Zoho Blogs

Announcing The Social Way To Get Things Done: Zoho Projects 2.0

Rodrigo Vaca — Wed, 1 Jul 2009 06:15:56 -0700

Today we're excited to end the 'mystery' and announce Zoho Projects 2.0. What is so exciting about this launch? It will change how teams get work done.

Remember the days when teams had their documents in a share, their discussions through mail in some ancient mailing-list software, the project plan in Microsoft Project, any relevant content on the company's intranet, and chatted with people on the team using a variety of IM clients? What happened when you needed to find something? What about when someone new just joined the team and needed to 'ramp up'? And sure, 'big' announcements always found their way, but what about the stuff that happens on a daily basis - the gears that move the team - how do you keep track of those?

Well, of course you remember those days, because they are actually these days. That's how most people still collaborate today. But no more. Zoho Projects brings all of that together into a single package of teamwork nirvana.

Zoho Projects 2.0 goes beyond the traditional 'project management' space and helps people work together to achieve a common goal. It's not just about tasks, milestones and priorities (but we do that too of course). It's about how people interact and what they need while working on something - whether it's a local team or a distributed team, an internal team, or a customer-facing one. Many times when we hear 'Project' he instantly think of a PMI-certified guy with a huge Gantt chart taped in his office door. But every team is always working in some sort of project, whether that's formally defined or not. And that is where Zoho Projects helps.

So, why 'social'? Social because we realize that getting work done is less about the work or 'the plan', and more about the people that work to make that plan happen - and how they make it happen. The new Project Stream makes it easier for people to stay on top of what's going on with their team and their project. Teams can keep all their relevant documents and files neatly organized in a centralized place. And it's not just about files, but also about the discussions that are going on around the project, or the content (and in these days that means more likely than not web content). And of course also about those IM chats.

Alright, I could go on about this for days. Instead, let me jump to the juicy stuff. Here's what's to love about Zoho Projects 2.0:

Plan your projects

Keep your projects organized: Milestones, Tasks and Tasks Lists
Set-up dependencies, assign ownership, priorities and more
Import MPP files - Plan in Microsoft Project, collaborate in Zoho

Collaborate with your team

The Project Stream keeps you up-to-date about the latest activities going on around your project
Set your User Status to let your team members know what you're working on (you can think of that like a private Twitter for your Project)
Keep all your meetings, milestones and tasks organized in the shared calendar
Store your files and documents in one place, keep track of the changes with the version history
Integration with the award-winning Zoho Office - so you can create/edit/view documents using just your browser
Discussions - interactive forums make everyone a part of the conversation - and keep important topics and decisions available for everyone to see
Create team and project web pages with the integrated Wiki
My personal favorite - the always-on, embedded chat means you can chat with your entire team - or with only one person using just your browser. And it also keeps a log of what's been said so you can refer back to past conversation. And you can also setup different 'chat rooms' - one for every topic you're discussing.

Track your progress

The Project Dashboard offers a quick at-a-glance view of upcoming tasks and milestones, meetings and whatever has been happening around your projects.
Reports visually represent your team progress against your pre-defined goals
And finally, for those teams with external customers, the Timesheet makes it easy to log and track who has spent how much time doing what. But it doesn't stop there, you can automatically generate and send the invoice using Zoho Invoice (or export the data to use any other invoicing medium that suits you).

If you want to see more of Zoho Projects in action before you sign up, below is a ~3 min video with a good overview. You can also view the screenshot tour we have prepared for you.

We are sure that after trying Zoho Projects for a month you will wonder how your team ever got stuff done without it. We actually used Zoho Projects 2.0 while building Zoho Projects 2.0 and it proved invaluable - we'll have more about that later.

Rodrigo

Plotting the Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices

Arvind — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:12:45 -0700

Standard & Poor's publishes the Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices on the last Tuesday of every month. The indices are calculated from data on repeat sales of single family homes. The indices are normalized to have a value of 100 in the first quarter of 2000. It is calculated monthly using a three-month moving average and published with a two month lag. We imported the data released today into Zoho Reports and created a few charts to see how the house prices have performed over the years.

There's also a separate chart that plots the Composite 10 and Composite 20 (an aggregate of 10 and 20 cities respectively) index values.

