SETTINGS

To get to your settings, look in the upper right of your web page after you log into your account.

Use the Settings link to Access the Team Branding Menu

Click on this to get to the Settings page and then choose the “Team Branding” link in the left.

Team Branding is part of the Settings page

TEAM BRANDING

The Team Branding page has several ways for you to personalize the experience. Here’s a description of each one and what it offers.

Settings for branding and their descriptions

Logo – include your company or project graphic here and it’ll appear at the top of each webpage as well as in system emails sent when you share or comment on a file.

Support Information – provides a space for you to define the email or user that is to be called when someone needs help. This is a text field that can include anything you desire. It will appear on the right hand side of the window when a user clicks on the “Settings” pane.

Email Settings – allow even the email communications to be customized. When new user accounts are created a welcome email is sent by the system. The “Registration email sender” will be in the header of the email that goes to the user. The “Event email sender” will appear in the header of notifications such as comments, changes, and activities digest.

Custom login settings – allow you to take control of the login page so that a user’s first encounter with your project will carry your brand impact.

Here’s an example of the custom settings and how it would appear to a new user who is logging in for the first time.

No need to accept a standard login page when you can customize with your brand.

By using the personalization options for your account, you can give promote your brand while giving your users the security and peace of mind knowing that they are accessing the correct service and project. Spend a few moments in the “Settings” area of your account to define your Team Brand today.

Soonr recognizes this and offers new options in the desktop software which is now connection aware.

Every connection can have a unique profile

CONNECTION PROFILES

The Connections tab shows each of the internet connections that you have available. You can define not only the speed (bandwidth usage) associated with each connection, but also the activities that you will allow for each one. Recall that under normal usage, your initial backup will be rather large. In that case, you want your fastest connections to support the initial backup. When you are using a mobile broadband card while traveling, you may want to “Suspend Backup”. The last option is not to use a particular connection at all. It’s your choice. Here are a couple of pieces of information to help you decide.

BACKUP ONLY FILE CHANGES

After the initial backup is completed, the desktop software will update changes to files or upload added files seconds after it detects the change. Although this is desirable in most cases, you may not want this behavior if you are travelling with a metered broadband card where you are being charged for mobile access by data consumed. Another reason you may not want to be performing a full back up through your mobile data card is that the speed of your experience may be affected since it is generally slower than wifi or a landline connection. On the other hand when you are at home on your DSL or at work, you may want to go full speed as it is fast and there are no data transfer limitations or additional charges.

SHARING WITH A LOT OF PEOPLE

Another consideration is the number of people that may be working with you. If you are in an office where many people share an Internet connection, you should limit the bandwidth you consume so that everyone’s internet connection doesn’t come to a screeching halt. By default Soonr’s desktop software is setup to use about 10-25% of the available bandwidth, leaving plenty of capacity for other activities. If you decide you want to speed this up to complete an initial backup faster, you can manually override this. If you do change the setting for your initial backup, just be sure and revisit these options after the initial backup is completed.

FULL BACKUP ONLY HAPPENS ONCE

Finally, remember that a full backup only happens one time. After you have a full backup, only the changed files need to be uploaded. Unless you routinely work with huge files while mobile, you may not even notice an impact to your connection experience. Still, it’s nice to know that you can control all these variables to make the best connection.

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.

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.

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!