Central Desktop Blog | Smarter Collaboration

When I heard that B2B journalist Paul Conley was writing another white paper for Central Desktop, my inner word nerd turned a few cartwheels. This guy is a great writer – with a fresh and interesting take on cloud collaboration. In this insightful and entertaining piece, Paul goes beyond the practical realities of online collaboration, [...]

Over the weekend, Gawker Media’s server was attacked by hackers, and their commenting database was compromised. 1.5 million users’ (myself included) login credentials were taken, and 200,000 of those passwords were released.

A question I get asked a lot from my clients is “When should I use a discussion instead of just creating an email?” My general rule is that if the subject matter of the discussion is related to a project or a department and will need to have more than 3 people in the loop – always make it a Central Desktop discussion. Examples would be planning department meetings or discussing deployment plans related to a client project. You may want to reference those discussions again.

Now that you have joined the ranks of forward thinking companies and have secured your Central Desktop account, you are probably wondering “Where do I start?”

Sure, you can dig right in and just start creating workspaces, adding members and uploading documents. Central Desktop is intuitive enough for anyone to just get moving. But then what about all of those important settings and features that do not make themselves quite so apparent? Where do you find those? How do you control the duration of email digests so they are useful to you and your team members? How do you make sure that the right people have the right permissions for the work they need to perform? How do you check the current status of all of your projects from one screen? The questions just keep on coming.

And that is why I want to introduce you and your fellow Central Desktop account members to some recently recorded webinars to get you started in the right direction.

Web capture forms – we’ve all filled one out some time or another, whether it was to join a mailing list, sign up for a newsletter, submit a complaint or to get more information about a product. These forms are commonly placed on websites to collect information from visitors, and are a great way to capture leads, product feedback and business contacts. Some popular use cases for web capture forms include help desks, pricing quotes, requisition forms, and mailing lists.

In today’s video tutorial, Alexandra Burton walks you through how to create a web capture form with a Central Desktop database. You can place the form onto any wiki page or online doc within Central Desktop, or directly onto your website. The best part? Anyone can do it – little to no HTML knowledge is required!

In my several years as a Central Desktop Administrator, I’ve created my fair share of workspaces. No matter what the workspace, I always test to make sure every aspect of the workspace behaves in exactly the manner we expect. Along the way, I’ve developed a bit of a ‘toolkit’ for creating and testing workspaces. This toolkit greatly speeds up my efficiency and ability to roll out a new custom workspace without breaking a sweat.

The Tools:

Email aliases

Your workspace is going to need users, and your users will need email addresses. I’ve found that Gmail offers a very easy solution for managing multiple email addresses at once. Here’s the secret: You can add “+<anything>” to your existing Gmail address and Gmail will still deliver it to you. So, alanbushisawesome+test1@gmail.com will land in my regular Gmail inbox. Same for alanbushisawesome+test2@gmail.com, alanbushisawesome+test3@gmail.com and so on. Bonus points to Google for their super simple filters; Just create a filter based on the “to” address, and you’ll instantly see which of your test accounts the email was sent to.

File and Folder Creation Utilities

If your new workspace will need a files and discussions section, you will, of course, want to make sure your folders are arranged in an appropriate order. Here are a few utilities I’ve found helpful.

What now seems like a very long time ago, I blogged about a tool I use to create a large amount of folders based on a text file. This bulk folder creation utility has created an unknown amount of folders for me; it is extremely useful.

You will most likely also want files available to upload to your file repository. One of the best and easiest places to find a large stash of MS Office files is the Microsoft Office Template page. From there you can download hundreds of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files of various shapes and sizes, perfect for testing. Plus, you might find something you can use with the Central Desktop for Office Tool.

Intranets are the best way to foster employee communication and provide access to valuable company resources, whether it’s across a small business or a large corporation. But let’s be honest – many an intranet end up as a stale abyss that we only visit when interested in the next company holiday.

How do you keep your intranet fresh, so your employees continue to check back regularly for new announcements and resources? By making your intranet a living and interactive environment, with constantly refreshed and updated parts. One great way I’ve seen customers spruce up their intranet is with an image gallery from the latest company outing, conference or lunch-and-learn. This is not only a great way to add some flavor, but a great way to create engagement and a sense of community among your employees.

The easiest way to display your photo gallery on your intranet is to add an application block to your intranet’s homepage. 

All it takes is 5 easy steps: 

1.) Upload Photos into the Workspace within their own Folder

2.) Edit the Workspace Homepage

3.)  Select “Insert More” and select the “Folders and Documents” Application Block