Creating a Project Workspace in Central Desktop

Creating a Project Workspace in Central Desktop is a great way to manage a team’s project, by centralizing important documents and collaborating with your team to get the job done in an efficient manner.  Having a Project Workspace reduces the clutter that is often found in the form of email attachments and users trying to navigate MS Outlook as a form of file management.  Below are steps to creating an effective Project Workspace in Central Desktop.

• In the Workspace Creation Wizard, you have two options to choose in creating a Project Workspace – ‘Project Workspace’ template or ‘A La Carte’ template

• Choosing the ‘A La Carte’ option allows for flexibility as one can cater to the specific needs to the project or the team

• Make sure you go through the below checklist of what the team may need to ensure the proper tabs and tools are in place to make your Project Workspace effective:

o    Does your team need…

1. A document repository to house important documents where they can collaborate and finalize the documents or share files (Files & Discussions tab)
2. An area for Milestones, Tasks Lists and Tasks for Project Management (Tasks tab and Milestones tab)
3. A Calendar to keep a general overview of all tasks and events for the team (Calendar tab)
4. Time tracking to record the amount of time team members spend on tasks (Time tab)

• Choose the appropriate tabs in the Workspace Creation Wizard to show in your new workspace

• You can now use the workspace to manage the project or team

For more information, follow the link What is a Central Desktop Workspace? or How to Get Out of Attachment Hell – Set up Project Workspaces. For help topics on workspaces follow the link Help Topics on Workspaces.

Custom Workspace Field Extensions

If you are on a Company, Community or Enterprise Plan – then you are probably already using the Project Resource Reports to capture and report on important information related to workspaces that you have marked as projects. For Example, if you use a Workspace for every client project you are working on and you have more than say 20 client projects at any given time, you can assign Start and End Dates, Risks, Comments, Priorities, Statuses, Owners and Beneficiares to line your projects up against each other, allocate resources and get a good overview of what is going on across your projects.

If you are on a Community or Enterprise Edition account, you can now capture more attributes on your workspace and report on them.   Instead of the standard fields we give you can now create and define your own custom fields (think things like: Business Unit, Accounting Code, Has Ecommerce Component, etc…). You can use Text, drop down menus, multiple choice options, field calculations – the possiblities almost seem endless.

To take advantage of this feature please go to your Company Setup (you must be a Company Admin) and click on Custom Fields.

Best Practices for Document Management

A shared envionment. It is a nice place to be. It can also be like a bad roommate situation if there are not best practices put into place. We all have ways that we manage our Outlook inbox or the C drive on our computers. Some people make sure the inbox is kept clear at all times, others utilize rules and folders and others let it pile up. Some people use folders, sub-folders and sub-folders of sub-folders of sub-folders religiously – others may just dump everything into their “My Documents” folder. Each of us uses what works for us, some things are very effective for some people while it would create a virtual nightmare for others.

We have all created best practices for what works for us.

Now imagine every inbox and every C drive in your office being combined at once. Imagine the chaos. It would be like “The Odd Couple” times ten!

This is what could happen in any kind of shared environment without some best practices put in place. Some of you already share computers with signifigant others and understand this in a low scale, low pressure non professional environment. You have both had to compromise on the best place to store the family photos, when to delete email etc. Or – you are in constant battle with each other – no fun and not very productive at all!

The good thing is – it is never too late to put best practices into play!! Here are some hints to keep your Files & Discussions tabs from giving you flash backs to the days of your roommates pizza box laying on top of your nicely organized homework.

Folders – Use folders as one way to organize your documents and files. This is a great way to keep your data in a structered and labeled format.

 Tagging – Use tag words to describe your documents and files. This is a great way to group your data. As an example, you might tag a Client Contract with words such as “contract”, “client ABC”, “PO#1122″ etc. You can then utilize the “Items by Tag” filter in Files and Documents, Tag Clouds and Tag Searches.

