Rabbit is a web-based operating system that connects people, processes and content, combining the power of social networking into an enterprise environment. A key component of Rabbit is its information sharing capabilities, which let users work on documents they’ve uploaded to Rabbit’s web workspace, and share this with other users. Rabbit has selected Zoho for this because of Zoho's proven ability to provide high levels of functionality and performance, and to provide a smooth transition for enterprise users from working locally on the desktop to working on the web.

All documents, spreadsheets and presentations uploaded and stored in Rabbit can be opened using Zoho. The documents and spreadsheets can be edited and saved back where as the presentations can be viewed. Below is a screenshot of files in Rabbit being opened using Zoho.



New documents and spreadsheets can be created too from inside Rabbit by invoking Zoho Writer and Sheet. This video by the Rabbit team explains the functionality in detail.

Rabbit has a 14-day trial. Try them out.

Zoho is primarily about working online. We have a great set of online productivity apps which businesses find extremely useful for collaboration. Microsoft SharePoint is ubiquitous in enterprises for content management, but it lacks several advantages that cloud applications like Zoho enjoy.

Today we are pleased to announce Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint that brings the advantages of Zoho online productivity applications to ubiquitous Microsoft SharePoint.

Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint extends the value of Microsoft SharePoint by allowing users to create new documents using Zoho's office suite and then save them directly to SharePoint in Microsoft Office supported formats. Users can view or edit existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations using Zoho Writer, Sheet & Show and save them back to SharePoint.

This video gives a good overview of this add-on.

Installation video is available here. As Zoho applications are served from the cloud, you don't need any installations on desktops to create/view/edit documents. Once you install the add-on for SharePoint server, you can be more productive with just your browser.


Zoho Collaboration on Microsoft SharePoint

Apart from providing editing capability for existing documents, the add-on also provides collaborative editing functionality. Based on sharing permissions already defined in SharePoint, multiple users can collaboratively work on documents/spreadsheets/presentations in real-time. This feature basically brings one of the key advantages of an online office suite to SharePoint.


While collaboratively editing documents, you can also chat with other members using our integrated Zoho Chat.

Data Behind your Firewall

Along with small and medium businesses, we see a good percentage of departments in larger organizations using our productivity apps for collaboration. There are  businesses which prefer keeping their data behind the enterprise firewall. For such organizations, this new add-on brings in the best of both worlds - Collaboration capabilities of an online application while keeping the data behind your firewall.

If you have SharePoint installed in your intranet behind your corporate firewall, you still will be able to view/edit documents using our online applications. After changes, your documents are saved back to your SharePoint server behind your corporate firewall leaving no data on Zoho Servers.

When you open the document, a copy is transferred temporarily to Zoho servers securely. When the document is closed, it is permanently deleted from our servers immediately leaving no data on our side.

Pricing & Availability

Starting today, this add-on is available for Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and 2003 versions. You can try the 30 day evaluation version for unlimited users. After the trial period, it costs $2/user/month on an yearly subscription or $3/user/month for monthly subscription.

If you have already invested in Microsoft SharePoint, this add-on is a great compliment that brings in the advantages of online productivity applications to SharePoint. If you are able to access SharePoint, you'll be able to view/edit documents without having to invest on productivity suites for every desktop in your business.

Additional information is available @ http://www.zoho.com/sharepoint

Please do give it a try and let us know what you think. 

-------
Microsoft, SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. ZOHO Corp is not affiliated or endorsed by Microsoft Corporation.

Japan's NTT Communications (NTT Com) unveiled their first foray into Cloud through a concept called "Setten" in Japan starting with a suite of applications for businesses. We are very excited to announce that some of Zoho's Applications are included as part of NTT Com's offerings.

NTT Communications is one of the largest telecommunications company in Japan and they are unveiling their cloud concept 'Setten' offering virtual office environment with a suite of online applications. To start with, the offering will include

In one of my previous posts, I talked about integration between different Zoho Apps expanding on the following integrations.

• Sheet integration with CRM
• Writer & Sheet integration in Zoho Projects
• Meeting & Chat integration in Zoho Show
• Creator Integration in People
• Projects integration in Invoice
• Writer, Sheet & Show integration in Notebook
• Writer, Sheet & Show integration into Wiki
• Chat integration in Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook, Meeting etc

Here in this post, let us look at some of the integrations we have added since then. Here we go...

Writer, Sheet & Show integration in Zoho Docs

When we introduced Zoho Docs, we not only aggregated all your documents from Zoho Writer, Sheet & Show, we also added the ability to open these documents right within Zoho Docs. With Writer, Sheet & Show integration in Zoho Docs, we let you open documents as a tab in view-only mode within the Zoho Docs application. You always have an option to 'Edit' these files which launches the appropriate Zoho application in a new window.



