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FREE: How to Save Gmail Emails to Amazon S3

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Today, we’re announcing our newest Chrome extension, Backup and Archive Emails to AWS S3.

We decided to create this for you because of these two very dominant business trends:

  1. We use Gmail for all business communications, and
  2. Many of us are freelancing, and are even starting small companies.
    **How is that relevant to you? Read below.

You Are Legally Required to Keep Email Archives

Did you know?

If your business ever gets sued, and you can’t produce an email that the court asks you for, you’re automatically found in contempt of court and more often than not, found guilty.

That’s why every company “in the know” backs up and archives their emails… because they’re legally required to keep a record of all their emails– and so are you.

Now, we can use cloud storage like Dropbox or G Suite, but one of the best winners in longer term archiving, has always been Amazon S3. Not only is it reliable, but it’s also offered at an unbeatable price.

That’s why we decided to let you save your emails in an easy, 1-click way:

With this Chrome extension, you’ll be able to:

  1. Save each email conversation to a separate PDF
  2. Merge all email conversations to one PDF
  3. Save only email attachments
  4. Setup a continuous backup to Amazon S3
  5. Setup a continuous backup for your team to Amazon S3.

… all from within Gmail itself.

It’s great for administrators, team managers, and independent contractors to keep a secure record of email communication.

Want to give it a shot? Here’s a short 1 minute video explaining how to do it:


Step 1.  Install “Backup and archive Gmail emails to Amazon S3”

Go to the Google Chrome web store and click on “Add to Chrome”.

It takes just one click to install this chrome extension in seconds, and you’ll be able to archive Gmail emails immediately.

Once you’ve installed the chrome extension, your Gmail will automatically refresh and reload.

Step 2. Choose the Gmail Emails You Want to Save

Unless you’re planning to save every email, you’ll want to narrow down your email selection.

You can type keywords in the search box, and then just choose from the following drop down menu:

 

Step 3. Choose How to Save Your Emails

Once you’ve selected the emails you want to save to Amazon S3, click on the “S3” button (shown below), and then how you prefer to save your emails. In this case, we’re choosing to save all emails conversations into one PDF.

Which method you choose depends on what you need to save. If you only care about attachments (and not the email body), choose the third option.

If you want to save invoices from a certain time frame, you might want them all in one file.

Step 4. Pick Your Preferred S3 Folder (Directly From Gmail)

Now that you’ve chosen how you want your emails saved, you can select where you want to archive and back them up.  You’ll be shown which folders you have in Amazon S3, as seen below:

Once you’ve chosen the folder you want, press “save.”

*Pro tip: Prepare an empty folder in S3 ahead of time so that you only have your Gmail emails in that folder. This extension doesn’t allow you to create a folder in Amazon S3, so doing it ahead of time is a good idea.

Step 5. Your Email Backup Was a Success!

When your emails are finished saving, you’ll receive an email, and you’ll be able to see all your emails in your Amazon S3 account:

And that’s all there is to it!

With Backup and Archive Gmail Emails to Amazon S3, you can save important emails from your Gmail at a moment’s notice. Or, you can set up a continuous email backup for yourself or your entire team.

*Pro tip: Need extra assistance? You can contact support here.

Saving Your Emails to AWS S3 is FREE!

Backup and Archive Gmail Emails to Amazon S3 is free, until you decide to do a continuous backup for yourself or for your entire team.

Give it a try and see how well it works:

New: Full Basecamp 3 Backup Support

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We’re proud to announce cloudHQ as the only company to fully support 37Signals’ newest project management platform, Basecamp 3, with an automated, real-time cloud backup.

 

cloudhq_basecamp_1_feature


 

 

Automatic Basecamp 3 Backup

Basecamp is used to organize your most important projects, and to go without backing it up is a huge deficit. With cloudHQ, you can now back it up in real-time to your cloud storage provider like: Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 or any of our supported cloud storage systems.

If you ever leave Basecamp, you’ll have a full record of every task, every document, and every conversation.

What You’ll Need

How to Set Up Your Basecamp 3 Backup in 3 Easy Steps

Setting up a backup for Basecamp 3 is easy. Just follow these steps:

  1. Add Basecamp 3 and authorize your account
  2. Select where you want to backup your Basecamp 3 (Google Drive, Amazon S3, Box…)
  3. Process your payment and your backup will start immediately.