Items by Status – Use the Status option on all of your documents. This is a great way to not only isolate and group data by their specific status, but to also run your documents through any workflow you may have. Note that you can create your own custom status options.

Clean Up – Occasionally, go through and do a little clean up. Central Desktop really takes care of everything, but you may want to create Archive folders for last years documents to keep things more intuitive and organized.

Think of others – Remember this is a shared environment, add some “Best Practice” rules to the homepage of your workspace or your intranet so that everyone can agree on how the documents and files should be organized.

Hope that this helps keep everything running smoothly!

Discussions made Simple

Central Desktop Discussions are a feature that bridges the gap between using email and user forums.

As you know, email is a great way to communicate with people in your office or outside of your office, such as customers, clients and partners. It works much faster than snail mail and keeps a much better record of conversations than the phone or fax machines. Sometimes you want to pull in more than a few people into an email “thread” to discuss upcoming meeting plans, processes or a key account. Again, this is a great way to communicate, but some issues that you can run into are people getting left out the loop (when someone uses “reply” instead of “reply all”) or being unable to locate old email discussions that you want to reference again. If you are anything like me, you receive and respond to a lot of email everyday- and these can really start to build up after awhile if you like to save your correspondence to refer back to it.

User Forums are a great way to discuss topics within a web environment.  People can easily view information and discuss topics inside of various categories. Unlike Email the threads are easily referred back to and no one gets left out of the loop. The only problem is, people have to log in to them to take part in the discussed topics. This means replies can sometimes take a long time to be created because people may not remember to check in, or just not really have the time to do so.

So, as you can see here the gap that requires a bridge has a bunch of people looking for old emails or getting left out of the loop on one end and people trying to foster faster communication on the other end.

What if we went ahead and bridged that gap and gave you a tool that would allow you to take advantage of the best of both worlds? Let’s take a look at Central Desktop Discussions. This allows you to still have your discussions take place by email, just like you are used to doing – with the advantage of everything being logged into Central Desktop for easy searching and reference. This allows you to have your discussions assigned to a workspace or project, allows for greater transparency and makes sure that no one gets left out of the loop.

A question I get asked a lot is “When should I use a discussion instead of just creating an email?”. That is a great question. 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.  If the subject matter involves involves lunch plans or a notice that you are arriving late for a meeting – send it by regular email. Chances are you do not need to go back and look at what you chose for lunch last November 13th.

Alright – so now we know the benefits of using CD Discussions and we know when not to use CD Discussions. Now – let’s take a look at how EASY these are to use.

When you want to start a Discussion follow this path: Login > My Workspaces > Workspace > Files & Discussions > go to the folder that you would like to house the discussion in > Click “New Discussion” > Add the Subject > Add your text and any attachments using the WYSIWYG editor > and then choose who you want to have take part in the Discussion >  Click the “Start This Discussion” button and away it goes!

Each person that you chose to take part in the Discussion will receive an email of the Discussion. It is also now inside of Central Desktop. If you are already logged into Central Desktop you can always reply to the Discussion thread right inside of the workspace. However, most of us live inside of Outlook or other email client all of the time – for those of us – we can read and reply to the Discussion just by opening the email, clicking reply, adding the reply and clicking “Send”.   The reply will then be sent out to those taking part in the Discussion as well as logged in Central Desktop.

It is that easy! And once you dive in and start to use it and experiencing the benefits of being able to recall information quickly, have it tied to projects and not getting left out of the replies – you will look back at using standard email in the same way as we look at using the Telegraph or Fax Machine now.

Enjoy!

A Simple Overview of Project Management using Central Desktop

Trying to figure out the best way to create your projects in Central Desktop? As you know a workspace is an area inside of Central Desktop that you can use to manage a project (among many other things such as blogs, forums, intranets etc). We believe that the best way to manage projects within Central Desktop is to use the “Workspace = Project” layout.

