Categories are used to

1) list/group similar items (contacts/companies/blogs) so you find them quickly (e.g. hot leads)

2) apply consistent tags to describe items (e.g. customer/vendor/prospect etc)

I don’t think you need any categories for this example.

You can create a task and both you and the external person will see it (you could also create an event which has additional fields useful for meetings).  The task will automatically appear in your Calendar and Next actions list.

Thanks for your reply. (I did edit my comment, but it is still similar).

You are saying categories are good filter (I might say vital). Where is the company category used for filtering?

You are correct regarding the event option. It does give more options to relate with other users.

Would I be correct in thinking that when a user creates “a task” in a blog this should only ever be thought of as a task relating to the blog itself, not a task assigned to invited individuals.

We will be adding more filter options for companies soon (similar to contacts now e.g. filter by categories).

Tip:

“Data sharing rules” creates workgroups so you can manage what items users can access.  Most small teams have only one workgroup i.e. giving an option for an item to be simply be shared or private.

Categories help you group data for reports.  A way of classifying similar items, to help with processes / dividing of work / further defining relationship etc.  You can create different categories for Contacts/Companies/Blogs e.g. you may not want to use the same category for a contact as you would for a blog e.g. “prospect” vs “regional campaign” etc.

When I import contacts in Solve360, would you recommend I stick with the people who will share Solve360 rather than bringing in all my email contacts?

I would recommend you import all contacts, then you have flexibility to use the records for your own purposes (e.g. track history, correspondence, look-up information).  Solve360 works as a CRM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management) and a Project Management system.

Thanks.
I previously exported my contacts from Solve360 (old) and brought them into Solve360 (new), but it was rather bloated.

I have redone this export and am going to populate the fields in excel as i find it much quicker to do this and bring these back into Solve360. I think editing fields in excel is good, especially when putting in phone numbers from my mobile.

From reading the wiki I can see that there are a number of permutations to the CRM model. Do you think that “Sales Force Automation (SFA)“ is the closest fit between Solve360 and the various CRM permutations mentioned?

The wiki also mentioned the following key remarks regarding successful implementation.

“Data from other systems can be transferred to CRM systems using appropriate interfaces.“
“Data cleaning is a major issue.“
“Many of these “failures” are also related to data quality and availability.“
My interpretation:—-CRM adheres to the olde fashioned, crap in, crap out rule—- .

At present my inputs and communication tools are Solve360 (old), Google Calendar and Excel Spreadsheets. I hope to move towards linking colleagues into a Solve360 workflow once I get: a clearer strategy, categorized data and limited duplication of data input.

I am from a publishing/project management background, and apart from designing adverts for CRM conferences, my hands-on knowledge is limited to MIS systems. Therefore, I would find a “Solve360 tip of the week” helpful to my Solve360 training.

Generally you could view Solve360 as a “Operational CRM” or as a “Collaborative CRM”.  However, it is conceived differently than first generation CRM systems in that it focuses on actually helping manage the conversation / work with customers rather than just reporting on it.

We use the term CRM only because it’s an effective way for prospects and industry to quickly relate to this area of the system.  We could use similar jargon on the project management side of Solve360 too.  Ideally however we’d prefer to see Solve360 not adding to the CRM/PM noise, but instead just as a simple and useful utility on its own to improve communications with your team and customer to get work done.  It does so by relating all of the information you have about customers, with all the projects your team is managing for them, and provides simple lists to manage the flow of work.

A Solve360 “tip of the week” is an excellent idea.  There is definitely a lot we can share.  Thanks for ‘the tip’ and stay tuned…

Thanks, your description helps clarify the benefits of synchronizing my set of management tools and data asap. Once done then it should be possible for my collaboration to be managed through the Solve360 “sub-browser windows”.

For me the following implementations come to mind as urgent:
1)“iCal publish” my activities into my Google calendar. (I managed to link with iCal however, my Google Calendar FAILED when trying to extract the data from Solve360.)

