Ian Wenig, Senior Director Strategic Alliances at Zoho got interviewed by Daniel Brusilovsky at the Structure 08 event presented by GigaOm. The interview is now up at Daniel’s Apple Universe podcasting site.

.

Thanks to Daniel.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Posted to:  General, In the News, Marketing, Technology  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article:  

Zoho Projects underwent an update just now and the below features are now available.

Multiple Admins : Till now, Zoho Projects followed the single admin concept. But from now on, there can be multiple admins. The one who created the Zoho Projects account is assigned the super-admin / portal owner role. And he/she can designate other members as Administrators. These administrators have all the privileges as the portal owner except upgrading/downgrading the Zoho Projects account & changing the credit card details.

Task-Documents and Task-Forums Mapping : Along with adding Notes to a task (which is useful for knowing a task’s status etc), documents uploaded to Zoho Projects and discussion forums created for a project can now be associated with tasks. Multiple documents/forums can be associated with a task and a forum/document can be associated with any number of tasks.

Managers can add Clients : Project members in Manager role can now add (external) client members to the projects they manage. This gives a Manager fuller control over the project(s) he/she manages.

Separate iCal link for Google Calendar : Google Calendar follows the VEVENT component versus the VTODO component that needs to be followed for tasks/tasklists/milestones. To support GCal, Zoho Projects now has a separate GCal link. Clicking on the links, you can download an .ics file which you can import into your iCalendar / Google Calendar.

Test drive the new features in Zoho Projects and we would be glad hearing your comments.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho Projects  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article:  

Any recruiting / staffing firm may face problems like negotiating client deals, keeping the clients updated on the job opening status, sourcing appropriate candidates, pooling resources for interviews, tracking applicants, offering negotiations etc, which distract them from their focus of hiring an appropriate candidate. Zoho People helps automate the process of staffing with minimal effort and customization, thus allowing you to focus on your business goal. A screencast that explains how Zoho People, the affordable on-demand HRIS and recruitment solution, can be used by a staffing firm to meet its needs.

More on the above topic here. Let us know how you are using Zoho People and features that you would like to be added to it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted to:  Zoho People  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article:  

We have featured the friendly Technologist cum Educator, Barry Dahl of Lake Superior College before. Barry continues to be a strong Zoho (and ToonDoo, Jambav) advocate for more than a couple of years now. From a recent post of his,

At the risk of sounding too much like a fanboy – I just have to say it one more time - love Toondoo and Zoho. This is nothing new for me since I’ve been sort of an evangelist for the past couple of years now. However, they continue to surprise me with how much they pay attention to their users and how responsive they are to suggestions or comments. With regard to Toondoo, back in Dec. 2007, I included them in my end of year list of the Top 12 Web 2.0 Tools. In that post I lamented the fact that I had wanted to use Toondoo with the elementary schools kids where I run the after-school Tech Club, but that I wouldn’t do it because there was too much inappropriate content on the site – mostly lame attempts at adult humor in cartoon format. Within a day or two of that post I received an email from Toondoo telling me that they had added a safe search button at the top of each page and a personal setting that can be turned on to not show any content that has been flagged as inappropriate. I was impressed with their responsiveness, but not terribly impressed with the solutions.

Then, earlier this month I included Toondoo in my post of the free web tools that I would be willing to pay for. My caveat here was that I would be willing to pay for the tool in order to use it with the youngsters if they could give me a protected environment

Lo and behold, I received an e-mail from Rajendran D. of Jambav within just a few days of making that post. TPTB at Jambav thought that was a good idea and were especially intrigued that I had even offered to pay for it. They are proposing that I be a beta tester for their new branded sites opportunity. They will provide a unique URL such as LakeSuperior.toondoo.com and allow me to host the members of my choosing. They are thinking that this service will probably sell for about $50 US per year, but they are offering it for free to me as a beta tester to use it with the students and to report back to them with suggestions and comments. This isn’t yet a totally done deal, but I’m confident that I will be able to try this out with the Tech Club when school starts up again in the fall.