Of course you can manage multiple projects within one workspace. However, using a Workspace to manage a single project has many benefits over managing multiple projects within a workspace. One of the first benefits you will realize is the depth of project management goes down an extra level and spreads out wider (allowing multiple milestones that can contain multiple task lists).

Instead of this scenario (Multiple project within a workspace)

Workspace Group = (examples: Departments, Clients, Intranets)
> Workspace(s) = Department
>> Milestone(s) = Project
>>> Task List(s) = Larger Project Goals
>>>> Tasks = Individual Deliver-ables

you would have (Workspace = Project):

Workspace Group(s) = (examples: Client Projects, Engineering Projects)
> Workspace(s) = Overall Project
>> Milestone(s) = Larger Project Goal or Deadline
>>> Task List(s) = Group of Individual Deliver-ables
>>>> Tasks = Individual Deliver-ables

This allows you to segment your projects into their own areas allowing you deeper granularity when it comes to membership and permissions. This means you do not have to worry about External Users such as Clients seeing each others projects and also keeps the noise level down for those that might really only be part of one or two projects. It will keep your project calendars less cluttered and allow more control over incoming information with Workspace Digest Emails and Recent Activity lists.

You will also experience more granularity with Usage, User, Task, Milestone, Time Tracking and Activity reporting since this can be done at the project level. This makes isolating information much easier than it would be if you were using a workspace to manage multiple projects. You will also be able to track project properties such as start/end dates, owner, primary resource, beneficiary, status, priority, risk and comments. On the Enterprise and Community Editions you can create your own custom project properties using Workspace Field Extensions.

You can also take advantage of Workspace Backups and Archiving of Workspaces (Projects) at a more granular level. And on the Enterprise or Community Edition accounts you can also take advantage of the Shared Folders option to keep yourself from having to upload the same documents into many different workspaces when using this method.

Using the Search Engine, Tagging, Status Filters and Document Filters will become much more targeted this way as well.

I hope this is useful information for those that are trying to decide which way they want to set up projects. Remember, your users will only see workspaces they belong to. So if you end up with 50, 100 or 200 workspaces because you have that many projects – if you use Workspace Groups, Member Groups and Custom Reports in the Project Reports area – this will be a breeze. (I will talk more about those areas in my next post.)

To review and give you an example of this in action:

The hierarchy works as such:

Central Desktop Account
> Workspace Group
>> Workspace (project)
>>> Milestone (larger project goals)
>>>> Task List (grouped deliverables)
>>>>> Tasks (individual deliverables)

a deeper layout would be as such:

Central Desktop Account
> Workspace Group 1 (example: Client Projects)
>> Workspace 1 (example: ABC Company Deployment)
>>> Milestone 1 (example: Phase 1 rollout)
>>>> Task List 1 (example: Post Sales Check Points)
>>>>> Task 1 (example: Review and Authorize Client Contract)
>>>>> Task 2 (example: Review and Authorize Client Scope of Work)
>>>> Task List 2 (example: Pre-Developement Check Points)
>>>>> Task 1 (example: Complete Needs Assessment Form)
>>>>> Task 2 (example: Review Needs Assessment Form)
>>>>> Task 3 (example: Complete Pre-Development Form)
>>>>> Task 4 (example: Review Pre-Development Form)
>>> Milestone 2 (example: Phase 2 Rollout)
>>>> Task List 1 (example: Post Development Check Points)
>>>>> Task 1 (example: Review and Authorize Needs Assessment Form)
>>>>> Task 2 (example: Review and Authorize Pre-Development Form)
>>>> Task List 2 (example: Development Check Points)
>>>>> Task 1 (example: Draft Development Plans)
>>>>> Task 2 (example: Review Development Plans)
>>>>> Task 3 (example: Create Roadmap)

etc. etc. Having as Many Milestones that contain as many Task Lists that contain as many Tasks as you require.

