Sharing Files With Customers

Over the past several years email has replaced paper mail and telephone calls as the primary method for communicating with customers. Email is fast and easy to use, but there are many drawbacks. The larger your organization, the more likely it is that your company has a serious problem with the time it takes to read and respond to emails. Many of your customers have the same problems.

An article in the August 2012 Macworld magazine by Joel Mathis suggests we Stop Using Email for Everything, and talks about some alternatives.

Let’s look at one area where email is not the best tool. Many companies associated with construction business want to exchange large files and have a place to share files with their customers. One software that I’ve been looking at seems to “have it all.”

ShareFile by Citrix really seems well thought out and easy for “mere mortals” to configure and use. Pricing begins at $30 per month, and each pricing level includes a 30-day free trial. I signed up to try out the most basic level, and found that it was not only easy to use, but I was happily surprised with the level of personal attention I got from the representative assigned to my account. My account rep went so far as to look up my company, download the logo, and customize my “site” with it – all without my having to ask.

The ShareFile website has “what you can do” videos customized to many industries – including construction. I strong suggest you check this video out when you have 7 minutes… it provides a good overview of the product as it might apply to a component manufacturer - or one of your customers.

Let’s say you want to set up a “space” for each of your customers you regularly do business with. In that space, you want to see individual folders for each project you are working on, and in those projects, all the files for that project. You want the customer to be able to download files, upload files, and you want to be notified anytime they do either. You want to be able to see all of your customers’ “spaces,” but you want them to only be able to see theirs. All of this is possible with ShareFile.

You want to be able to limit the number of times a file can be download? Set an “expiration date” after which a file can no longer be downloaded? That’s there too. All in all, it seems to be a very impressive and easy-to-use collection of tools for managing the files we share with our customers.

My Favorite Tool

Looking over the shoulder of my comrade Glenn Butler at a sales meeting last year, I noticed he was typing notes into a program I hadn’t seen before. I asked him about it, and he told me it was Microsoft OneNote, which comes as part of the MS Office Suite. Some software applications just immediately get your attention, and OneNote got mine. Now I use it every day.

At first, OneNote doesn’t seem very special. On the surface, it’s just a notebook for keeping track of, well, notes – like a three-ring binder. Like a binder, it can contain words or pictures. It can be divided into sections, subsections, and pages within either. OneNote is simple, but it does what it does very well.

Find What You Are Looking For

About two years ago the nature of my job changed and I found I was having more and more detailed conversations –the type of conversations where good note taking, or a perfect memory, are called for. Not blessed with the latter, taking detailed notes was clearly indicated. The problem was where to put the notes? I initially used the Google blogging tool Blogger, because I was able to create a document (blog) for each conversation, associate each document with one or many index words, and then find what I was looking for later by using the index words or using the text search tool. Blogger is stored on the Internet, so I didn’t worry about backups, and I could restrict it so only I could see it. It worked quite well.

When I found OneNote, I found it was better. First, it was on my computer, so I did not need to get on the Internet to use it. Second, it handled pictures and other graphics as easily as it handled text. Now my notes could include pictures of job site problems, screen dumps from software, or sketches. The reason both solutions work is the ability to search for what you want. When you have built up hundreds of pages of notes, no matter how brilliantly you organize them, locating the exact piece of information you want will at times prove frustrating. The solution is a simple search capability that allows you to type in some text and have the application find all instances of that text and display them for you. OneNote does this brilliantly, and is very fast. Not only can you flip through all the pages that have the text you searched for, but alternately, you can display a side-bar listing all of the documents that match the search sorted by date, document title, or section.

Text

A OneNote document is very different than a pure text document like an email or one created in Microsoft Word. In OneNote, you pick any location on the page, click, and start writing. Your page can be filled up with lots of little boxes of text – as many as you want. No need to insert a special “text box;” any text you type automatically goes in a box. From there, the text can be added, removed, combined - whatever. Boxes can be moved around the page or from one page to another. If all the text is removed, the box goes away… it does its own housekeeping. The usual tools to bold, change font size and color are available. The integrated MS Office spell checker shows misspellings.

Pictures

OneNote initially was released in 2003 after being developed for the tablet PC, perhaps explaining why OneNote feels more “free form” than other Office products. Although pictures of any kind can be pasted into a OneNote document, I use one technique more than other. To capture an image on the screen, I hold down the “windows” and “S” button at the same time, and watch the screen get kind of a “white fog” over it (that I can still see through.) I then use my mouse to draw a box around the image I want to capture; the image is automatically saved to the Windows clipboard. Now I click on the place in the OneNote document I want put it, select “Ctrl-V,” and there it is. The picture automatically goes in a box, and so it can easily be moved, resized or deleted. Did I mention it’s fast?

Stability

Final kudos go to the stability of OneNote. Word documents, especially long ones will eventually lock the application. Recovery is usually possible, but not without some tense moments. The OneNote format has been wonderfully stable for me. The pages are stores as a number of individual files and so it appears that even if a page or a section got messed up, the rest would be fine.

Untraveled Paths

There are several features I haven’t needed, but sound interesting. Audio files can be added just like graphics, and a document on the network can be worked on by more than one person at a time. As such, it could potentially be used as an office whiteboard.

If you have lots of ideas, notes, or information and could use help you keeping track of them all, OneNote may fit the bill. Works for me.