What You Can Expect

    • You’ll have a real-time copy of Basecamp 3 in your cloud storage, and
    • Archive folders reflecting previous copies of Basecamp 3.

This is done so that you can retrieve and restore your Basecamp 3 information very quickly.

 

cloudhq_basecamp_2_new-bc3-option_annotated2


 

 

Backup Basecamp 3 Now
 

Automatically Save Gmail to Cloud Storage

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We’re pleased to announce a new advanced wizard for our Save Emails to Cloud Storage extensions.

The new wizard lets you automatically store PDF copies of your emails (plus any attachments) to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and other cloud storage services.

It also lets you create advanced rules for what emails to save (and which to skip). Options include:

  • From a sender
  • Subject title
  • Has attachment

Creating Rules to Automatically Save Your Emails

 

 

Here’s how to install and use our free “save to” Chrome extensions.

1. Install a Free “Save to” Chrome Extension

Visit our Chrome extensions page to see all our available extensions.

Choose the one designed to work with your preferred cloud service (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, etc.). Several popular ones are:

Each extension will let you easily save PDF copies of your email (including attachments) directly to your cloud storage account.

You can save emails with a single click from within your Gmail, or you can use the new wizard to set rules for what you’d like to save.

2. Click the “Save to” Button in Your Gmail

Once you’ve installed a “save to” extension, you’ll have a “Save to” button in your Gmail.

To save emails to cloud storage and access the new backup wizard, open a message in Gmail, then click the button:

 

 

 

 

cloudHQ_wizard_2_clickhere

 

 

When you do, you’ll be asked if you want to use the new wizard to set up rules for automatic backup of all or selected emails from your Gmail account:

 

 

 

 

Why Save Your Emails to Cloud Storage?

There are many reasons you might want to back up emails and attachments from your Gmail. For example:

  • To protect against accidental data loss
  • To protect against intentional destruction of data by disgruntled employees
  • For a convenient record of all communications with a client or an individual
  • For a legal record of communications
  • To organize business records such as receipts or invoices

Whatever your reason, the wizard will make it much easier to create and organize a complete record of your emails—stored and backed up safely in your cloud storage service of choice.

If you prefer to bypass installing any of the Chrome extensions listed in #1, here’s a direct link to save a copy of your Gmail emails:

 

Save A Copy of Your Emails Now
 

 

New: cloudHQ Now Free for Free Services!

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cloudHQ Pricing

 

 

 

We’re excited to announce: cloudHQ is now 100% free to use with free cloud applications.

If you use free accounts from any of the following services, you can now use cloudHQ for free:

  • Dropbox

  • Google Drive

  • Box

  • Evernote

  • OneDrive

  • Amazon S3

  • Any other free account from a cloud service supported by cloudHQ

Bottom line: If you use free cloud apps, cloudHQ is free too.

cloudHQ is great for:

  1. Backing up your files to a cloud storage app of your choice.

  2. Gmail label sharing for:

    a) Sharing a chunk of emails with any email address, and

    b) Filtering incoming emails so that teams can process them together like: support@company.com, sales, projects, HR.

  3. Increasing your productivity with any of our free Gmail Chrome extensions 

  4. Automated email processing to establish where emails automatically get backed up (coming out on Thursday!)

 

cloudHQ’s Premium, Business, and Enterprise Plans

If you use paid or business cloud applications, we have 3 affordable cloudHQ plans for you to choose from.

All paid plans include:

  • Unlimited sync

  • Gmail label sharing

  • Cross-platform sharing

  • Premium cloud services

 

cloudHQ Premium

cloudHQ’s premium plan is for individual users and costs $9.90 a month.

It includes an unlimited sync for all supported cloud apps, including both free and paid accounts.

 

cloudHQ’s Business plan

cloudHQ’s business plan is designed for small businesses with multiple users and costs $25/mo for up to 5 users.

It includes an unlimited sync for all supported cloud apps, including both free and paid accounts. It also includes:

  • Admin integration to set up backup rules across the entire organization

  • Phone and email support

  • Additional users for $2.50/mo/user

 

cloudHQ Enterprise: Custom Setup, Pricing, and Volume Discounts

cloudHQ’s enterprise plan is designed for large organizations with many users.

It includes everything in the business plan, but with a custom setup, custom pricing, and volume discounts.

