Archive for the ‘Product Announcements’ Category

OfficeDrop Integrates with FreshBooks

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

We are very excited to announce that OfficeDrop has integrated with FreshBooks by creating our very own online document management FreshBooks add-on! FreshBooks has compiled a sizeable list of add-ons and we are honored to lend our services to make their online billing service even more helpful. This integration merges the accessibility of your OfficeDrop documents with the convenience of FreshBooks online invoicing. With the OfficeDrop add-on you are able to append a link to the notes section of any FreshBooks document which allows recipients to view and download any selected group of documents in your OfficeDrop account. All of your documents are just one click away from Freshbooks for you and your clients.

For example, with the OfficeDrop integration, a FreshBooks user could attach a projected project timeline and scope of work to a FreshBooks estimate she sends to a prospective client. Her client can easily click on the OfficeDrop link embedded in the Freshbooks estimate and view the timeline and the contract - and the client can full text search within the contract and download it as a PDF.

Freshbooks users will also be able to attach entire folders from OfficeDrop to Freshbooks items. With OfficeDrop’s search feature Freshbooks users and clients will be able to search all the documents to find the specific item. OfficeDrop’s snippit views make it easy to find specific information in files or preview things like purchased photographs or artwork.

Some other great things possible with this integration include the ability to attach:

  • Scanned paper or emailed receipts to invoices
  • Project timelines to an estimate
  • Contracts to an estimate
  • Photos or artwork to invoices or clients
  • Word documents to time entries
  • Or even entire folders of documents and files to all sorts of Freshbooks stuff!

To get started go here: http://www.officedrop.com/freshbooks-document-management/

See how it works for yourself in the following tutorial videos we produced covering the integration:

Linking OfficeDrop documents to a FreshBooks invoice:

By linking OfficeDrop folders and documents to an invoice, clients can easily access, download and search any relevant documents.

First you will need an existing FreshBooks invoice or other document that you would like to link with OfficeDrop. Once this is done, log into your OfficeDrop account and locate the folder you would like linked to the FreshBooks form.

To do so, click the small triangle to the left of the folder to bring up the folder actions menu. From there, move down to the options listed under “Link to FreshBooks.” Select the document type that applies (Invoice in the video use case) and you will be shown a list of the designated FreshBooks documents you have created. Then select the document(s) you would like to link the folder to and decide whether this will be a private (recipient will need your username and password to view) or public link (anyone with the link can view). We recommend public link if you are sharing the document or folder with a client. Finally, you can either click “Append to Existing Notes” to add to notes already on the FreshBooks document, or “Replace Existing Notes” to replace them. The link to the shared files will appear in the notes section of the Freshbooks item; this is why you have to choose how to put it into the notes. The system will alert you of the link and the only step left is to return to FreshBooks and send the document to your client, complete with a secure link to the designated OfficeDrop documents.

Setting Up Integration

Step 1: Enabling FreshBooks API

FreshBooks API must first be enabled to start linking OfficeDrop documents.

To do this, log into your FreshBooks account and click “My Account.” From there, click the tab labeled “FreshBooks API.” The last step is to check the “Enable API” button, and you’re ready for the second step.

Step 2: Authorizing OfficeDrop for FreshBooks Integration

The second step in is to authorize your OfficeDrop account to interact with FreshBooks.

First, log into your OfficeDrop account and from the home screen select “tools.” On the resulting screen, there will be a menu on the left with a link to “Add-ons.” Click the Add-ons link, and from there move below the Evernote add-on to the space reserved for FreshBooks. Here you will have to enter your unique FreshBooks URL. You can find information on where to find this URL here. Click “Authorize OfficeDrop” and you will be asked to enter your FreshBooks username and password. Once finished, just click “Allow Access” and you will be able to start linking OfficeDrop documents to FreshBooks invoices, expenses and more.

We hope you utilize our new add-on and enjoy the ease and convenience of FreshBooks online billing with OfficeDrop document management.

Share Your Documents Online

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

OfficeDrop is happy to announce the release of another tutorial video, which demonstrates how to use your OfficeDrop account to share documents online with friends and co-workers. Sharing digital documents across your business is a great way to expedite projects and increase productivity.

Sharing documents online with OfficeDrop is simple and secure

Just select the document or folder you wish to share, and enter email addresses to which a secure link will be sent. You are always in control of your share documents with features like share duration, download access and other security features.

*See the tutorial video below for more in-depth descriptions and examples.

Recap: OfficeDrop Online Document Management - Sharing Documents Online

In order to share a single document, move to the document’s options under the document snippet and click the ‘More’ button.

From the dropdown menu, select ‘Share’ and you will be required to fill out sharing options.

Choose Security Options

  • First specify whether the share is public or private. Public shares can be accessed by anyone with the link you have sent, while a private share limits sharing to a specific email address.
  • Choose whether to grant printing or download access and whether annotations will be visible.
  • Designate emails of those you wish to share with.
  • Edit share duration to choose how long the document is shared.
  • Personalize the message sent to recipients.

Once finished, hit send and your document will be shared.

