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click.to to OfficeDrop

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

OfficeDrop and click.to are excited to announce the newest OfficeDrop API integration – click.to to OfficeDrop!

With click.to, you’ll be able to CTRL+C (⌘+C on a Mac) any file on your desktop and send it directly into OfficeDrop’s cloud filing system. It’s super easy, really fast and a great new workflow for the power OfficeDrop users.

Get click.to to OfficeDrop for free by clicking the following link:

click.to OfficeDrop Video

Here is how the integration works:

Select any file and press CTRL+C (⌘+C on a Mac). The OfficeDrop logo will pop up; simply select it and the file is stored directly in the cloud. Users don’t have to fumble with multiple open windows, dragging and dropping, or leaving their current screen.

Special for OfficeDrop Users

OfficeDrop is the first click.to partner to have folder integration. This means that a user can choose an OfficeDrop cloud folder to upload into at the time of clicking! We are really happy that click.to made us the first to have this integration, and we know it’s important since our customers are very aggressive folder users.

There is a little set up required at first to get click.to to choose a folder. First you’ll have to type in the name of the folder that you want to upload into. If that folder already exists click.to will put the document directly into it; otherwise click.to will create the folder for you and put the file into it. We know this is a little bit of an effort the first time you try to pick a folder, but we appreciate the development effort that the click.to team put into creating the folder integration specifically for OfficeDrop. They intend to refine the folder selection UI in the future.

Setting up click.to to OfficeDrop

Here is a quick video that helps you set up the click.to/OfficeDrop integration.

Learn more about the click.to OfficeDrop integration here.

Posted in Benefits, cloud computing, Digital Office, Evernote Document Management, Freshbooks Document Management, Google Docs Paper Management, Home Office, OfficeDrop, partnerships, Product, Product Announcements, Product Features, Product Updates | No Comments »

The Cloud Makes All Services Frenemies

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

An important business philosophy that we have here at OfficeDrop is the concept of “Frenemies” – we will work with other services that would historically have been considered competition if it makes sense for our customers. It means that we value our customers’ workflow and actively look to integrate our cloud filing system with other online, cloud and SaaS services that our customers are using. Our customers are small businesses who want to move to a “digital office” and away from having their different work processes silo’ed into particular, proprietary applications.

What’s a Frenemy (or Frienemy, depending on how you spell it)?

We believe that the cloud has changed the way software will be used. Old, desktop software that wrote special, unique and proprietary files and that trapped your data are out. Remember when a file could only be opened by the program that created it? Well, in the cloud all the smart providers have open APIs, which means your data can now be pushed (securely, of course!) from one application to another – making it easier for you to get your work done. This means that our service may have to work with other online storage companies, or companies that have overlapping features. Should we be competing with these companies and avoid integrating with them?

No.

We can only survive if our clients WANT to use our service. They can get their data out at any time, so we need to offer the best paper-focused, searchable storage service we can – and let customers use other best in class services in conjunction with ours – like our FreshBooks document management integration. We’ve got an open API, and if someone who might be close in features wants to connect with our service they are very much able to create a tight integration with the OfficeDrop service.

OfficeDrop Articles on the Frenemy Concept

Prasad wrote about how competing in the cloud is making companies frenemies in TechCrunch. Today he penned one on “Building a Business Around Frienemies” for FastCompany.

Frienemies

Posted in cloud computing, Customer Satisfaction, Digital Office, discussions, Document Management, Entrepreneurship, Freshbooks Document Management, Market Research, OfficeDrop, partnerships, Press coverage, Product Features, Small Business | No Comments »

New and Improved OfficeDrop Help

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

OfficeDrop Help Gets a Makeover!

We’ve upgraded our help section software and are now using a product by Zendesk. You can find the new and improved OfficeDrop help at http://support.officedrop.com/home.