Inferences from the above charts

West
- Los Angeles, followed by San Diego are the cities where the prices peaked much (indices of around 275 and 250 respectively)
- In Seattle and Portland, the prices peaked almost a year late when compared to other cities in the West (around Sep 2007 as against Sep 2006)
- There was a mini bubble in Los Angeles in 1989-1990
Midwest
- Chicago and Minneapolis have seen the maximum rises
- In Detroit, prices have fallen the most (given the state of the auto industry there)
- Prices in Cleveland have almost remained level (just went up by 20 points)
Northeast
- During the bubble years, New York's prices rose at a faster rate than Boston's (from 1999 to 2004, prices rose almost at the same rate in both the cities)
- In the 1987-1996 time period, prices haven't varied much in the two cities
South
- Prices rose the most in Miami, followed by Washington DC and Tampa
- Like with Cleveland in the Northeast, prices in Charlotte, Dallas & Atlanta didn't rise by much
- There was a brief bubble in 1989-90 in Washington, DC
General

The indices for many of the cities are showing a small uptick for April 2009
Almost every region in the US has got uniformly affected by the current housing bubble

Do let us know your own inferences from the above. The data is available here. Play with it and create as many charts as you like. For example, the below is an interactive chart of how the indices in the Midwest cities have been since Jan 2001.

We will be updating the data on the last Tuesday of every month. The charts embedded above being dynamic will change automatically.

Related Links

That thing we're launching... (integration, MS import and a screenshot)

Rodrigo Vaca — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:35:48 -0700

One of the features I love about this thing we're launching soon is how many other Zoho services it incorporates into one cool package of unrestrained productivity. And... no, it's not just a pricing bundle where we give you a number of disparate thing for one set price.

It goes beyond that. Anyway, I was just counting how many other Zoho services it integrates under one roof - no less than 5! It's actually more than that, but I won't go into details.

You might remember last week we announced the ground-breaking Zoho Office for SharePoint - which lets users store their documents in SharePoint while editing and collaborating on them with Zoho. A lot of customers, media and bloggers liked that idea. Well, this thing (that we're releasing before you leave for your 4th of July weekend) also integrates with another popular Microsoft product.

As an added bonus, here's what a screenshot of this new thing looks like:

Yeah, of course it's broken into big, 38-pixel mossaics so as to not give it away so easily. Gotta love that Photoshop.

But, if you squint your eyes and look at it for 5 minutes without blinking, the whole thing will appear in 3-D before your eyes - like those posters that were popular in the 80s (90s?). Oh, who a I kidding? I was never able to see one of those autostereograms - to this day I still think they are a cruel joke.

But I digressed. You might think that screenshot doesn't give out any info. Well, it does! Some of the things that people were guessing are not supported by this screenshot. Also... read carefully!

Rodrigo

We're launching something, sometime next week

Rodrigo Vaca — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:32:56 -0700

How's that for a launch announcement? You see, we're launching this thing next week. But we're not crazy. Bear with me for the next few lines. There are two philosophies when it comes to launching a product: one is you say well in advance what you are going to launch, and when - the Microsoft model. The other is to say absolutely nothing (nor product not date) until the day you launch it, the Apple model.

So we thought it'd be fun to do something in between those two extremes. We're telling you that next week we're launching something.

But we won't tell you what that is, nor we'll say specifically when. But we promise it will be before you leave for the 4th of July weekend.

We also promise you will really really like this new shiny thing. It will change the way you _________ (can't tell you that just yet, as it'd give it away). In fact, we challenge you to try out Zoho _________ for a month, and then you'll wonder how you worked without it before.

Rodrigo

New Zoho API Partner : Rabbit

Arvind — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:11:00 -0700

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.

Introducing Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint

Raju Vegesna — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:12:15 -0700

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.

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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.

Zoho Launch Timeline

Raju Vegesna — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:02:09 -0700

Someone recently asked me how many applications we released last year. Frankly, I had no clue. So I decided to dig the brief history a bit and create a time line of launches of various Zoho Apps. Some information could be missing, but I have the information captured for the most part.

Sep 05 - Zoho Writer Alpha
Oct 05 - Zoho Planner
Dec 05 - Zoho Writer Beta

Feb 06 - Zoho CRM Released (Product + Service)
Mar 06 - Zoho Creator
Apr 06 - Zoho Sheet
Jun 06 - Zoho Show
Jun 06 - Site24x7
Aug 06 - Zoho Projects
Oct 06 - Zoho Accounts (SSO)
Dec 06 - Plug-in for MS Office
Dec 06 - Zoho Wiki

Jan 07 - Zoho Notebook
Feb 07 - Zoho Chat
Mar 07 - Zoho Meeting
Jun 07 - Zoho launched on iPhone
Jul 07 - Zoho launched on Facebook
Aug 07 - Zoho Viewer
Sep 07 - Zoho Business
Oct 07 - Zoho Reports

Mar 08 - Zoho People
Mar 08 - Zoho Invoice
Apr 08 - Zoho CRM Enterprise
Aug 08 - Zoho Share
Sep 08 - Zoho Docs
Sep 08 - Zoho Marketplace
Oct 08 - Zoho Mail
Nov 08 - Zoho Status
Dec 08 - CloudSQL

Mar 09 - Writer 2.0
Apr 09 - Chat 2.0
Apr 09 - Zoho Mobile

These are just key product releases. This time line doesn't include plug-ins, integrations, utilities or hundreds of upgrades we did in the past 3 years.