Zoho Mail Integration in Docs and Vice Versa

In Zoho Mail, we added an option to attach documents directly from Zoho Docs. This is a simpler way to send documents created in Zoho. Similarly, if you are in Zoho Docs, we integrated Zoho Mail to email your documents. Additional information about this integration is available here.




Zoho Chat Integration with Mail, Docs, People & Business

When I previously talked about Zoho Chat integration, we had Zoho Chat integrated with Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook & Meeting. We now extended this integration to Mail, Docs, People & Business. This means you'll see the consistent chat bar at the bottom across all Zoho Apps allowing you to chat with members in your buddy list. With Zoho Chat supporting multiple IM Networks, you can now seamless chat with your buddies from other IM Networks no matter which Zoho Application you are in.



Zoho Meeting Integration in Zoho Chat

I previously talked about Zoho Chat integration with Zoho Meeting. This time, the integration is the other way around. We integrated Zoho Meeting in Chat. This means, while chatting with other users in Zoho Chat, if you have a need to share your desktop with other users, you can do so with a single click. As Zoho Chat is integrated with multiple IM Networks (Yahoo, Google, MSN, AIM, ICQ & Jabber), you can share your desktop with users from any  IM networks.




Zoho Meeting Integration in Zoho CRM

Zoho Meeting is contextually integrated into Zoho CRM. When you search for a contact in Zoho CRM, you'll see an option on the right to start a quick one-on-one meeting with that user with just a click. As Zoho Meeting is free for one-on-one meetings, you need not be a paid Zoho Meeting user to try this functionality.



These are some of the new integrations between Zoho Apps. We have few others which I'll expand in a future post. We also have some interesting integrations coming. Stay tuned.

Over the past year or two we have had some initiatives on mobile capabilities for selected Zoho applications. With Zoho Mobile, we are aggregating all our previous initiatives with consistent user interface and extending it to multiple applications and mobile platforms.

Zoho Mobile can be accessed from your favorite smart phone @ http://mobile.zoho.com (or http://m.zoho.com to keep it short). In the current version of Zoho Mobile, the following applications are available.

• Zoho Mail
• Zoho Calendar
• Zoho Writer
• Zoho Sheet
• Zoho Show
• Zoho Creator

These browser-based applications come with a consistent user interface across multiple mobile platforms. We currently support the following mobile platforms.

• iPhone
• Android
• BlackBerry
• Windows Mobile &
  
• Symbian (S60 Platform)
  

We certainly plan to expand the coverage to other platforms like Palm moving forward. Also, the applications we support on these platforms will be expanded further as some of our Business applications make their way into Zoho Mobile. We also have plans to offer some native applications for selected platforms under Zoho Mobile.



Zoho Mobile is also localized to Japanese. We plan to make this available in additional languages soon.

Do give Zoho Mobile a try from your mobile phone and let us know your feedback.

How many times did we hear about using just the 20% of the features in a software like MS Office. Yes, it is true that we only use 20% of the features most the time, but then, some times we do have a need for one of those other 80% features we don't use normally. So it becomes important for software to offer those other features.

We believe users, especially business users purchase software with more depth and useful features. It is not because they use these features regularly, but because they have the features when they need it. It is kind of like your camera on your phone. You may not use it very regularly, but then you have it handy for that one moment you want to capture.

For a professional writer, features like Word count is very essential. For a student/researcher an equation editor can be priceless. For some users, features like pagination, Headers, Footers, Table of Contents are important. I don't use any of these features, but for me, collaborative editing and sharing are biggie. For me, features like Table of Contents fall into 'the other 80%' category where I don't use them regularly. This may not be the case for you. The need for these 'advance features' or so-called 'the 80% of the features I don't need' varies from person to person and it eventually becomes important for software - especially the software that caters to a broad audience, like an office suite - to offer all these features.

The point I am trying to make is that the other 80% of the features we may not need regularly varies between users. From a vendor's perspective, it becomes important to provide feature-rich applications, especially for broadly used applications like an office suite. This is the reason we focus on the depth of the application. Our Writer 2.0 is a step in this direction. Features like Pagination, Header/Footers, End notes/Footnotes, TOCs, Equation Editor etc may not be 'cool', but they are useful when you need them. Same is the case with features like Pivot Tables or Macros. These are features we may not use on a daily basis, but we have many users using these features every day.

We believe in feature-rich applications and we will keep adding more depth to all our applications.

Zoho Gadgets launches today with the aim to connect Zoho applications with external applications. Zoho Gadgets, available at http://gadgets.zoho.com, can be integrated/embedded with online applications like iGoogle, Facebook, Orkut, Gmail & more. To start with, we are offering six Zoho gadgets.

• Zoho Docs (Including Writer, Sheet & Show)
• Zoho Mail
• Zoho Calendar
• Zoho Tasks
• Zoho Contacts and
  
• Zoho Planner
  

All the gadgets are OpenSocial compatible - this means you can now use these gadgets in any OpenSocial compatible social network. We plan to provide gadgets for other Zoho Applications moving forward.

