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!

First we need to understand a few variables – bandwidth, interaction and privacy. In each of the options Soonr offers something special to make the experience a little better. Let’s examine each variable and see how it would affect your decision.

BANDWIDTH:

Upon first inspection, you may think to yourself, “What does my bandwidth have to do with anything?”. It is not your bandwidth that we are concerned with, it is the bandwidth of the recipient. Soonr will always make things as efficient as possible. When someone receives your invitation to interact, only the smallest possible bits of data are sent over the air. Soonr will optimize the pages in a presentation or pictures in a folder so that the recipient can have a good experience even on a mobile phone. A link or share is the most efficent bandwidth option.

INTERACTION:

What do you expect the recipient to do with the file(s) sent? Are they just going to look over it or perhaps they will add a few comments? Will they need to download the entire file and make changes to send back to you? Will the file be circulated to many people working together on a project? Sharing is the best interaction option.

PRIVACY:

Is the file a sensitive document that should only be accessed by key individuals? Does it need to be password protected or is it ok for anyone with the weblink to see it? Is the file a basis for collaboration where many people will comment and change it?

So now that you know what the variables are, let’s look at the SEND, LINK, and SHARE options.

SEND:

This option can be applied to any file that is backed up or any file in a project. The recipient will get a conventional email in their inbox with a file attached. If you send this to multiple people, each will get a copy of the file. What Soonr adds is that you do not have to upload the file to the mail server to relay it along to the recipients. The mobile phone or web browser you are using to access your account is simply a remote control. You are instructing the Soonr service to create the mail and forward the file. If you are on a mobile phone, sending along a large multiple megabyte presentation becomes a simple task that doesn’t consume huge amounts of bandwidth. The interaction model is like regular email. Unless you keep copies of past emails, it’s difficult to track the history or changes made to the file. Furthermore, the privacy level is the same as your email system. Send works, but is a basic file transferring method. We can make it better!

LINK:

Link is one step above Send and hardly uses any bandwidth. Soonr will create a URL (Web Link) to the file that you can send along to anyone. The recipient will get to take advantage of the rendering abilities of Soonr to see over 50 file types without downloading the file. If they need the original file they can download the file. The Link option doesn’t offer much interaction with the file outside of a download or the ability to resend the link to someone else. You can’t really track activity beyond whether or not the file was accessed and how many times. As for privacy, Soonr allows you to assign a password to the file and also determine the lifespan of the link. The link can “die” in a day or not at all. You can choose what works for you. However, users can forward the link to anyone they want. You don’t have a lot of control over its distribution.

SHARE:

Share is the most unique option as it offers all the advantages of the previous options, but also includes a multitude of collaboration capabilities. Shares can be applied to Project Folders and the files they contain. Like the Link, a Share is very efficient as only a web URL is  sent to the recipients. The interaction model is VERY rich. Users can leave comments and notify each other of changes. Full version control for individual files are active so that changed files do not overwrite previous edits. User may have the ability to forward the shares to others or invite additional participants to collaborate. Sharing even includes the ability to notify mobile users of changes via SMS when their computers are not on. Finally, the privacy level of a share is very high. Only users that are part of your Team (Company) or invited guests can access a Share. All users must log into their accounts to see the share and furthermore, they only have access to the share if they are invited. As an administrator, you can decide who has access to the Share and what their rights are.

Sharing a Project is the most powerful way to collaborate

Whether you choose to Send, Link, or Share, Soonr offers the most efficient way to show files to others. Everything that you have backed up is available to you, and with Project Folders you can even include files from multiple machines and/or multiple people in a shared workspace. Explore the many options for collaborating online with your account. All this is available even when you are using a mobile phone with limited bandwidth. Ditch the antiquated method of copying and relaying files via email. There’s a better way to do get things done Soonr!

Setting up your brand is easy using the Settings | Team Branding option in Soonr. After you log into your account as an administrator, navigate to the Settings tab and then click on the Team Branding option along the left.

Here are the first four (4) areas where you can extend your brand.

Edit yellow highlighted areas to apply your brand.

The first is your company logo. You can choose any graphics file that is in the proper (72 x 35) dimensions. The reason it has to be exact is that it will fit into the tab in the upper left of each page. Use any graphics editing program to re-size your logo if necessary.

The Support area will enable you to customize your support options and messaging to your team members or guests. They will see this whenever they are in the settings area of Soonr.

