After 10 years of good service, the previous version just retired today as ContactOffice launched its new website. So long old chap, you did a good job. From now, users logging on http://www.contactoffice.com will be prompted the Advanced interface, now selected by default. The Advanced interface benefits from all the new features while the Classic interface doesn’t. In addition, the Classic interface is not maintained anymore and will disappear one day. So now, use the Advanced interface instead. If you can’t get rid of the classic interface, just check “classic interface” under the “ENTER” button on the login page. We look forward to your feedback on facebook, twitter or on our blog. CO

Using multiple email accounts at the same time Almost everybody has at least one private and one professional email address. When you use ContactOffice as default professional email address (ex: me@contactoffice.com), you can also consolidate your other private (and professional) email accounts in ContactOffice’s interface in order to have all your mails in one singe interface. This can be done either by downloading your external emailaccounts in Pop3 or viewing them through our IMAP client. In addition, for each email account created, ContactOffice allows to set up a different signature. Finally, ContactOffice will automatically select the correct email address used in any discussion when you reply to an email.

Contextual help for each function There are two user modes: “Beginner Mode” and “Expert Mode”. They can be defined in the general preferences. The “beginner mode” shows for certain functionnalities a question mark button with some extra information about this functionnality which is visilble through ‘mouse over’. This ‘Contextual help’ option can be activated or de-activated at any moment.

Writing emails, checking your calendar and uploading documents at the same time Sometimes you want to suggest a meeting when writing an email to someone and you don’t remember your available time slots. In addition, you might want to upload a document into your private or group storage space but you can’t because you are busy in the email tool. Tip: press “ctrl+t” and a new Tab will appear in your browser. Open your virtual office by typing its URL (ex: http://www.contactoffice.com). Because you are already logged in in the first tab, your account will open automatically in the second tab. There you will be able to open other tools: your calendar for example. Using such Tabs allow you to have several tools open at the same time within the same browser and will allow you to switch easily from one tool to the other one.

MARSEILLE, December 7, 2009 - Together with ContactOffice leader of collaborative applications on the French market, the University of Marseille 3 has developed a contingency plan that helps maintain a link between teaching faculty and students, even in cases of pandemic influenza A / H1N1. A first in the French academic world.

The University of Marseille 3 has more than 25,000 people including more than 22,000 students. “In case of closing the facility due to pandemic influenza, we wanted to have a platform that would bridge the distance between teacher and students,” said Didier Pin, the CIO of the university. Now, students take different courses depending on their orientation. It was therefore necessary to connect the database with a learning platform that provides all the tools necessary to communicate and share. ” This link between teacher and students is now a reality thanks to the ContactOffice collaboration suite. With the intersection between the login of each student and training codes, virtual groups for each course have been created. These automatically-made working groups between student-teacher is made in the virtual office ContactOffice. Through a connection to the ENT (Espace Numérique de Travail), students are directed to the proper groups related to their academic curriculum. In addition, some 1,800 university teachers can use the ContactOffice features to share information with their students. They can send e-mails and of course share materials or media files. This device is now operational since a month and includes an SMS gateway for sending urgent “textos” to specific user groups. “ContactOffice proves once again the strength of its collaborative suite,” says Patrick De Schutter, Managing Director. Our solution also shows its ability to communicate seamlessly with external systems.

ContactOffice recently launched its auto suggestion feature which is really helpful by suggesting email names that are similar to what you’re typing. A couple of keystrokes, an auto-complete suggestion, and you don’t have to type the entire email name every time. It is both simple and handy. The ContactOffice application recognizes any address in your private addressbook. If the written email address is not correct, it will be displayed in red. If it is correct, it will be displayed in blue. In the future, group email addresses and sent email addresses will also be recognized.

You can invite group members or external contacts (from your private addressbook or a group addressbook) to an existing event by selecting the “Participants” tab. This is the best method to collect RSVP’s (ie I will attend or not from participants). The meeting will automatically be displayed in the group members calendars. External contacts will get an e-mail with instructions and the event attached (.ics file). If you don’t need to manage RSVP’s, you can now select “Send by mail” in the event contextual menu and it will be sent as an iCalendar attachment (.ics file). The recipient will be able to import it into his favourite calendar software, which is probably ContactOffice! This new feature is available in the Advanced interface only.

