The MyOffice Blog

With the price of fuel going up and up more people are looking at the feasibility of working from home. Every day we get enquiries from users who don’t want to do the daily commute to the office. In some cases they are questioning the very need for an office!

We made the decision several years ago to move out of our expensive offices and ask all the staff to work from home. That decision probably saved us at least £50k a year and our employees were delighted that they didn’t have a daily commute. Of course, we had an ulterior motive …. we wanted to test the viability of working from home using the new collaborative software tool we were developing called MyOffice.

The reason MyOffice is so robust is probably down to the fact that we all use it every day, day in, day out. We figured that if it worked for us it would probably work for the vast majority of SME’s.

Like other small businesses we rely heavily on email … and the email client in MyOffice allows you to log on from any PC connected to the internet and do your emails. I can see all my sent and received emails no matter where I am in the world. When I’m abroad I tend to use the Web Browser version because it works from internet cafes, hotels, airport lounges etc. Back in the UK I have the Windows Desktop version of MyOffice installed on all the PCs that I regularly use … and when I’m on the move I use my Pocket PC (HTC TyTN).

Some users I talk to solve the problem of doing their email from different locations by dragging a laptop around with them wherever they go. That’s fine if you have other data that you need on your laptop … but if you only need emails, contacts, files and tasks then its a bit of a ‘heavy’ solution.

Then there’s the issue of backing up your data. Most users don’t do this and when they lose their PC or it crashes, the problems really start. If you use a product like MyOffice you get all your data backed up automatically at the server end.

So, to those people who are looking at the rising cost of fuel this morning and considering working from home I have one piece of advice … just do it … either a few days a week of full time like we do. You’ll never look back.

Yes, we all do it from time to time … forget our logons.

Personally I have so many logons to various things on the internet that I could use a logon administrator to help me. Applicants should have an exceptional memory and be prepared to work 24/7!

In common with a lot of other applications MyOffice has a ‘Remember logon’ feature that automatically logs you on every time you start MyOffice. Its easy to forget the logon when you haven’t used it for ages. Fortunately help is at hand …. your Admin user (usually the person who initially set up the account) has access to all the logons and passwords.

Any user with User Administrator capability can click on Tools > User Admin to see (and edit) the list of usernames and passwords.

So, if you find yourself needing to log on via the Web Browser version say from a hotel or airport lounge it’s always a good idea to check your logon details with your admin before leaving!

�

I’m often asked by new users ‘How does the sharing actually work?’ I had a user today who thought some kind of synchronisation took place between PCs. When I explained that all his data was held on our servers and users just accessed it in real time across the internet …. it all fell into place for him. He could see that when one user adds an appointment it goes straight to our servers and literally a millesecond later other users can see the appointment.

Technically this is called a client/server application. The client is the PC end and the server end is the cluster of MyOffice servers holding all your data. There’s another expression that you might see on our web site …. Internet Hosted Service. This simply means that we look after the system and the data for you. We host the service on our servers, not yours so you don’t have to make an huge technical investment.

So, MyOffice is a client/server application with lots of clients (users on PCs) accessing their data on the MyOffice servers.

Another concept that some users have difficulty with is the idea of being able to install MyOffice on as many PCs as they like. In today’s world where you move around between offices and sometimes work from home you want to be able to access your emails, contacts and appointments from more than one PC.  MyOffice lets you do this. You can log on from any PC with MyOffice installed and see the same up to date information. You could log on from home early in the morning and do some emails … then when you get to the office you can log on and see all your sent and received emails, including the ones you dealt with from home.

The default setting for sharing diaries, contacts, tasks etc is that every user can see everything … but you may not want some users to have access to certain diaries or contact groups. You may even want to restrict access to ‘read only’. You do this by specifying which users have access to which diaries, contact groups, task lists and so on.

It sounds like we’ve come full circle …. from explaining how sharing works to preventing it!

For more information on sharing see ‘What is MyOffice’ www.myoffice.net/whatis.aspx and ‘How it works’ www.myoffice.net/howitworks.aspx