You’ve always got Options

You may have noticed the Options button on items in your Activity feed. We put them there to help you move items around and it can prove to be a handy little time saver.

On a message or file item, the Options Dropbox has 6 functions. On other items there may be fewer than these. The options are context sensitive.

1. EDIT

Select EDIT if you wish to edit a message. So if you made a spelling mistake or simply wish to change what you posted, this can prove handy.

2. MOVE / COPY

This Option allows you to move the post, or copy it to a different Topic. When selected a popup shows your Topics and you just choose and click.

3.  DELETE

If you wish to remove an item select this and the item is deleted from your Activity Feed. Only the item creator has the ability to delete. Once gone it’s gone forever so use this carefully.

4.   EMAIL

With the Email Option you can email your selected item. When selected, your compose Email screen opens. The body of text from your message is copied to your email text box. Select a contact in the TO line, add a SUBJECT and click the Send button.

5.   ADD TO CAL

You may want to save a message to your CORUS Calendar. Click the button and the 2nd screen to appear allows you to add the item into your Calendar at the times and date you have assigned.

6.  MAKE TO DO

This Option allows you to Create a To Do item. The first screen offers you the Option to add text, select your group members you wish the item to be assigned to. You also the opportunity to include a Due Date on this screen, a Time Track allocated hours. The Topic option at the top of this screen allows you to move or change this assigned duty across your Topics.

A host of Options. Only 2 clicks of a button !

Thanks to the Egyptians the practice of storing and stuffing paper in walls and draws has continued for centuries.

But now, what was once a filing cabinet full of fat folders of paper documents is a collection of folders invisibly stored on a file server.

As every business owner knows your valuable documents and records need to be in order. So, you’ve come to the right place! CORUS was designed to help and organise your digital world.

Every business self organises into groups. There will be a Marketing or Sales or groups working on a particular project. In the teaching environment, it is classes.

With CORUS, creating groups is easy. Use groups to add people quickly to a topic.

Here’s how

Open Contacts on CORUS (top middle of the front page).

In the left panel click Create a Group.

Under Group heading, a text box will open. Name the group, e.g. “Marketing” and hit enter on your keyboard.

A popup window will appear where you select contact easily by clicking Add to Group.

Close when finished.

You can always come back and edit by hovering over the Group name and selecting +.

Now you can add the Group to a topic with one click.

A client asked the other day if he could embed video into a message on CORUS. He had some training material which needed to be shared with his clients.

Most video web sites like YouTube and others offer an embedding function. This code uses the Flash plug in on your browser to display the video.

Here’s how

Let say you have found video on Youtube and you want to copy it into a CORUS message.

You’ll find an <Embed> button at the bottom right of the video. Click this button then copy the code.

Now go to your CORUS page.

Open the CORUS Message box. On the top right of the icons is the embedding button.

Click here and an Embed Flash Video screen will appear. Paste the embedding code here and click the Embed button. You’ll see a big Flash icon and you can then add your message explaining the video.

Then choose to Email or Just Post.

A lot of people use Outlook or iCal for their calendar

We are often asked if calendar items in CORUS can be viewed in their Outlook(PC) or iCal(Mac) calendars.

Yes.

1. Open your CORUS Calendar

2. Click Publish Calendar

A dialog box will open in your Outlook or iCal calendar which will have a URL of your CORUS calendar.

3. Click the Subscribe button. You can then adjust some settings and you are done.

3 easy steps.

We have just rolled out a new feature for your convenience.

You can now either login to CORUS with your username and password OR via Facebook.

Certain websites like Facebook, Google and Twitter, have in recent times enabled third party websites, eg. CORUS to let their users login using their Facebook, Google or Twitter credentials.

You might ask why?

Everyone knows that remembering your login credentials for every site, is a huge pain. This method helps you streamline the login process and is offered purely for your convenience.

Here’s how we do this on CORUS

On the CORUS login page, select the Login with Facebook button. A window will open which asks Facebook for permissions to connect to CORUS. There will be either a login page or a dialog box that asks you to grant that permission.

Finally, for this one time only, you will need to login to your CORUS account.

To recap, the above is a once off setup.

Next time you login to CORUS, you can just click the Login with Facebook button and you will be automatically logged in to your CORUS account.

If you wish to disable this functionality first you go to Settings/Applications

Then click Remove Connection

We implemented this for your convenience and hope you like it!

Documents are the lifeblood of every business

From time to time I am invited by a friend or colleague to help them with technology advice.

My first question is, show me how you currently “do stuff”.

Every single time the first thing they show me is their file server. Often quoting, “This is the heart of our business, where all our documents are stored.”

We have a general discussion about their work flow and practices. They cut to the chase and ask the question that they really wanted, which usually flows along these lines. “Lucy has a Macbook and Tracy our secretary is on a PC. How can they share calendars?” Or, “James just got a new iPhone, how does he access his emails from outside the office?” Another often raised issue, “how can I access files on the server when I’m out of the office without ringing Tracy and asking her to email them to me?”

Like a quilt, the technology landscape is built with various pieces. Most businesses approach technology services in a piecemeal fashion and struggle putting them together, and making them work. Stitching in a new technology thread increases this difficulty level.

It wasn’t always this way. Before technology ran the office, everything was stored on paper, in a folder. Usually the custody of this was assigned to somebody senior in the office who knew where everything was.

In the 80′s and 90′s Macs and PCs infiltrated the workplace. Files initially were stored on floppy disks which were neatly catalogued by the custodian. Networking enabled file servers. Then the work was stored there.

But around 1994, that Internet came onto the scene and the number of files generated, shared and stored went through the roof. So did the complexity.

Today when you share a file, you have to check the file size to see if you can email it. If it’s too big for an email you spend time navigating through the nested folder/structure of your file server, placing it there then sending an email notifying your colleague of the changes you made.

Not much has changed. Until now.

Here’s how you manage Files on CORUS.

On your homepage, in your Toolbox you see Files. As you hover over it you will see the ADD button.

Select your required file, then the Topic, then add a message and hit the Upload & Email button.

Your team members will then be notified by an email and on their CORUS homepage that a new file has been shared.

You can upload multiple files at once and not have to worry about their file size.

Yes, we have tag clouds

Tags were made popular a few years back on some of the early Web 2.0 sites. These sites, Flickr and Delicious, enabled people to tag photos and bookmarks so one could quickly build a collection of tagged items.The page displaying the tags became known as a tag cloud. Visually, the larger the text, the more items associated with that tag. This method of sharing tags was coined folksonomy.

On CORUS, you can tag any item. Then, view on the one page, you can view your tag cloud.

For example, if you receive a message which requires a follow up but don’t have the time to address it immediately. Under the item, if you click Tag This then type in “follow up”, the item will be tagged.

Using tags on CORUS is another easy way of organising your work flow.

Also remember, these tags are shared with the other members on your CORUS topic. So, think of a tag as a generic label that is easily understood by your team.

Here are some example tags that we use.

Complex communications made simple.

Tags make it easy to get organised and stay on top of things.