Next week, we will have a new addition to this list. Anyone care to venture a guess on what the new launch will be?

Update: Adam Behringer from Bee Docs created a nice video for this timeline.

Stoneware Integrates Zoho

Raju Vegesna — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:11:14 -0700

Document management systems in many businesses are typically shared network drives. While some businesses have graduated to online document management systems like Zoho, a good percentage of them still use shared network folders or samba drives as their central document repositories, which sit behind the firewall. This means, their documents cannot be easily accessed outside the company network.

What if you need a system to make your existing document management system accessible outside your network, providing the advantages of an online document management system and not disturbing your current setup? This is where Stoneware comes in.

Stoneware provide web access to your internal infrastructure outside your network through your browser. Using their webNetwork application, your internal documents from your shared network drives can be accessed outside the firewall using just your browser.

Stoneware integrated our productivity apps - Zoho Writer, Sheet & Show - into their webNetwork application. With this integration Stoneware customers can view/edit their internal documents using just the browser and save them back to their internal network. After all, there is a reason they want to keep their data behind the firewall. So this integration does exactly that. It lets Stoneware users open their internal documents from existing shared drives using Zoho Apps and save them back to their internal network.

This remote saving capability has been available through our Remote APIs and is being used by our other partners like Box.net, Huddle etc.

We'd like to thank Stoneware for integrating Zoho. We certainly look forward for more interesting integrations using our APIs.

Analyze Data Using The New Quarterly & Weekly Options In Zoho Reports

Clarence — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:16:41 -0700

We posted about enhancements done to the pivot table recently in Zoho Reports. Here's more. Pivot tables (and charts, filters) now support quarterly and weekly intervals. This adds to yearly, monthly intervals before. This can be best explained in the sales context. What if you want to know how you did in 1Q 2009 Vs 4Q 2008 (previous quarter) or 1Q 2008 (previous year, same quarter)? Or what if you want to know how you did this week compared to last week or see the trends of the earlier weeks? It is easy now to have reports for such scenarios.

The screenshot above is for the Actual Values - Quarter & Year, sales in various quarters of each year. Seasonal/Cyclic - Quarter option differs from this as it will give the sum of Quarterly Sales summed across years.

Similarly, the Weekly option is available too. Sales figures of different regions for the various weeks in 2008 shown as a Pivot table.

The same quarter & week concepts are available in Charts and Summary Views.

You can also Filter the data using Quarter and Week timelines.

Try the new Quarterly & Weekly options in Zoho Reports and let us know your feedback in the comments.

Related Links

Money and Software-plus-Services

Rodrigo Vaca — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:23:53 -0700

And by "Money" I mean not the "Show me the money" kind of money, but the Microsoft Money product. You know, the product that Microsoft just announced it is whacking.

The obvious winner in this epic battle that goes several years back seems to be Intuit, with its Quicken line of services and products - so congratulations to the Intuit team - I hope that with their major competitor out they will nonetheless continue innovating and producing a good product. But without taking away from Intuit's effort, there's also a lot to be said for on-line services like Mint.com (a personal note: I've been a user for a while and I love it). Mint in particular has been quite successful as of late, adding users and generating a lot of buzz in the media. Of course, we should also note that Quicken also offers a 100%-web (and free) money management service, Quicken Online.

What is interesting here is that Microsoft Money was, without ever being officially called so, one of Microsoft's first products to follow their "Software plus Services" strategy. Software-plus-Services is the name that Microsoft uses to justify not fully moving into a SaaS model. And Microsoft Money could have really been the poster boy for software-plus-services: buy a piece of boxed software from your favorite electronics store, install it in your computer and complement/augment it with the kind of additional value/information that you can only get on-line.

So, why did Microsoft kill Money? Well, here's the official explanation:

With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed...

Now, let's see... my two banks (two of the biggest ones in the nation) provide some services, but nothing close to a full solution like Mint or Quicken. My brokerage doesn't provide that centralized view either. Neither does my credit card company. So that leaves websites like Mint.com and Quicken Online as probably the biggest factors that contributed to the demise of Microsoft Money.

Well, so there you have it. Software-plus-Services just yielded its first result.

Rodrigo

ps. Credit when it is due - kudos to Microsoft for working with Intuit to help Money customers easily migrate to Quicken.