored files location

When you get a new computer, you need to install the Soonr agent on that machine (so that it’ll appear as a choice on the computers to target) and then restore the necessary folders or files to your new machine.

With Soonr you are always protected and productive no matter what adversity your business life throws at you.

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