Because a file is quite large or because some servers limit the size of incoming e-mails to a very low value, sometimes you just can’t e-mail a file to someone. In other cases, the recipient’s mailbox is almost full and won’t accept a large file… Instead of sending the Document in the e-mail itself, you can send it as an hyperlink by selecting “Document as hyperlink” from the “Attach” menu when you compose an e-mail. The recipient will have a few days to download it by clicking on the hyperlink and you will be notified when he does.

Alternatively, you can start in the Documents tool and select “Send as hyperlink” from a Document contexual menu (right click). This new feature is handy for large documents but you can use it with small ones as well. It is available for paying subscriptions in the Advanced interface.

If you’re a heavy user of ContactOffice in a professional purpose, you will be interested in the comment feature we just implemented in the Ajax version of our virtual office. For each item in your mailbox, you’re now able to write and save a personal note by clicking on the “comment” button” (cf. this screenshot).

You know the story: even though you’ve been able to find a wireless network (using your credit card or not), you can’t send e-mails from your e-mail software because of these annoying SMTP relay server settings, which you have to change each time you switch networks. Of course, you could connect to the ContactOffice Web interface and send your e-mails from the Messages tool. But we think that if you prefer third-party e-mail software (using POP3 or IMAP), you should be able to send your e-mails from everywhere. This is the reason why ContactOffice offers an authenticated SMTP relay server. Set it up once and for all with your usual login and password and you’re done. The authenticated SMTP relay server is available from the Regular subscription in the standard version. It is also available as an option in the customized version.

ContactOffice vision is to offer one central online storage place for all your personal data such as calendar, documents, contacts,… In line with cloud computing, we believe that there is an ever-increasing need to be able access one’s data from any computer or terminal (smartphone, PDA,…). People are on the move and have their data on different devices. That’s is why we have developped import and export modules for all our tools. We want our users to be able to as easily import their data from any tool as export them.
Our calendar for example can be accessed through different browsers, synchronised with outlook or PDA’s and smartphones. You can get notifications through SMS or RSS, you can access it via a calendar client in ICal on a personal URL, you can layer it with external calendars published in ICal and finally you can import or export it in iCal, vCal or a printable PDF file. Our contacts can be accessed through different browsers, synchronised with outlook or PDA’s and smartphones, imported from Outlook Express, Outlook 2000, Outlook 98, Outlook 97, vCard, LDIF (compatible with Netscape, Mozilla and Thunderbird), CSV. Finally you can export it to vCard for Outlook (Hey, they have their own vCard standard??? ;-) ), vCard (standard) and CSV (comma seperated value). Our documents tools is even more amazing. Not only can you access all the documents in ContactOffice from your browser. You can also be notified through mail or RSS. In addition our document server is also a WebDAV server, which means you can access the documents through your file manager as if they were documents stored on a local file server. You can then just drag and drop them from your hard disk to the ContactOffice server via your local filemanager. Our documents are now also an FTP server allowing you to access them through an FTP client. Finally we developped both a webdav and just released a CIFS / SMB client. Users can now access locally stored documents (on a local file server) through the browser interface of ContactOffice when they are on the move. For more in depth information on the Webdav or the CIFS / SMB protocol follow the links to wikipedia.
More about our attachment to standards and access modes in a following post.

ContactOffice has just released in beta an integration of the Zoho tools including Writer, Sheet and Show. They are Web-based tools and allow you to create, edit, and access your spreadsheets, docs and presentations files from anywhere without the need of having these applications installed on your pc. All documents edited by these tools remain stored in your environement. For traditional interface users, just click on ‘Actions’ near a document and then ‘Edit’. For the advanced interface users (aka beta interface), right click on a .doc, .xls or .ppt document and select ‘Edit with Zoho’. Note : this feature is only offered to paying subscribers. Enjoy.

Having problems with a shared document that is in a format that you cannot open. Or… are you on a machine that does not have the right software to open a specific document of yours? Well as from now you can use our .PDF converter in the documents tool. You just need to ‘click right’ on a document that you would like to open and choose the function ‘View as PDF’. Your document will be converted to an Acrobat (.pdf) file. The following formats are being supported: “doc”, “txt”, “rtf”, “ppt”, “xls”, “odt”, “sxw”, “ods”, “sxc”, “csv”, “odp”, “sxi” Attention: This function is available for paying subscriptions only and must be accessed through the new Ajax interface. Enjoy ;-)