2)Segmenting my Solve360 (old) contacts (I am working on this using Excel, honest governor!)

3)Moving more content and correspondence into Google Docs, (scary prospect, but worth it)

A BUG REGARDS THE Google PDF Docs. When I added a Google PDF document to my blog the WHOLE browser window becomes Google Docs. This froze me out of Solve360, and the only way to re-enter Solve360 was to log out of Google, and remove the Google PDF Doc link.
test with this file if you like:
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.4531b4f0-057a-4da9-bcdd-ffa11b8d7346&hl=en

I think this is because Google PDF Docs (current implementation) only allows users to share PDFs from within the Docs list.

I checked using your iCal feed to Google Calendar and it worked okay.  This is what I did:

In Solve360 Activity window, set the filter to Show Calendar Events for…, click data, Publish as iCal, copy the web address.

In Google Calendar, click Add (left side in other calendars), Add by URL, paste the web address from the previous step, click Add.  You should now see your Solve360 activity in the Google Calendar.

Regarding the document, can you try something - first login to your Google account, then with the same browser session login to Solve360 - does it still pop you back?

BTW I’ll be checking back periodically to make sure you hold your promise regarding data cleanup with Excel ;)

I am back home from work and using my mac mini, (Firefox 3) The iCal feed published successfully to the Google calendar without problem. Excellent;). I suspect the feed snagged at work because they have a Firewall and Firefox 2 (I followed the same process both times).

—Regards viewing Google PDF Doc in a Solve360 browser window

Upon clicking Google doc icon, the window opens. The moment the Google doc loads-up the browser switches from Solve360 to the Google PDF doc preview page. If I “Go back one page” (using the Firefox browser) I see the Solve360 login page, and after a couple of seconds am automatically logged back into Solve360.

Then Solve360 reloads its windows, including the Google Doc preview window.

**with my Google account logged in**. The “Solve360 browser window” again loads the Google PDF Doc, and again immediately trips to Google PDF doc preview page. If I return back to the Solve360 login page… the loop continues…

**To get out of this loop, I logged out my Google account** This time the window displays the Google docs login page. I then close the offending Solve360 window and removed the Google Doc link.

Thanks for the info.  It seems in some circumstances Google wants to take over the browser (become the parent) and we’ll need to figure out under what situation that occurs.

I think it would be useful to have the option available for “Solve360 browser windows” – that display linked websites, or google docs – to open as a new tab in the browser.

While I like being able to view these items within the Solve360 environment, it is not always advantageous. Especially on a 17” monitor.

Are there further developments planned regarding integrating Google docs into the Solve360 experience?

Because pdf files loaded in Google docs take over the browser you have changed how GDocs are previewed. This workaround solution means that all Google docs now open in new tabs, thus removing one of the great benefits of the Solve360 desktop – being able to see documents and blog at the same time.

Do you know if Google is planning to enable folders to be shared with other users in the near future?

It’s our strategy to reduce software integration issues for teams so we will continue to seek out improved techniques to inter-operate with Google Documents.  We see this as useful and important.

I don’t know if Google plans on folder sharing, but we’ve left them some room i.e. the concept is compatible with Solve360.

Would it be possible to have an index of all the web2.0 docs/web addresses I use in Solve360?

That way I could just scroll down the list and insert the activity details without having to repeatedly navigate back and forth with Google Docs, websites, etc.

Floydie - Mar 28, 2009 06:02am

Would it be possible to have an index of all the web2.0 docs/web addresses I use in Solve360?

That way I could just scroll down the list and insert the activity details without having to repeatedly navigate back and forth with Google Docs, websites, etc.

Can you walk us through an use-case example so we can follow along?

Floydie - do you mean using the same documents/links in multiple places? For instance, you have a Google Doc listed in one project blog, but would like to attach to another without navigating to the document in another window just to copy the link?

Chip – yes that is correct. This could also be links to web a photo library (e.g. Mac/ Picassa account)....