Jambav is owned by Adventnet, which is a profitable software development company. Zoho is also owned by Adventnet, which gives them a potent 1-2 punch in my book. The most recent moment of Zen for me regarding Zoho tools was when I was presenting at the Tennessee Board of Regents Summer Institute last month (TBR08). I did two sessions on Zoho tools that were well attended and well received. There were many times that jaws dropped during those sessions as people saw some of the functionality that they didn’t know existed, or hadn’t taken the time to investigate. I always say that I think the Zoho suite is far advanced over Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and a few Google users confirmed what I was thinking about the power that is Zoho. I also did a session there about Toondoo, and there were so many great ideas about how to use comic strips for both student projects and for other purposes related to online courses and programs. For example, (1) make a Toonbook of frequently asked questions, (2) have students prepare a comic strip to introduce themselves at the beginning of the class, (3) instructor-created comic strip or toonbook as a topic teaser (introducing a new topic before more in-depth study), and several others.

Deepa, who uses Zoho for her day-to-day activities, writes about her usage of Zoho Creator, “Zoho Creator :- Only intuition, no programming”

I came across Zoho Creator, and have been trying it out for the past 6 months before making my first post about it here. I proudly admit the fact that I have integrated Zoho into my actual working environment, which has taken the load of report maintenance off my shoulders. These days, I spend only 2 hrs a week to consolidate my report. I use the free version, but sure have the plan to switch to business version soon enough.

The advantage of Zoho [Creator] lies in the fact that

1. There is no huge download or installation.. Because this is a WEB APPLICATION
2. The Registration is free
3. You need not have any programming knowledge
4. The interface is exceptionally intuitive
5. Drag – and – drop allows you to design custom forms
6. Logical flow of events will guide you to do the scripting.
7. Embed the form in your blog and collect data
8. Various choices on how you wish to process the data collected ( HTML, Excel, JASON, AJAX, Pdf , ) for novices and advanced users alike.
9. The feeds can be integrated into feed readers, HTML displayed within iframe,.. possibilities are immense.
10. Applications can be shared with any number of users ( say you have created the application and want you friend to moderate the content… go ahead and share it)

You can develop a simple form like Guest Book , which has minimum scripting ( auto date ), or , developing a complex form that allows you to generate and send email-verification code right from zoho form, which involves more complex scripting.

Bloggers have long loved interaction with their readers. After all, isn’t that why we enable comments? Here is something to take this level of interaction a step further. How about developing a custom application to cater to your needs?. Well, if you feel lack of programming knowledge, and the mind boggling software installation ( not to mention the price) is pinning you down, not anymore. Try Zoho Creator, I am sure you will eventually end up using it.

Thanks Barry & Deepa!

Do tell us how you are using Zoho, ToonDoo or Jambav. Email us or leave your comments below.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho Creator  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article:  

Open IT Online is a Firefox extension that allows to open and edit documents and images from everywhere. Thanks to this extension, you will be able to open several types of documents directly in Firefox using online services (such as Zoho) without needing any software to be installed. In other words, it adds an option to your Firefox “Open With” dialog to let you open Word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more file types in the Zoho suite, Google Docs, ThinkFree Viewer & others. You can configure defaults for every file type - nice and convenient for fans of online editing. Open IT Online is a free download and it works wherever Firefox 2 or 3 does.

Here’s more screenshots & a nice video of how to use Open IT Online to view documents online with Zoho. Install the Open IT Online Firefox add-on to view/edit files directly online without downloading them.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Posted to:  API, Announcements, General, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Viewer, Zoho Writer  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article:  

Henry Thiele’s notebook titled, Should I know Web 2.0? Nice aggregation of text, links, images, audio & video from the world wide web combined with one’s own thoughts. Simply awesome! Another cool notebook from him : Digital Storytelling. Thanks Henry!

To our readers & Zoho users : Do leave your comments on how you are using Zoho Notebook.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho Notebook  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article:  

Here’s a little noticed feature in Zoho Show. You make a presentation public and embed it in a blog. Once the presentation is embedded, what if you made (want to make) changes to the original presentation? By default, it will reflect in the embedded presentation too. But this is not desirable in two cases

• When you are adding or editing slides, the visitors to your blog/website will be seeing live the unfinished changes that you are making
• When you want to have the original version linked to on the site while wanting to have the revised version private or shared only to a group

There is the Automatically re-publish when document is modified checkbox which does the trick. Leave it checked and you will always see the latest version in your blog/website. Uncheck it and you can do your edits safely without the external world knowing it.

Having the Automatically re-publish when document is modified option ticked makes the latest version available to the public always

Leaving the option unchecked, you can see that the last published version is 1.4 while the latest version is 1.6

The above is not just limited to embedding your presentation as it applies in general to making a presentation public! Hope you found the tip useful. Try this out in Zoho Show and do leave your comments on how you are using Zoho (Show).

