Archive for the 'New Features' Category

Focus with Filters

Published July 20, 2010 New Features Leave a Comment
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As your usage of the Soonr service grows you might find that the amount of information that you are working with may get a little daunting. Have you ever had to juggle large teams of people or several projects at once? What if you are looking for that one file in a folder but there’s hundreds of files and you don’t recall the exact name? Or maybe you just have a lot of people named Peter in your company!

Any of these issues can be made much easier using Filters. At the top of the page is an input field for Filters. Working in real time, a Filter will bring the things you are looking for into focus by filtering out the things that do not match.

Type in Filter edit field for real-time updates

If you have many folders in your backup set or even several computers and their various folders, the Filter will quickly display only the ones you are looking for.

 Just start typing some word or part of a word and your view will update to show you exactly what you were looking for. The more you type, the better the focus.

Filters appear in four (4) places in Soonr.

  • Computers View – show only the folders that contain the letters you type.
  • Projects View – turn a hundred projects into a target few with a few keystrokes.
  • Team – find just the right guy named Peter.
  • Folder – when looking at a folder, the filter will pick out just the right file for you.

Filters are so powerful because they work across pages of information. Let’s take a look at a real world example. Our company has a lot of people named Peter. Our company is spread across the USA and Europe, so it is a little surprising that it’s such a common name. But I digress… So I want to see what I am working on with a particular Peter. I can use the Filter to make this easy.

An abundance of people named Peter in our company

In the example above, the Filter has grouped all 8 people named Peter at our company from the pages of all team members. From here I can quickly click on the correct person and find the exact project that I am working on with them.

Unlike Search which only works on files and must be executed after you type your search words, the Filter can assist you outside of files and also works in realtime. Try it a few times and I think you’ll find it to be an indispensible feature to bring files into focus.

Go Back in Time with Versioning

Published July 17, 2010 New Features Leave a Comment
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Soonr includes full version control at the file and folder levels. This means that you always have the option to revert back to a previous version of a file. Let’s look at this feature and how you would use it in your backup sets as well as in Project folders.

BACKUP:

After you have defined the folders you want to backup, Soonr’s desktop software will automatically update the backup set when a file is changed. By default the service will create a snapshot of your system every day, week, and month for several months. Depending on whether you have a Premium or Pro account, that historical archive can be from 90 days to 6 months. To see the versions click on the computer’s name in the Computer tab. You’ll see a Previous Versions tab in the details page.

Click on the computer's name in the Computers Tab to see the detailed history of versions that have been saved.

In this example, we can see that there are at least 9 versions of this 1.4GB backup set! Does this mean that we have consumed 9×1.4GB of space? No we haven’t consumed 12.6GB of space! Soonr is smart enough to only store changes from one set to the next. You can click on any of the versions and the system will display a complete snapshot of your document at that point in time.

You can roll back to a previous version by simple restoring it to your computer. Simply click on the version you desire and then choose the “restore” option from the action menu.

You can move back and forth in time with the orange buttons as you navigate snapshots of your computer in your version history.

In this example we are going back a few weeks and restoring a complete folder to our computer. We can also accomplish the same thing with individual files. We’ll take a look at this screnario in an online Project.

Versioning and Projects:

On online Project contains many files. When shared with a team of people, there may be multiple contributors and editors to a single file. Since the are several ways to add a new file into a project, what happens if someone if editing a file and another person uploads a version of the file at about the same time? Does one person’s changed overwrite another? With versioning, you can go back and retrieve a older version and recover the changes.

Choose the "Revert" option to revert a file back to one contained in the version archives.

In the example above, Martin and I are editing descriptions in a Word Document. After a few revisions, we decided that we’d like to roll back to the edits Martin made four weeks ago. Using the action drop down menu, I can choose to “revert” to this version and Soonr will automatically make it the most recent in the Project. It’s simple to go back.

As you can see Soonr’s versioning gives full protection of all your backup sets on your computer(s) and it also takes care of the ongoing changes that happen when there’s a shared project. With Soonr, you are always protected from losing information whether you or a member of your team made the changes.

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!

Help is on the way!

Published July 6, 2010 New Features Leave a Comment
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You may have notice some changes to your Soonr account in the past week. That’s because we rolled out a new release! There are a lot of new things to help you discover the features of Soonr and to enhance your productivity as your files in the crowd grows.

One of these features is “Help Hints”. These are pop ups that appear in context as you use the system. There are two kinds, a pop up on menu items and then also a message bar at the top of the page that appears then key events happen. You can turn on or off these hints as needed. The pop up hints are off by default.

TURN ON HELP HINT POPUPS:

Turn on by clicking the question mark. Turn off by clicking it again.

After you log into your account, you’ll notice at the upper right of the web page a question mark that is orange in color. This is the toggle for the Help Hints. Mouse over it to see its full description and then click on it to turn it on. You can also turn it off again by clicking it again. With Help Hints on, you’ll notice that mousing over areas of the screen and even menu items will result in explanations that pop up.

Here's the Help Hint for the Project tab.

As you use Soonr, explore all the hints to get a better idea of what is available. One place to try it is on the action menus. Each menu item has a long description to help you understand what it does before you do it.

MESSAGE BAR

The message bar is also a very useful feature that appears at the top of each page under the tabs. Not only does it notify you of events such as the successful completion of a task, but it also offers logical next steps.

For example, let’s say you copied a file in your backup to a shared Project. Upon completion, you’ll get a message telling you that the file was copied. Also notice that in the message the target Project folder will be a link so that you can jump directly to it.

The message box contains a link to the target project.

As you use Soonr, you’ll see message boxes in several areas to guide you. This combined with the Help Hints popup will make each activity a little easier and get you going faster.

Next week, we’ll look at all the Team features that make it easier than ever to collaborate with the people you work with.

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

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