We are in the process of transitioning over all of our links (like the links to help you find when logged into OfficeDrop and on our main site’s pages).

officedrop-help

You’ll find the new help and support section easier to navigate, with topics arranged by:

OfficeDrop Digital Filing System help center – info on using OfficeDrop’s cloud based filing system, including:

ScanDrop Help

ScanDrop for Windows help – information on getting ScanDrop scanner software to work and upload paper to the cloud

ScanDrop Mac help – using ScanDrop for Mac to scan to the cloud from… your Mac!

ScanDrop Mac scanner configuration – setting up your Mac’s scanners to scan to the cloud using ScanDrop scanner software

The new help is even better because you can leave comments and questions for other users and for our support team on it!

Posted in Benefits, Customer Satisfaction, Digital Office, Evernote Document Management, Freshbooks Document Management, Google Docs Paper Management, OfficeDrop, Product Updates, scandrop | No Comments »

Cloud Dashboard

Monday, December 20th, 2010

OfficeDrop’s new dashboard, that gives our users a view into their cloud service, has so far been very well received! Here are a few of the highlights on how the OfficeDrop cloud dashboard works:

Accessing your cloud dashboard is easy. When you first log in you’ll see the dashboard automatically. You can also get to the dashboard at any time by clicking on the “dashboard” tab at the top of your account.

access-cloud-dashboard

Cloud dashboard overview. The dashboard provides several great views into the data that you have managed in your OfficeDrop account.

cloud-dashboard On the left, you will see your recent document processing activity, including the documents you have mailed to OfficeDrop to have scanned and the digital files that you have uploaded into the account.

In the center, you will have quick access to your documents, including your favorites. But remember, if you push the “documents” file tab at the top of the page you will go back to the traditional OfficeDrop login.

On the right, you can see the “addons” that you have linked with your account. Here is where you can see what documents you have pushed to Google Docs, Evernote, etc.

We hope that you like the new layout and dashboard! Please let us know your comments.

New from OfficeDrop

ScanDrop scanning software is OfficeDrop’s newest product and makes it easy to scan paper directly into popular cloud services. Scan to Google Docs, scan to Evernote, Scan to Dropbox, scan to OfficeDrop, soon scan to gmail, scan to local disk. ScanDrop offers powerful PDF tools like preview, rotate, page reorder, delete, crop and more. When scanning to the cloud, add metadata like tags, labels, notebooks, and folders/collections.

Posted in Benefits, cloud computing, Digital Office, Evernote Document Management, Freshbooks Document Management, Google Docs Paper Management, Product, Product Features | 1 Comment »

Document Sharing

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

OfficeDrop let’s you publicly share and embed documents on your web pages. As Sunir at FreshBooks recently pointed out, sharing documents via your website is becoming a critical application for a lot of businesses who use the web to distribute marketing PDFs, case studies, owners manuals, etc. Here are a few examples of how you can publicly share documents via the web with OfficeDrop

Sharing a Folder of Documents

With OfficeDrop, you can embed a link to a folder of documents stored in the OfficeDrop system. Once shared, people clicking on the link will see this:

Share Folders of Documents Online

And the link your website visitors click on can pretty much look like anything! Here is our example: shared folder link example.

What to learn more about sharing documents via links with OfficeDrop? Read about publicly sharing documents and folders with OfficeDrop. Of course, you can also share individual files via links with OfficeDrop.

Publicly Share Document via Embed

Need to post a document on a website, and want to make it visible to everyone who visits your page? Paste a little OfficeDrop code on the web page and here is what you get:

Learn more about embedding PDFs on your website here.

Posted in Benefits, Digital Office, Document Management, Freshbooks Document Management, Paperless, Product Features | 1 Comment »

OfficeDrop: All About the Cloud

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

At OfficeDrop, we’ve noticed more and more visitors coming to our site who’ve searched for the word “cloud.” But since the cloud has so many meanings to so many people, we’d thought we’d explain how we see small businesses taking advantage of the power of cloud computing to get more out of their paper and digital documents. Our understanding of how businesses use the cloud is rapidly evolving as we grow!