>> Workspace 2 (example: DEF Company Deployment)
>>>Milestone 1 (example: Phase 1 rollout)
>>>> Task List 1 (example: Post Sales Check Points)
>>>>> Task 1 (example: Review and Authorize Client Contract)
>>>>> Task 2 (example: Review and Authorize Client Scope of Work)
>>>> Task List 2 (example: Pre-Developement Check Points)
>>>>> Task 1 (example: Complete Needs Assessment Form)
>>>>> Task 2 (example: Review Needs Assessment Form)
>>>>> Task 3 (example: Complete Pre-Development Form)
>>>>> Task 4 (example: Review Pre-Development Form)
>>> Milestone 2 (example: Phase 2 Rollout)
>>>> Task List 1 (example: Post Development Check Points)
>>>>> Task 1 (example: Review and Authorize Needs Assessment Form)
>>>>> Task 2 (example: Review and Authorize Pre-Development Form)
>>>> Task List 2 (example: Development Check Points)
>>>>> Task 1 (example: Draft Development Plans)
>>>>> Task 2 (example: Review Development Plans)
>>>>> Task 3 (example: Create Roadmap)

etc. etc. Having as Many Milestones that contain as many Task Lists that contain as many Tasks as you require.

etc. Having as many Workspaces as you require or your account is set up for. Remember the the Enterprise Edition allows for an unlimited amount of workspaces.

How much security do you need?

As you are already aware, Central Desktop is a leader in the SaaS arena when it comes to security. Central Desktop partners with Alchemy Communications, Latisys Data Center, Akamai, and McAfee to provide its customers and partners with state-of-the-art perimeter, network, server, application and data security to ensure privacy and availability. McAfee runs a daily security test on Central Desktop – you can read the results here anytime: https://www.mcafeesecure.com/RatingVerify?ref=www.centraldesktop.com

Our Security Page gives you an overview of the Perimeter, Physical, Network, Server, Application and Data Security that Central Desktop offers. You can find more here: http://www.centraldesktop.com/security

If you are working within a company, organization or market that demands the best security available – I highly recommend considering the following features that come standard with the Enterprise and Community Edition of Central Desktop.

Advanced Password Security Settings

The Enterprise Edition adds an additional layer of Password Security by allowing the administrator to adjust a range of password options such as: enforcing a minimum password length, disabling the password save option, enabling password complexity and implementing password change frequency.

TLS Encryption and Trusted Email Domain Support

The TLS (Transport Layer Security) Encryption and Trusted Email Domain feature allows you to control access and send encrypted emails to trusted users. Email domains that are listed as Trusted Domains will receive a TLS encrypted email with all of the contents of the discussion, comment or documents available for the user to read. Email domains that are NOT listed as a Trusted Email Domain will only receive a generic email notification with a direct link to login to Central Desktop.

Trusted IP Addresses

The Trusted IP Address feature allows Administrators to restrict access to Central Desktop by IP Address or IP Range. Only listed IP addresses will be allowed access to Central Desktop. This is ideal for companies and organizations that need to restrict access to Central Desktop via a VPN or office location IP address. This feature can be configured at the Company level and at the individual User level.

Custom Terms of Service & Privacy Policy

The Custom Terms of Service & Privacy Policy feature allows Administrators to force Internal Members and External Members to agree to custom Terms of Service and Privacy Policy when they register with Central Desktop. This feature enables companies to comply with certain confidentiality or terms of use required under certain corporate policies or statutory requirements.

Single Sign-On Redirect

The Single Sign-On (SSO) Redirect features allows companies and organizations a secure way to create a Single Sign-On experience from Central Desktop to 3rd applications, so that users don’t have to login twice when clicking from Central Desktop to another application.

