Multiple computers in one spot!

EASY SETUP:
So how do you set this up? You need to run the desktop software on each machine and use the same login information for your Soonr account. Each computer will have a unique ID and appear separately on the computers tab. To get the desktop software on a new machine, follow the steps below:

1. Using the computer (Mac or Windows) that you want to add to your Soonr account, go online and log into your Soonr account.
2. Click on the “Settings” tab and navigate to the bottom of page to see the section “Install Soonr Desktop Agent”.
3. Click on the “Download” button to begin.
4. When prompted, provide the login credentials for your account. Each machine with the same login credentials will be grouped together.
   

   Scroll to the bottom to get the desktop software

There’s so much more you can do once the computers are associated with your account. Explore the blog to learn more and Do More Soonr!

Organize with Favorites and Recetn Changes

Let’s explore each one of these productivity tools.

There are certain things that we go back to time and again because they are what we care about most. Whether it’s a favorite website, restaurant, picture, or video; we take time to put them at the “top of the stack” because we want to return to them at a moments notice.

The same thing happens when you working on your computer(s). Certain projects, pictures, files or folders contain things you use often but perhaps at varied intervals. The Favorites tab allows you to quickly bring those things together in your Dashboard. As you are navigating in your Soonr account, you’ll see a star appear next to files and folders.

If you want the file or folder to appear in your favorites, simply click on the  star to toggle it on or off.  If you’ve ever used Gmail, you’ll see that it’s pretty similar to Gmail’s favorites feature.

Favorites have a yellow star next to them.

Now let’s contrast this to the “Recent Changes” tab. Whereas Favorites are completely controlled by you, Recent Changes automatically detects updated to your cloud and shows you what’s happening in realtime. If someone left a comment for you or made a change in a shared project, it’ll appear in the Recent Changes tab. The order of the items is chronological, with the most recent things at the top. At a glance you can see what’s going on in your cloud. You can perform actions that will appear on the list, but unlike Favorites you cannot directly mark items to be persistent and included even when no action occurs.

These features are especially useful when you are accessing your account from a mobile phone. The immediacy of the information and the fact that it’s intelligently presenting what is happening in realtime, allows you to quickly respond to requests or project activities when you are mobile. You don’t have to spend a lot of time navigating in the more limited interface of a mobile phone in order to get to what you need.  When you area on a device with a smaller screen, fewer clicks equals better mobile productivity.

The Soonr Dashboard has a special area for online Projects. The most active 5 projects are automatically managed for you. Depending on the recent activity, the Project will be presented in rank order so that you can see the ones that are the most active.

See Project Activity at a glance

Directly beneath each project is a count of the number of team members that are collaborating on the project with you.

You can always see all of your projects by clicking on the link at the bottom.

Let’s drill down a little deeper and click on the Signup Campaign, the one with eight (8) collaborators.

After clicking on the Project name, the Project detail screen will appear.

Manage related files and team members

In this example, the Project has been shared with me from a co-worker named Simun. I can click on the team icon to see the other people who are working on this Project. Simun can actually manage each user’s rights within the project since he is the owner, but that option is hidden from me.

You can also see that the “Action” menu lets me apply all the cloud services of Soonr to this entire Project Workspace. For example, if I want to work on these project files when I am on an airplane and not connected to the Internet, I can choose to “Download” this project to my laptop’s local harddrive. Any changes  made can be uploaded later and automatically version controlled.

Another popular action is “Commenting”. I can clearly see which file has comments associated with it and I can have Soonr SMS me when ever something changes. Comments are stored outside the file and are not meant to replace change tracking. Programs like Microsoft Word have an excellent change tracking system. Commeting let’s you keep a historical thread of the teams thoughts without impacting the actual file. It’s very useful for an active discussion when groups are working on things together.

Finally, online Projects have a unique email address. People are just used to attaching files to emails. Now you can simply cc: your Project email address and those files will automatically appear in the Project Workspace. Of course that change will then appear on the Dashboard.

It’s easier than ever before to see the status of your online Projects at a glance! Of course your mobile phone will also share in this functionality. Choose the “Projects” option on your phone to see the Project pane.

You can see San Francisco on a clear day!

When our lease expired in our office space and we found out that our original space was available, we moved back! You can see all of Silicon Valley and even San Francisco (about 1 hour north of us) on a clear day. In the picture above, Apple Computer is on the left, Moffet Field (where the Google guys park their airliner) is just left of center. San Francisco is just right of Moffet Field (way behind it) with the San Jose Airport in the middle. To the right, you can make out downtown San Jose and where one of Soonrs data centers is located.

Our new address is 1901 S. Bascom Ave. STE 1530, Campbell, CA 95008. If you are in the area, please visit!

One last thing. Our phone lines may not work just yet. We are having a heck of a time switching vendors and maintaining the same number. It’s a long story, just come visit in person or send email. We respond to those right away.

During the maintenance period (estimated at 5-10 minutes) you may get a message telling you to try to access Soonr again in a few minutes.  Curious as to why this is necessary? Read on!

There are basically three different Levels of updates that we can apply.

Level 1 - these are scripts, graphics, web pages, etc. that are loaded dynamically and can be posted without any impact on the overall service. The updated files are simply loaded the next time you encounter a page the requests them.

Level 2 – updates are rolling updates, meaning that we can apply them to one server at a time while another server picks up the load. Once again, no interruption in service is noticable to the users.

Level 3 – requires that we stop the service since it requires changes to the core system database schemas or other constantly used information. These changes are usually linked to major new features.

Now you know. As you may have guessed, Level 1 & 2 changes happen all the time in the background. Level 3 changes require a notice like this one.

Thanks in advance for your understanding. We will continue to make Soonr the best in class service for Active Backup and Collaboration!