Connecting Cloud Services

More and more, we are seeing the benefits of the cloud in terms of connecting data to other services. Paper no longer has to be stuck in a silo’ed document management service, but can instead be accessed and shared with other software via a cloud filing cabinet. Data can be pushed from one place into another to take advantage of unique technologies – like Evernote’s amazing mobile clients or FreshBooks’ unique invoicing software. (OfficeDrop has recently released an API to allow other software developers to build off of our document scanning service and digital filing system/digital office.) Cloud content management makes this all possible.

Why Cloud Computing Is Great for Small Businesses

Cloud computing is great for small businesses for a number of reasons. As we mentioned in our blog post, “An Introduction to Cloud Computing for Small Business Owners:”

“Cloud computing is a platform for accessing and utilizing your businesses IT via the internet. This means nearly all of your IT resources – your servers, data storage, software/ programs – are hosted on the internet. It used to be that all of your computing would have to be done by your own servers, hardwired to your business. Now that the internet is around, your servers don’t have to be hardwired, and you don’t even need to have your own. Instead, you can rent server space from anywhere in the country from people like Amazon, who have already paid the overhead. Utilizing this system with SaaS, which does the same thing with software, one could theoretically run an entire business from various cyber cafés (if those still exist) without purchasing any of their own personal hardware or software at all.”

We Are Still Learning About the Cloud – From Our Customers!

OfficeDrop continues to learn more and more about how small business owners want to interact with the cloud (and their data!) When we first founded the company 3 years ago (wow, that’s a long time) we thought that web browsers would be the favorite way for users to access their data. But we were wrong. With the success of our downloadable apps, we’ve noticed something pretty amazing: Business owners like to use applications to visit the cloud, not browsers.

Beyond the Cloud Filing Cabinet and OfficeDrop’s Cloud App Strategy

As our cloud scanning software app, ScanDrop, continues to take off and since our iPad “paper to go” app was in the top 10 business ipad applications in itunes, we’ve realized that apps are a great way to interact with the cloud.

OfficeDrop Free App Downloads

And by “realized” we mean that our customers made it clear that they like apps!

Our CEO, Prasad, has been busy training some of our web developers in desktop programming, and our CTO, Vik, has dusted off his Objective-C skills for our Mac versions.

We will have a new way to interact with our cloud digital filing service from the desktop soon for Windows users. And Mac users will soon be able to scan to the cloud just like their PC friends.

We are also busy working on creating workflow specific desktop/cloud solutions for paper intensive industries, starting with accountants and bookkeepers. We just did the first demonstration of our new bookkeeping software, which was very well received, and hope to enroll beta users toward the end of the month. This software will connect the popular QuickBooks software with paper in a number of powerful ways: from the scanner, desktop and cloud. Let us know if you are interested in trying this service!

We are having a ton of fun here at OfficeDrop, helping business owners harness the power of cloud computing. Of course, we haven’t forgotten the importance of actually speaking with customers. Give us a call at 888-674-6493 if you ever want to chat about getting your paper and filing cabinets into the cloud!

Posted in Benefits, cloud computing, Digital Office, Document Management, Evernote Document Management, Freshbooks Document Management, iPad, Market Research, OfficeDrop, Organization, Paperless, Paperless Champions, partnerships, Product Updates, scandrop, Small Business | 2 Comments »

iPad Apps for Business We Can’t Wait to Start Using

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Many businesses use the iPhone in their business. With the release of the new iPad, we think there are many applications that if specialized for the iPad, could make Apple’s new tablet a valuable asset for small businesses. We are currently developing our own iPad application, which we think would be a great way to view, organize, and search your documents with the new iPad.

Though the iPhone is designed more like a consumer good than a business tool, the personality of the device didn’t hinder app developers from making a boatload of iPhone apps that make life around the office easier.

All the great business iPhone apps can be downloaded to the iPad, but the iPad will just be a big iPhone until app developers start taking those iPhone business apps and making versions specifically for the iPad. Here is a list of business-focused iPhone apps that we would like to see made into full blown iPad versions.

FreshBooks (Billing and Finance)

We love FreshBooks for our online billing and invoicing, so obviously we would love to see the FreshBooks application on the iPad. Paired with the slick multi-touch features of the iPad, online billing would never be easier or more fun.

Zoho CRM (Customer Relations)

We use Zoho CRM to keep track of all of our customers and leads. If you were taking your office to go with an iPad, you would want to keeps tabs of all of your customers, and react quickly to any questions or problems. Thought the Zoho team is just working on an iPhone app currently, we would really like to see that functionality ported to an iPad-specific application.

iWork & Keynote (Production)

The Apple equivalent of Microsoft Office, iWork will allow you to word process, make spreadsheets, and put together striking presentation with Keynote (Powerpoint for Mac). This application will be made to fully utilize the multi-touch features of the iPad, and will also be compatible with Microsoft-created documents.

WordPress (Blogging)

As you can see, we like to keep our company blog active and up-to-date. The WordPress iPhone app lets us manage our blog from anywhere, and an iPad app would make blogging on the go even easier. Benefits would include the large display and full touch screen keyboard for added convenience.

Chartbeat (Analytics)

What better way to watch over your site’s analytics than on the rich graphical display of the iPad. With the chartbeat iPhone app you access your Google analytics account, and get real-time alerts on stats like average page views, uniques, and sources to see when you’re site is getting hit, and when you’re falling behind.

Those are the business apps we’d like to see on the iPad. iWork and Keynote are already available, and we hope that the iPhone apps mentioned roll out iPad equivalents.

Posted in Freshbooks Document Management, Home Office, Marketing, Product Announcements | 4 Comments »

OfficeDrop in Web Worker Daily’s 10 Apps You Can’t Do Without

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Web Worker Daily mentioned 10 apps that are the best solutions for critical tasks in 2010. OfficeDrop was mentioned as an easy way to add functionality to to the online invoicing solution FreshBooks. Check out the article and see which applications like OfficeDrop and FreshBooks can help you manage your online business!

Posted in Benefits, Freshbooks Document Management, Press coverage | No Comments »

Find OfficeDrop in the FreshBooks Addons Page

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

You can now find OfficeDrop in FreshBook‘s addons page under the category “document sharing!” Check our our FreshBook’s document sharing profile and let us know what you think of the integration. As Web Worker Daily says, “Now tying specific files to your invoices can be a cinch with OfficeDrop.”

Posted in Freshbooks Document Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

WebWorkerDaily Spreads the OfficeDrop Word

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

OfficeDrop and our FreshBooks integration was recently written up in an article featured on WebWorkerDaily which can be seen here.

As we noted in a previous blog post, OfficeDrop can now be integrated with FreshBooks with the OfficeDrop-FreshBooks app. We are very excited about helping people with their online billing, and others are starting to take note of the convenience this integration provides.

For example, we recently caught the eye of WebWorkerDaily, a resource site which is part of the popular GigaOM network and provides tips, news, and guides for people in web-focused careers.

We were fortunate enough to be featured on WebWorkerDaily in a post by the talented Aliza Sherman, who explained the notable features of both OfficeDrop and the FreshBooks integration. We especially liked her real-world examples that noted the benefits of a graphic designer attaching images right to an invoice, or a freelance writer sharing drafts with clients so that they can see progress right from the bill.

Since WebWorkerDaily is a great resource for the digital workforce, we are proud to have our very own article to join the ranks of pieces geared toward promoting productivity and making online careers easier.

Thank you to Aliza and WebWorkerDaily for spreading the word about OfficeDrop and our new FreshBooks integration!

Posted in Benefits, Freshbooks Document Management, partnerships, Press coverage, Product Features | No Comments »