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted to:  General, Uncategorized, Zoho Show  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article:  

Let’s see the possibilities that Zoho’s project management application offers when working with tasks.

1. You define a task which forms part of a larger tasks list. And this task list can be Internal or External, can be associated with a Milestone or not
2. You can choose to Send Mail Notification whenever a new task is created, gets assigned
3. In the real world, most tasks are accomplished through team work. Zoho Projects allows you to associate a task to multiple team members
4. Typical project management involves Start and End dates not just for Milestones reached but for individual tasks also. And you can do this with Zoho Projects
5. You can set the priority of each task as High, Medium, Low or None
6. A task’s progress can be monitored as you can edit a task and change the % Completed field status. And each task’s status is reflected in the Gantt chart view under Reports

How are you using Zoho Projects? Please do let us know in the comments.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho Projects  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article:  

We get this question quite often -

Does Zoho offer a backup function which will let me download all my data?

We have various options depending on each Zoho service.

Zoho Writer : Offers a variety of different formats that you can export a document to - doc, docx, pdf, odf (odt), latex, sxw, html, rtf & txt. Click on Export to see the options.

Also integrates with Google Gears. Offers upto 50 documents to be downloaded to your desktop. You can access these documents from http://writer.zoho.com/offline. Click on Go Offline to download Google Gears and your Zoho Writer documents

Zoho Sheet : Click on Export. Again offers a wide variety of options from xls to pdf to ods to xml. There is also a batch export option available from the sidebar.

Zoho Show : Open a presentation. Click on Export and you will see the options available (ppt, pdf, pps and odp)

Zoho Projects : Export all your tasks as an xls or csv file. Under Tasks and Milestones, click on Export button

Zoho Creator : Export all your data as xls, pdf. Also as RSS, JSON feeds etc.

Zoho Wiki : You can download all the pages of your Wiki as a zip file. Available under Settings -> Click to download the backup

Zoho CRM : Choose the module (Leads, Contacts etc) and click on Export. You can also export all your CRM data in one go also. We charge a nominal fee of $10.

Zoho DB & Reports : Export your reports as csv, pdf or an image file

Zoho Invoice : Export each invoice, estimate as pdf. Export customer’s info as VCard (vcf).

Zoho Notebook : Has an Export as mht option. The exported page can be viewed in Internet Explorer.

We will be coming up with more export options in upcoming updates.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho CRM, Zoho Creator, Zoho DB, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Notebook, Zoho Projects, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Wiki, Zoho Writer  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article:  

As you may know, there were recent updates to Zoho Sheet and Zoho Writer. Continuing on the series of updates, the below new functionalities in Zoho Show are now available.

1. Export to PPT, PPS, PDF, ODP : Zoho Show has long had the ‘Export as HTML’ option. Now we have added the much needed ppt, pps, pdf & odp file export options as well. After opening a presentation, click on the Export button. You will find the new options

2. Languages support : 9 new languages. In addition to English, the Zoho Show UI can now be set to one of these languages too : Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Europe), Spanish & Swedish

3. Personal Groups and Contacts support : Click on Share. You will see the Add Contacts, Add Groups option.

Group the email addresses of your contacts (work, family etc). Useful when repeatedly sharing presentations (need not type all the email addresses again). Also, all your Zoho contacts - the ones who you have shared documents with, from your Zoho Mail account etc - get listed while you share a presentation (auto-suggest feature which will help you in easily picking up who to share a presentation with.

4. Undo/Redo : You can now undo/redo upto 50 actions. You can see the new undo & redo buttons in the toolbar

5. Picasa Integration : Click on the Insert Image icon. You can see Picasa listed along with Flickr (which was already there). You can insert public pictures from your Picasa account

6. Remote Presentation - UI enhancements : Click on Remote -> Make Remote. Try making a remote presentation. You will see a chat tab to the right. The Notes tab is open (for the presenter alone) below the slide area. And the slide area size can be adjusted (to accomodate notes)

7. Embed Enhancements (Advanced Options) : Click on Publish -> Embed in Website/Blog. You will see the ‘Advanced Options’ link. Clicking on it opens a new window. There are options like how big you want the embedded preso to be, if you want the toolbar included etc. You can see that the embed HTML code snippet changes according to the options being chosen

8. Copy/Paste slides from one presentation to another : Open two presentations in separate browser tabs. You can copy-paste from one to another.

Do test the new features in Zoho Show and we would be glad hearing your feedback.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Posted to:  Announcements, General, Zoho Show  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
Help others find this article: