Thoughts by Your Virtual Ally

Echosign

As a virtual worker I typically never meet my clients, even at the conception of our relationship, so the process of getting contracts signed when we do start working together usually requires that I sign the contract, scan it and email to my clients, who sign it and send it back. The other option to this is to use fax. Not too long of a process, but often requires printing, scanning and emailing. A 3-step process on both sides.

Echosign is a way to make this process much easier, faster, and for those of us wishing to be as green as possible, greener by deleting the printing process.

With Echosign, you can use;

• e-signatures to keep the entire process online (you can use various sign-in methods as your e-signature as well as Facebook and LinkedIn).
• Do it the old fashioned way with printing, signing and faxing.
• Track all signed contracts in your account.
• Integrate in your Google Apps account (see my blog post about this last month).
• Integrate with other tools like Salesforce, and there is an API which allows you to modify in other systems.

You can try Echosign with a free account. It has limitations but does give you a good idea of how it will work for you.

Google Apps Mail

Google has continuously been famed for having great email. And yes like everyone else I have a gmail email account. However, I had never used it for business because I love domain based email addresses for my professional face – that is just my thing!!! And then I found out about Google Apps when my client decided to change our domain based email addresses to this system. Google Apps  are a great way for you to retain your domain based email address, i.e. admin@company.com, but created in the Google interface. For those of you who love gmail this is a super fantastic win-win situation, but be aware a personal gmail address is free and this isn’t. The cost is $50 per mailbox per annum, but as my client and I were moving from a Microsft Exchange Server account this still represented a saving.

Now we get to use the full gamet of google apps via our domain name. Our email page is mail.company.com, and the same is for access to our google docs etc. If we use a range of Google Apps, then we can just have a homepage start.company.com which will list all the apps we are using.

Those famed gmail features are also available:

Labels – which allows you to automatically or manually label each email so that you can link appropriate emails to either clients or particular projects.

Filters – which allow you to automatically reply, delete, archive (move to folder) and various other actions that help to manage the inbox extremely well.

Shared calendar – so that I can schedule, setup and manage events, and meetings for my client Priority mail management – Choose which emails are a priority and gmail will keep them at the top of your inbox at all times for quick review – I love this!!!

Mobile browser – this is my absolute favourite, I just love how well it works on my mobile (iPhone). Nearly as good as using it in a regular browser.

As well as an essential Exchange feature:

Email delegation – so that I can view, and answer my clients emails.

Spam management – postini services which are absolutely excellent.

These are my favourite gmail tools, but there are so many so have a look at what is available: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about_whatsnew.html

Please let me be transparent, and before somebody asks, I am not saying that gmail is my favourite email service. It does not work how I like in Outlook and I REALLY like Outlook, but it does has some sweet tools, and works extremely well as a browser based email, which means it is cross-platform – v. useful

Let’s Mikogo

I recently came across a great screen sharing tool recommended by my colleagues at AssistU. It is so simple and easy to use that I am not sure that I will have enough to talk about here. Simply put, Mikogo is simple to use. It is extremely reliable, and it is FREE. And of course it sits in my realm of special services, because it is also cross-platform. So both PC and MAC uses, as you know, of which I am both, can easily use this software.

Once you have downloaded, and installed the software and set up your user name (email address) and password you are ready to rock in roll.

Here is the entire process:

• Click on the Mikogo logo in your toolbar
• Choose “Start Session”
• And then either provide the information to allow users to login, or simple click "Email Session Information", so that your email client will immediately open, and you can add the email addresses to provide the login information and link.

Although your users need to also download and install the Mikogo software, they do not need to do this before the session. Once they click on the session link, the download and install process is fairly quick so that it does not delay the desktop sharing process too much.

And what do we as VAs need to use screen sharing for? Well, for me, it does make it easy to be able to:

• Make quick, final edits to documents while my clients are watching, so that we can brainstorm the changes and review the effect together, or
• Share screens with clients to approve actions taken or show a process
• Teach a process to handover projects to new VAs, or clients’ subcontractors

Desktop sharing is such a useful, fast and simple process with Mikogo, and having the software icon in the toolbar that can be used on-demand feels absolutely indulgent, – which is just a great addition to my working life.

Dropbox - file sharing, synchronising and backup

I have been using a wonderful tool for the past few years called Dropbox. Dropbox is a file sharing, synchronising and backup tool.

Why is it so perfect for me? Well it fits my requirements for 3 main reasons:

1. There is an application and it is also web-based, allowing offline and online access
2. It is dual platform, so I am able to work from both my MAC laptop and my PC desktop
3. It works so simplistically that it functions without much assistance

Setup

To setup your Dropbox account you just need to go to http://www.getdropbox.com and click the Dropbox button at the bottom of the page. You are able to setup a fully-functioning 2GB free account with no time limitation, by just installing the application on your computer.

So it is an online backup of your files, but what makes it so special?

1.  Dropbox instantaneously synchronises whenever a file or folder is updated, added or deleted
2. You can install your Dropbox account on as many machines as you want and have access to the same files on all machines
3. You can share as many or as few Dropbox folders, with as many people as you wish
4. All your files and folders are secure.  
5. When you share a folder or file, the recipient can only see the folder or file that you have shared with them

Access

You can access your account online by going to the right-hand corner of the home page and enter your login details.

To access your Dropbox on your machine is simple. Either through your harddrive – in MAC just go to your home drive which is usually referenced by your name and you will see the Dropbox folder there or in PC just go to My Documents and the folder is called My Dropbox, or the next option is to click on the Dropbox icon that is on the top-right hand side of the MAC screen and bottom left-hand side (in the toolbar) of your Windows PC.

Sharing Files

One of the main reasons of accessing your online Dropbox account is when you want to send a share invite to a folder.  There is a sharing tab or you can just click on the dropdown arrow associated with the file and send a share invite from there.

To be able to send a share invite all that is required is the recipients’ email address. The recipient will get an invite via email and just need to click through to download the application and acknowledge that they want to accept the share invite. N.B. When accepting a share invite, Dropbox automatically sets up a free 2GB fully-functioning account for the recipient and then adds the share folder to this account, but the recipient now also has their own Dropbox account that is for their exclusive use and the share folder has been added to this account.

When viewing your account either in the online or offline version you can quickly see which files and folders are shared or not, as the share folders have a figurine (or several depending on the platform) and a folder that is not shared just looks like a normal folder.

Synchronisation

You will see that as soon as you add, edit or delete a new file or folder, the Dropbox icon will have a blue revolving circle in the corner to show that files are synchronising. Depending on the size of the file or folder the synchronisation happens instantly, but nonetheless you will be clear when this has finished because you will see a green tick at the bottom of the folder when complete.

 

Twitter Tips for the Small Business

You know I just love talking and learning new small business marketing techniques, and this past year it has nearly all been about social networking.  I have wrote several articles myself on the subject, after all regardless of how you think and feel about it, the knowledge is always really useful.

Well I came across this great free twitter tips ebook and just had to share the blog post (with ebook contained within) with you.  What a fantastic idea!  Ask the people who know – the tweeters – their best tips of how to use the tool.  What a fantastic idea!!

Don’t waste a moment, skip on over to this article and get your free twitter tips ebook.

Then come back here and let me know what you think about it.  Once I have read through I will add an addendum of my thoughts.