Note that under the document snippet, your current active share is shown, along with previous shares of that document.

You can view all of your shared documents from the shared items list located left of the interface, under the labels list.

Also note that OfficeDrop grants you the option of expiring a share so that you always have control of your share durations.

Sharing Folders Online

To share a folder, first click the folder you want to share and select ‘Share’ from the ‘Actions’ menu. You can also access the share button from an individual folder’s options by clicking the arrow to the left of a folder name.

Fill out the sharing form and your folder will be shared.

We hope this tutorial has been helpful. Please leave a comment or contact us with any questions or comments.

New Feature: Duplicate Notification

Friday, January 15th, 2010

We have found that during the uploading and scanning process, people sometimes submit multiple copies of the same document, or submit a document that has been scanned previously. Whether this is intentional or by accident, duplicates can clutter your document list, and take up excess storage. For this reason,  there is now a way to see when duplicates are submitted on your OfficeDrop online account.

The New Duplicates Tab

From your ‘Inbox’ tab, which shows current uploads, Users will now see a ‘Duplicates’ tab.  When the system senses an upload that already exists in storage, it stores it under the duplicates tab before it is processed. In the duplicates tab, the user is shown which documents are suspected to be duplicates, and which existing documents they are  a duplicate of. Documents are suspected duplicates if the user, name and size coincide. The user can then review both documents, and choose whether the suspected duplicate should be processed anyway, or deleted.

Just one of the many ways OfficeDrop keeps you organized. Feel free to leave any questions of comments below.

Document Scanning Made Easier With Labels

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Save Time With OfficeDrop: Label Your Documents

OfficeDrop is happy to announce the release of another tutorial video, which demonstrates how to use labels within your online OfficeDrop account. OfficeDrop provides you with many ways to keep your documents organized and easy to find online. The labels system lets you assign any number of label tags to each of your documents, allowing you to narrow your document view later. By labeling documents, you only have to see the documents relevant to what you need them for. *See the demo for more in-depth descriptions and examples.

At OfficeDrop, we want you to be able to work with your documents easily and effectively once you have scanned them. Organization tools like labels are there so that our customers can get the most out of document scanning by saving time, and boosting productivity. After all, what good is scanning a document if you can’t find it when you need it?

See the video below for a complete walkthrough.

Recap: OfficeDrop Online Document Management - Using Labels

To navigate labels and narrow search results, click the check box of each label to limit the list view to documents containing that label name. Checking multiple label boxes will further refine your view, while  un-checking labels will broaden the list view to documents without those label names. See the ‘displaying” tab at the top of the list to see which labels you are viewing.

To apply a label to a single document, click the ‘apply label‘ button under the document’s snippet. From here you can either choose from existing labels, or create a new one.

To apply a label to multiple documents, check all the documents you wish to apply the label to, and use the ‘apply label‘ button located at the top of the list. You can also choose existing labels or create new labels from this menu.

To delete a label, click the ‘x‘ that appears after that label name. Deleting a label won’t delete any documents, but one click will delete the label without a prompt, so be careful.

We hope this tutorial has been helpful. Please leave a comment or contact us with any questions or comments.

A Few Touchups for the New Year

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Over the past month or so, we have introduced a few “touch-ups”  to the OfficeDrop Application. These are by no-means ground breaking features, but more along the lines of “usability enhancements” and “I can’t believe it wasn’t already there”.

Here are a few of the noteworthy ones:

Context-Menus for Folders and Labels

Folders Menu Screenshot

Folder context menu screenshot

Labels Menu Screenshot

label-context-menu2

Now you have a “right-click” for each individual folder and label. Just click the arrow to the left of the folder or label name and you are given a list of options specific to that classification.

Drag and Drop Feature

You can now Drag and Drop documents to both folders or labels. To do this, just click and drag document snippets to either a folder or label in the folder or label menu. Dragging to a folder will move that document from any folder it was in previously, to the new folder. Dragging to a label will simply add that label to the list of already applied labels.

New Online Document Management Feature

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Uploading your documents directly to a folder

To simplify your organizational process, OfficeDrop has introduced a new feature that allows you to upload documents directly to folders. This is especially helpful if you have a large number of documents to upload, and don’t want to spend time assigning documents to folders one by one. Uploading documents directly to folders which are already in use eliminates the need to search through document snippets in your OfficeDrop account and you can preemptively apply labels as well.

To upload a document directly to a folder:

  1. From your home screen, click the arrow directly to the left of the folder name in the Folder menu box.
  2. From the drop-down menu, select “Upload Files.” This will prompt a menu box.
  3. Assign any labels you would like applied on the left side of the menu.
  4. Click “Upload Files,” and select the document(s) you wish to upload.
  5. Upload as many documents as you wish.
  6. When you are finished, click “Close.”

Processing will begin immediately and your documents will finish processing under your Inbox tab, as usual. Once they have finished processing, your documents will appear in the designated folder.