Using Central Desktop as an RSS Reader

One of our favorite features in Central Desktop is the built in RSS Reader functionality.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  A detailed description of RSS can be found here. What this means is that you can funnel all of your favorite blogs and blog searches into a tool called an RSS Reader. Websites and Blogs allow for feed information to be sent outward through “RSS Feeds”. When a blog or blog search updates, the new post is added to your RSS Reader. You can identify web content that allows for RSS Subscriptions or Feeds by looking for this symbol:  I look at it as if you are subscribing to a whole lot of different magazines, and they all get consolidated into one large magazine. One place to get all of your favorite content.  Now how can you as a Central Desktop user take advantage of the RSS Reader available in Central Desktop? And why would you want to share RSS subscriptions with other people in a workspace environment? Here are some ideas that we have seen used and use ourselves: Perhaps there are a few industry related blogs that you frequent and would like fellow coworkers or customers to view.  I subscribe to a few software related blogs that we like to share with others in our team. This keeps us all updated with new ideas and information without having to constantly send emails saying – “Hey, check this link out”. We also like to keep up on what people are saying about Central Desktop. So we have an RSS subscription that sends us updates anytime someone mentions “Central Desktop” in their blog or news story. Another use for RSS subscriptions is to keep up on your competition. Imagine seeing a blog post by someone complaining about your competitors service or offerings. Now go secure that business! Or find out what people like about your competition. Now you go do it better! Maybe someone out there is blogging about a problem that you and your business can solve. Contact them and solve it! Don’t waste time scouring the web and going from blog to blog, just read all updates in your RSS reader. 

Now, let us put this into action with Central Desktop. First, go to the Blog that you would like to subscribe to > Open another tab in your browser and login to your Central Desktop account > Go to a Wiki Page inside of a workspace, click on the “Edit This Page” button > This will direct you to the WYSIWYG editor >  Once in the editor use the “Insert Application Blocks” button and choose the option for “News Feeds & External Syndication Feeds” > You will be directed to a light box that you can enter the Feed URL into > Go to the tab that has the blog that you want to subscribe to  > Click on the RSS subscription link or button > Copy the URL > go back to the Central Desktop tab that you have open and paste the URL into proper field in the light box. (If you are required to enter a username and password you can do that here as well) > Click the “Add” button > you will now see a preview of the RSS Feed > Click on the “Insert RSS Feed Into Page” button > Click “Save” in the WYSIWYG editor > now marvel at the miracle of technology.  You can now go to the Wiki page and click into any new posts all through the day.  This allows for keyword searches against all blogs that are out there to read. Follow this path to get the RSS Feed URL that you can use in the sequence previously given. Go to Google Blog Search > In quotations search for your topic (Company Name, Competitor Name, Industry specific words etc) > Click the “Search Blogs” button > Now you can choose whether or not you would like to view the results by relevance or by date (I choose date so I always look at the most recent information as it comes in) > Click on the RSS link over in the left nav bar of the Google results page > Copy the URL in the address bar > This is what you will use when you are using the RSS Feed application block. Let us know how that works for you.

Control your incoming information from Central Desktop

You probably already know this, but Central Desktop is a great way to stay up to date.

You can get updates on everything from the status, addition, completion, deletion and editing of members, comments, tasks, documents, events and discussions by way of viewing recent activity, RSS Feeds, email, Email Digests, the CD sidebar, Outlook and SMS. Confused? Me too! And I typed it.

Let’s simplify everything, because if you are not receiving this information in a way that works for you – you are either receiving TOO MUCH information (noise) or NOT ENOUGH information (the void). Either one of these options does not help you increase productivity by either making you delete or ignore what could possibly be important information – or miss out on information because you never had the chance to see it.

Let’s take a look at the primary areas that can be controlled and set when it comes to how you receive information.

Primary Email: Make sure that the email address you have associated with your user account is the one that you want to use and want to receive information at. This allows you to receive notifications, discussions and other Central Desktop created items. To update your email address, follow this path: Login > Account > My Account .

CC Myself by Default on all Notifications: This will allow you to have an email CC’d to you whenever you notify users of a change in a document, an addition of a task, a comment etc. This would come in useful if you like to use email inbox folders or like to keep records. To set your default follow this path: Login > Account > My Account > Email & RSS Subscriptions > Check or Uncheck the box for “cc Myself by Default”.

Send SMS Reminder on Events: This option will allow you to receive a text message 10 minutes before the start of an Event. This would be useful if you attend a lot of meetings, or are away from your desk often and do not want to miss out on events. To set your default follow this path: Login > Account > My Account > Email & RSS Subscriptions > Check or Uncheck the box for “Send me a SMS/Text Discussions Reminder 10 minutes prior to all Upcoming Events” > Update.

Daily Reminders of Upcoming and Overdue Activities: This option will allow you to opt-in or opt-out of receiving a daily email that contains any upcoming and overdue activities that you are assigned to. This feature is useful for those that access email more often than they may login to Central Desktop. This is also useful if you are mobile and want to view your upcoming activities on your way to work through an email rather than waiting until you get to the office to login to Central Desktop. To set your default follow this path: Login > Account > My Account > Email & RSS Subscriptions > Check or Uncheck the box for “Send me a Daily Email Reminder of Upcoming and Overdue Activities” > Update.

Email Digests: Email Digests allow you to receive consolidated updates of recently added, completed and completed tasks, documents, comments etc. that have happened within a workspace during a certain period of time. You can set your Email Digest at the workspace level and can choose how often you would like to receive them. The increments that they can be received in are 2, 4, 8, 12 Hour, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or None at all. An example of how this works is as follows – you are set to receive an email digest every 4 hours in Workspace A. If nothing happens in workspace A, you will not receive an email digest. Once an activity happens, the clock starts. All other activities that happen within that workspace over the next 4 hours will be sent along with it in the Email Digest. This is a great feature to use so you can keep up to date on Workspaces that require your close attention, and essentially block from your view (or until you login) any workspaces that do not require your close attention. To choose your Email Digest settings, please follow this path: Login > Account > My Account > Email & RSS Subscriptions > Use the Drop Down Menus within the Email Digest Frequency column and choose the duration for each workspace.

RSS Feeds: This allows you to subscribe to either an RSS feed by Workspace or subscribe to an aggregate feed of some or all workspaces. Again, this is all depending on how much information you want. Think of this as an alternative to the Email Digests. This would be useful if you are really tied into an RSS reader in your email client, web browser or other source. For more information on RSS, please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS . You will also be able to use “Include activity in dashboard, email, RSS” column to include or exclude your own activities from the feed as well.

Dashboard: The Central Desktop Dashboard is a great way to stay up to date on everything that is going on in the workspaces that you are a member of. At the Dashboard homepage you will see a list of your Overdue and Upcoming activities such as Tasks, Events and Milestones. You will also see three tabs that allow you to view “All Activity”, “Activity by Workspace” and “Status Updates”. Let’s take a look at each of these.

All Recent Activity: This tab allows you to view a list of recent activity across your workspaces in chronological order. A nice thing to know about this tab is it functions using the same settings you would set using the “”Include activity in dashboard, email, RSS”" options listed above. You can choose which workspaces you include in the view and can exclude your activities from the view.

Recent Activity Grouped by Workspace: This option allows you to see the recent activity of each workspace that you belong to inside of sortable boxes. You can drag and drop these boxes into whatever order you like and can minimize or maximize these boxes as well.

Status Updates: This tab allows you to keep up on what other workspace members are currently working on. You can choose to view a list of Everyone or just the people that you are following.

iCal: Central Desktop Calendars can be subscribed to via iCal subscriptions. This feature will allow you to subscribe to your own as well as other member calendars and have Events and/or Milestones for you and any user you choose sent from Central Desktop to your iCal enabled/compliant calendar. Subscribing to your own calendar is useful if you are unable to use the Outlook Plugin (covered next). Subscribing to another members calendar allows you to view their availability inside of your own calendar. This is very useful if you schedule meetings regularly or need to keep track of other member’s availability. To subscribe to your own calendar by way of iCal follow this path: Login > My Calendar > Click on the “iCal Subscription” link and follow the prompts. To subscribe to another members calendar, navigate to their profile page > Click into their Calendar >  Click on the “iCal Subscription” link and follow the prompts.

Outlook Plug in: For those that live inside of Microsoft Outlook this feature is essential for survival. This plug in allows you to have your Events and Tasks synced between Central Desktop and Outlook. This allows you to maintain one point of data entry or access for creating/editing/deleting/completing Events and Tasks while allowing you and others to view in Central Desktop and/or Outlook.  To access and install the Outlook Plug in follow this path: Login > Help >  Tools.

So now that you know all of your options on how to receive information, and you know how you like or need to work – go implement your settings and defaults and either fill the void or reduce the noise! Make sure to share these tips with your other workspace members and help make everything more efficient.

Workspace Management in Central Desktop

It is time for us to return with a topic that we think is just as important as Storage and Member management inside of Central Desktop – Workspace Management!

As you know if you are on an Enterprise Edition account you have no ceiling on the amount of workspaces that you can create. You say that you have hundreds of projects that you would like to manage by using one workspace for each individual project? No problem. You are covered.

But how about those of you that have not upgraded to the Enterprise Edition yet or are planning on staying with a Team or Company plan? As you are aware – each of those plans have a limit on the amount of active workspaces you can have open at a time. Team Plan Free allows 2 workspaces, Team Plan 1 allows 3, Team Plan 2 allows 10 and the Company Plan allows up to 25. Sometimes this fits right into how you are using Central Desktop or the amount of active projects you may be managing at a time. However, there are cases where you may have a need for more workspaces than your plan allows.

The easiest solution is of course to upgrade to the Enterprise Edition of Central Desktop. But that is not what we are going to focus on here. We are going to focus on ways to manage your workspaces when you are planning on staying with your current plan.

The first area that I want to direct you to is called “Manage Workspaces”. You may recall that we looked at this area in the Storage Management blog. To access Manage Workspaces, please follow this path: Login > Account > Manage Workspaces. This will give you a complete list of all of the workspaces contained in your account as well as the creation date of the workspaces.

From here you will also be able to access the settings of each individual workspace by clicking into the Pencil icon that correlates with the workspace. Clicking into the settings of the workspace, you will be able to delete any unwanted workspaces by using the “Delete” button in the Administrative Actions area. This will not only clear the storage used by that workspace but also open up a new active workspace slot in your account. Please note that if you wish to retain any of the information in the workspace, you will want to perform a workspace back up before deleting.

A workspace back up is something that we always recommend doing before deleting a workspace – or if you would like to keep an offline copy of the contents contained in your workspaces for archival purposes or company policies. To perform a workspace backup, please follow this path: Login > Account > Manage Workspaces > Check the box or boxes that correlate with the workspace or workspaces that you would like to back up > click on the Perform Backup link > You will then be sent an email with a link to a zip file that contains the contents of your workspace or workspaces. We recommend doing one workspace at a time as it will roll up into one zip file. Once you have downloaded the zip file, you are now free to delete the workspace.

If you are on a Company, Community or Enterprise Edition account, you can use a function called “Archiving” for workspaces that represent projects that are complete or on hold. This would allow you to still access a workspace in Read Only mode and reactivate it at any time, while opening up another active workspace slot. This comes in very handy for not only opening up that extra workspace slot, but also to keep your account organized and noise free. The more intuitive and clutter free the environment, the more people will use it.

To archive a workspace follow either of these paths: 1. Login > Workspace > Settings > General Settings > Archive or 2. Login > Account > Manage Workspaces > Penicl Icon for the Workspace > Archive. To unarchive a workspace follow this path: Login > Account > Manage Workspaces > Click on the Pencial Icon for the Workspace > Unarchive. Easy as that! Now remember that Archived workspaces do not count against your active workspace allotment they will still count against your storage.

OK, now you have deleted what you can delete and archived what you can archive. Let’s say that you still need more workspaces, but are not wanting to upgrade. What else can you do?

Here is a trick that we have recommended time and time again to allow people to get more out of their Central Desktop workspaces. As you may know a workspace is an area inside of Central Desktop that you can use to manage a project or manage a department (among many other things!). The best way to utilize Central Desktop reporting and project management capabilities is to use a workspace to manage a project. This allows you to have the following hierarchy involved with your project and gives you the greatest amount of granularity:

Workspace = Overall Project
> Milestone(s) = Larger Project Goal or Deadline
>> Task List(s) = Group of Individual Deliver-ables
>>> Tasks = Individual Deliver-ables

This allows you to track project properties such as start/end dates, owner, primary resource, beneficiary, status, priority, risk and comments if you are on a Company Plan (you can create custom project properties on the Enterprise and Community Editions to allow you to track more information). It also allows you to get very granular on Task, Milestone and Time Tracking reporting.

An alternative workaround – although again, this does not give you the deep reporting you may require would leave you with a project management hierarchy is as follows:

Workspace = Department or Group of Projects
> Milestone(s) = Overall Project
>> Task List = Larger Project Goals or Deadlines or group of Deliver-ables
>>> Tasks = Individual Deliver-ables

You would then utilize Files and Discussions to create Folders that represent the Milestones that you have created. This would allow you to store any associated documents in a structured format that makes sense with your individual projects.

The only drawbacks would be the lack of deep project reporting through project properties and workspace permissions/membership. Workspace permissions and membership would only be an issue if you wish to have your users eyes on only the projects they should have their eyes on. If this is not an issue with the nature of your projects – then you are good to go!

We hope that these tips help! Remember – Back Up, Delete and Archive. Then – experiment with how you use your workspaces.

Member Management Tips for Central Desktop

One of the issues that Central Desktop users can run into is how to manage members or users in their account. What is the difference between an internal and an external user? How can members be grouped? How can you see who has been logging in and who hasn’t? It seems there is a LOT to think about. So – let me break it all down for you here. These tips should help you make the most of your current plan with Central Desktop.

Internal vs. External

Let’s go ahead and take a look at the difference between Internal and External Members. Internal Members are generally people within your company. External Members are generally customers, clients, partners, vendors or someone outside of your company that you want to collaborate with.

Internal and External Members can have Read, Edit, Add, Delete, List Admin and Admin rights at the workspace level.

Internal Members appear on your Company Roster, can be added to User Groups, can act as a Billing/Company Admin, can host Web Meetings (if subscribed to a Web Meeting Plan), can create Workspaces and can view items marked as Internal Use Only.

External Members do not appear on your Company Roster, cannot be added to User Groups, cannot act as a Billing/Company Admin, cannot host Web Meetings (if subscribed to a Web Meeting Plan), cannot create Workspaces and cannot view items marked as Internal Use Only.

Items that can be marked as Internal Use Only are: Folders, Task Lists, Milestones, Databases, Events and Custom Tabs.

Member Groups

Now, let’s look at Member Groups. Member groups are a way to organize internal members for easier administration. By classifying internal members into logical clusters (departments, teams, workgroups, divisions, etc…) administrators can then apply access and permissions for each group rather than each member. Note: If unique permissions are necessary, any member added to a workspace as part of a group can also be added individually, overriding the group’s permissions. To create and manage member groups, follow this path: Login > Account > Company Setup > Groups.

Active / Inactive Members

The ability to have active and inactive members within your Central Desktop account is a fairly new feature. I think this comes in very handy if you have users that may or may not use the system often and you want to avoid having to upgrade to a higher plan to accommodate the amount of users that you require. This is also helpful in situations when employees are temporary, contracted, or on vacation. To mark a member Active or Inactive, go to Account > Company Setup > Internal Members > Check the box to the far-right of the member’s name, then select Mark User(s) Active/Inactive from the Menu above. The status of each member is listed in the Status column.

Inactive members do not count against the number of Internal Members allowed by your Company, Community or Enterprise Edition plan.

I hope these tips will help you manage your members more efficiently.