These gadgets can be embedded individually in any websites or can be added to iGoogle or any personal dashboard.

Gadgets for iGoogle
You can now add all Zoho Gadgets to your start page. To add Zoho Gadgets to iGoogle, just click on the iGoogle link in Gadgets page and add these gadgets for them to appear in your iGoogle page.

These gadgets support oAuth when plugged into iGoogle or Gmail. This means, Zoho Gadgets can be accessed without entering Zoho Credentials inside iGoogle/Gmail. Also, as you know, we do let you login to Zoho with your Google credentials. This means, we automatically show your Zoho contents if you use this option to login to Zoho.

Gadgets for Facebook & Orkut
Gadgets can be added to Facebook by clicking on the Facebook icon in the Gadgets page and bookmarking the gadget. Your gadgets will be visible from the Applications bar at the bottom in Facebook.


As you may know, we have Zoho App for Facebook as well.

Similar to Facebook, these gadgets can also be added to Orkut. Clicking on the Orkut link in Gadgets page will redirect you to Orkut page where you have an option to add the application to your profile.


Gadgets in Gmail
We have many users using Gmail for email and Zoho for Documents. If you are one of those users, you can now view your Zoho Documents within Gmail. To do this, you'll have to enable the Labs feature in Gmail. To do this, go to Settings > Labs Tab > Enable 'Add any gadget by URL' and save the changes.

Now, go to Settings > Gadgets tab and paste the XML URL of the gadget and click 'Add'. This XML URL is available under OpenSocial option in the Gadgets page.




For now, you'll be able to add Zoho Docs, Calendar and Tasks gadgets to Gmail. If you are using Gmail, we figured you won't need Zoho Mail & Zoho Contacts inside Gmail :)



Gadgets for OpenSocial Apps
Zoho Gadgets can be added to any application that is OpenSocial compatible. The OpenSocial option in our Gadgets page provides the link to the XML file needed to integrate the gadget.



Generic Embed
All these gadgets can be embedded anywhere with our standard embed option. Just copy and paste the code in your blog or website for the gadget to be embedded. Of course, this also means you can embed these gadgets in other Zoho Applications like Zoho Notebook, Wiki, Writer, Show etc which support standard HTML embeds.



This is just the beginning for Zoho Gadgets. We have more gadgets to come for our other applications. We also have plans to make these gadgets available in other social networks like Ning moving forward. These gadgets will also make their way to the Desktop component in Zoho Business.

Please do try out these gadgets in social networks and let us know your feedback.

Injoos is a collaboration platform for teams with integrated document, project and knowledge management features. All documents, spreadsheets, presentations uploaded to Injoos can now be viewed, edited & saved back online, thanks to Injoos using the Zoho API.

You can upload all types of files to Injoos. The below screenshot lists an uploaded Resume document. Click on the View/Edit link.


It will open the document in a new tab using Zoho Writer editor.


Similarly, xls, csv files will open in Zoho Sheet editor and ppt, pps files in Zoho Show. Jagdish at Injoos has done a nice flash video to explain this feature. Give Injoos a try.

Randy notes....

The best online word processor, however, may be the one from a tiny company, Zoho, a nimble innovator. Zoho Writer is running close enough to Word to imagine that it and other online word processors will be able to do most everything that Word can do, and more.

Zoho Writer handles the basics and provides many advanced functions without breaking a sweat — like the ability to edit a document when page breaks are displayed. Google Docs can’t. Writer works even when one is offline, thanks to open source technology developed by Google, and used by Zoho in its word processor four months before Google used it.

Zoho Writer also provides some esoteric features, like a choice of footnotes or endnotes, with note numbers in superscript, placed in the text. Google Docs does only footnotes and puts in a pound sign as a placeholder. You may never need to create the most complex mathematical equations, but Zoho Writer makes it easy to do so.

We believe in feature rich applications and keep adding these features frequently. You may not need these advanced features every day. But it is always good to know that you have those features when you need them.

Also, we don't believe in advertising inside our applications. We hate seeing ads in our Productivity & Business apps. After all, these apps are supposed to make you productive and not distract you with ads, right?

The article makes few good points. Please do check it out. Thank you for a great article, Randy.

When we launched offline capability in Zoho Writer using Google Gears, we let you view and edit your existing documents in offline mode. One key option missing in our first version was the ability to create new documents in the offline mode.

With Zoho Writer 2.0, we added this new feature that lets you create new documents while offline. You can create new documents the same way you'd create while online. We have no restrictions on the number of documents you create in the offline mode. One limitation with this feature is that you'll not be able to rename the document while offline.

When you are back online, the a synchronization dialog appears asking you to synchronize newly created documents which will then be available online.





When online, you'll have the option to rename documents along with all other functionality.

We hope you'll find this new feature helpful.