The Simplest Document Management and Scanning Service Just Became Easier to Find

Monday, September 28th, 2009

We are very excited to announce that OfficeDrop’s award-winning document management service is now available through the Intuit App Center. The Intuit App Center is powered by Intuit Inc. Through the Intuit App Center, small businesses will be able to find tested and proven third-party software applications. For a solution that was especially built with small businesses in mind, we are incredibly excited to be associated with one of the most trusted brands for small businesses.

What makes this partnership especially cool is that, OfficeDrop now integrates with Quickbooks data through the Intuit Data Services (IDS) API. For starters, when you share documents or folders from OfficeDrop, we automatically lookup the email addresses of your Customers and Vendors from Quickbooks, to make the sharing easier. Here is a screenshot that illustrates this.

Share using Quickbooks

Share using Quickbooks

If you are a QuickBooks user who is new to OfficeDrop, you can watch this 2 minute video to know what makes OfficeDrop the preferred document management and document scanning service for small businesses.

Pixily system availability on Saturday AM

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

Early Saturday morning, we became aware of a DNS (Domain Name Server) misconfiguration issue, with our hosting provider, whereby requests to www.pixily.com were incorrectly sent to a parked domain, rather than to our servers. Because of this issue, users may not have been able to access the OfficeDrop website or the online application. Our servers were and are all healthy and running, and your documents, as always, are secure.

The issue has been resolved as of 10:30 AM EDT. However, given that the issue has to do with domain name resolution, it could be a few to several hours before the change is propagated to servers across the internet. So, depending on your Internet Service Provider, you may still be facing the issue. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to expedite the process. If you did have an issue accessing your account this morning, please restart your browser before trying again. My apologies for the inconvenience.

I would like to reiterate that this error was caused due to a configuration issue at the hosting provider. All your documents and your information are, as always, secure. We are following up with our hosting provider to ensure that this doesn’t happen again in the future. Please rest assured that we continue to work hard to provide secure anytime, anywhere access to your information.

Remember Everything, including paper, with Pixily and Evernote

Monday, May 18th, 2009

What if you could get all your documents (paper and digital) scanned and be readily accessible, in your desktop or on the road. That’d be cool, isn’t it? What if you don’t have to do the scanning yourself? Even better, right? Who said that you can’t eat your cake and have it too?

OfficeDrop’s users already enjoy the convenience of having all their documents available in one central location, and access it using a web browser. Now, you can also have those documents available right at your desktop, thanks to Evernote.

About Evernote

Evernote, in their own words, helps you to Remember Everything. You can capture and access information using whatever device or platform you find most convenient. Everything you put into Evernote is always synchronized across all of your devices.

Exporting your scanned, uploaded and emailed documents from OfficeDrop to Evernote automatically synchronizes those documents to the Evernote desktop client (available for both Windows and Mac) and to your iPhone. Like other documents in Evernote, the contents are made searchable.

So, why is this cool?

Here are a few examples of how OfficeDrop and Evernote can help you:

  • Access scanned documents on your desktop: Stuck in the airport, without an Internet connection? Need to look up that contract? Need access to last month’s invoices? No Problem. Use the Evernote desktop client to view documents scanned at OfficeDrop, right in your desktop. Impress your client with all the information in your fingertips.
  • Access scanned documents on your iPhone: Have your recipe Collection at OfficeDrop? Need to look up the ingredients at the grocery store? Use your iPhone, get all the ingredients, save an additional trip. Guests love your brownies and you score brownie points with your spouse.
  • Microsoft Document Formats now searchable in Evernote: Wish you could search the contents of your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations in Evernote? No problem. Upload them to OfficeDrop and Send to Evernote. You can then search from the web, on your phone or right from your desktop. Talk about Ubiquitous Capture.
  • Handwritten documents: Your class notes digitized at OfficeDrop? Handwritten documents (manuscripts, class notes etc,.) can be sent from OfficeDrop to Evernote, and thanks to Evernote’s handwriting recognition technology, can be searched.

So, what are you waiting for? Put your memory on steroids. Legally! Sign up now for Evernote and OfficeDrop and follow instructions here to get setup . And tell us how it helps YOU remember everything, including paper.

Introducing Pixily Annotations: Virtual Sticky notes on paper documents

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

At OfficeDrop we try to retain all the ease and convenience of paper while eliminating the clutter. The snippet view came out of this type of thinking and based on our analyses of how people try to find information by shuffling through a stack of  paper. Today we are happy to announce another goodie that emulates how we currently use paper: the ability to annotate.

You can now add “sticky note” style annotations to any portion of a page, from within the page view of that document. Click on Add Annotation, Drag and drop the region of the page where you would like to add the annotation and type away. In addition to moving and deleting the from the page, you can also hide them all. Try that with sticky notes!

Here is a real-life example of annotations at work. I had to call customer service of our vendors, to dispute an over-billed amount. While I was on hold with the service rep, I logged in to my OfficeDrop account, looked up my account info, gave her all the necessary details, and when she gave me back a confirmation code for the refund, I could make a note of it right there in the document.

Annotations at work

Love it? Want to see more? Tell us and we’ll make it happen.

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