Registration Email Sender name will appear in the invitations to collaborate that come from Soonr. When you create new users the invitation is automatically sent to them with brief instructions.

The Event Email Sender will appear whenever something happens that generates an email to a team member. Typical things are notifications of file changes, comments, or shares.

Rolling down the page, you’ll see the custom login page options.

You can give your Team any name you want in the Team Name area and also include a logo for visual reinforcement.

Create a custom login experience for your team!

After you define the elements, be sure and click on the “Open Login page” link to get the URL for your custom login page. This is what you will send to your team members.

Now when you share files and folders to collaborate with others, you will get a custom branded experience! This is another of the many reasons to go with a Soonr premium account for your business. You pay nothing extra for this ability. It’s included as part of the Soonr Pro service so you can “Do More Soonr!”

Collaboration becomes effortless as you and your team will just use the programs you already know in the same way as before. *Please note that some of the features described here only come with a paid Soonr account, but there’s a 30 day free trial for all paid accounts!

What does Soonr Cloud Drive provide?

• Easily manage your online storage folders just like you would a local harddrive. All the same tools work so there’s nothing new to learn.
• Directly edit files from the cloud using the powerful client programs you are used to, but from any computer where you have the client programs installed! If editing from a remote computer, all changes will be automatically pushed to the original location.
• Collaboration effortlessly. All the edits made with Cloud Drive in a Project folder inherits the added web services of Soonr. Notifications to the team, view, share, print, fax, search, it’s all included.

Soonr Cloud Drive is an immensely powerful feature. It turns your online project workspaces into a great collaboration tool with nothing new to learn!

Managing Online Storage Folders:
Actually, You already know how to do this since it’s integrated with the operating system. In the example below, you can see that cloud drive T: is set up on the computer named “VAIOZ-SERIES”. The File Explorer is on the left, and you can see how it directly maps to the Soonr account in the Web Browser. All your computers and projects will appear in File Explorer as if they were local.

Editing with Cloud Drive:
When you are looking at the files in a folder, you can use the action menu and select “Edit with Cloud Drive“. This will automatically launch the application on your computer and open the file from the online folder. You can edit using the native application and when you save, it’ll automatically save back into the online folder and push the changed file to its original location. Also in the background, the version control will make a snapshot of the older file. All this and you don’t have change anything you do today. You can edit from a remote computer and still maintain all changes on the original computer.

Effortless Collaboration:
Imagine being able to edit your files on your desktop just as you do today, except that when you save them, they are automatically saved online, made viewable by over 817 mobile devices, and available even when your computer is offline! Your team members will automatically be notified when you make changes and if they leave comments on the file, you will be notified by email and even SMS if you prefer.

Finally, any and all changes are automatically version controlled. You get all these benefits working on files just like you do today on your local machine.

Let’s take a look at how to set up Soonr Cloud Drive.

Set up Soonr Cloud Drive:

Your Soonr desktop software has a tab called Cloud Drive. On this tab you can define what drive letter you want to assign to the drive, the default is “T:”. You can can also control whether it’s automatically activated when connected to your Soonr service. There’s a button where you can launch Cloud Drive directly from the agent.

For those more technically curious, refer to this FAQ: Map a Drive Letter

You can have all this by getting yourself a premium Soonr account! If you already have one, add some users to your team and extend all the benefits of Soonr to them. If you don’t, why not try the 30 day free trial for the premium accounts. Get more Soonr!

Online Projects offer collaboration power!

It’s Not Just a Backed Up Folder
Unlike your computer folders, Online Project Folders can contain files from different sources. They can be from different computers (Mac or PC) or they can be from different users. All the related documents that your team is working are in one easy to access location. Getting a file or folder into a Project is also very easy. You can use the drop down menu and choose Copy to Project, you can upload a file using the browser, or you can even email a file into the folder as an attachment.

What can you do with it?
So now that you’ve got all the related files into one spot, what can you do with them? Everything! All of the web services that Soonr offers are automatically applied to the Project Folders. Documents are available for remote access with rendering for 817 different devices! You can choose to comment, print, fax, or share any folder or file. You can even create a guest account so that people who are not part of your company can still participate in a Project.

Online Project Folders help you get all the resources that your team needs to complete tasks faster, into one always available online resource. No matter where the team members are located or what devices they are using, they can stay connected to the team and work more efficiently. All this and the data is secured and automatically version controlled when changes do occur. Give the Online Projects a try today and see how it can increase your productivity so that you can Do More Soonr!