 

Start Today with a Free Plan

Get started today with our free plan, or try a paid service plan with a 15 day free trial.

 

Get Started
 

 

Demystifying Salesforce

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Salesforce is the service that every business needs to use. It’s essential for them because of how efficiently it helps manage the process from lead management to sales to customer retention, which includes accurate reporting that keeps your finger on the pulse of your company’s growth at all times. There are other CRMs that are available, but with the sheer amount of apps that are available on the Salesforce app exchange, you’d be hard pressed not to find whatever you’re looking for in a robust CRM. Still, Salesforce in and of itself, is perfectly sufficient for any organization.

Consider how many cloud platforms your company uses. The average company uses at least 7 platforms (on the books), but it’s actually closer to 21 when we take into account the platforms that employees personally bring to the workplace on their own devices.

Their direct user interface doesn’t have an embellished user interface, but that actually helps organization with decreased distractions.  When we look at Salesforce, we’re really looking at the bottom line, and there’s no place for fancy UIs, only for actual useable numbers. Their 4 most essential sections are:

  1. Accounts: You’re able to see the details of your individual customers.
  2. Opportunities: You’re able to see the details of your lead funnel.
  3. Personal Library, Documents, and Chatter files: You’re able to access any needed documents that are usually linked to an account; like NDAs, purchase orders, RFPs, manuals, etc. This portion is essential to your workerbee team.
  4. Reports: This is probably one of the single most important features of Salesforce. It’ll help you understand exactly what your forecasts are, and what calculable actions your company has taken in order to be able to repeat them.

Below Are Your Top 3 Salesforce Tips & Tricks:

How to Onboard, Train, and Engage With Your Employees.

Using Chatter Files can help you sift through much of your internal communication in a really efficient way. Specifically, they can be used to onboard, train, and receive feedback from your employees. Here’s how to set up a great cloud community which will help support and proliferate a positive working environment:

  1. Login to your Salesforce account
  2. Click on the Chatter Tab
  3. Go to “groups”, and click on the “New Group” button

  4. Create your first onboarding group. This will be where you should put a welcome message and things like: company policies, insurance plans, welcome manuals, employee contact list, etc.
  • To upload your manuals or files, just click on the file button.


  • Select where you’re uploading your files from, and include them here.
  • You can point all new employees to this Chatter Group to help get them incorporated far quicker since they can easily have access to all the tools they need to get started.
  • Do the same for training and feedback groups. Keep your work environment a healthy one by keeping it approachable.

Managing Your Files Is Easy.

When you have multiple files in another application like Dropbox, Box, Egnyte, Google Docs, or Amazon S3, and you want to provide them to your groups in Chatter Files, or to have them linked to any accounts, just sync them to your personal library in Salesforce. Everything will be available within seconds from within your Salesforce platform, and in the correct mapping order.

  1. Login to cloudHQ account
  2. Click here, and select your Salesforce account.
  3. Then, choose “Sync and Backup Salesforce Documents, Files, and Libraries”, and click on “Next Step”. See the image below:



  4. Now select the cloud storage service that you want it synchronized with (i.e Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.). I’ll choose Google Drive for this particular example.
  • NOTE: If you want to create a new folder in your Google Drive (or other storage platform) that you want mapped to your Salesforce account, just keep following the cloudHQ wizard after you click on “Create Folder”.




    You’ll get this pop-up where you can create your new file name in Google Docs. I chose to name it as “Salesforce Personal Library Sync”, so that it can be very obvious to me about where I can drop new files in my Google Drive that I want sync’ed out to my Salesforce Personal Library.



  1. Now, your sync should be up and running. Just to be sure, hop out to your Salesforce account and select your Personal Library folder. take a look and see how all your documents that you had in your Google Drive folder is all of a sudden in your Salesforce Personal Library like so:



  2. There’s no need to ever have to download or upload any documents between Google Drive and Salesforce again. It’ll automatically just show up in Salesforce (and vice versa into Google Drive).
  • Note: If you ever need to alter anything in your files from Salesforce or Google Drive for this example, it’ll get reflected into your other synced platform, so no worries about having to reload updated versions of anything. It’s all done for you.

Reports: Automate them. Share them.

Reports are tricky, but the good news is that it doesn’t really have to be.

  1. Click on your reports tab in Salesforce and check out your left hand menu:



  2. Choose the report you want to see. I’ll choose Sales Reports. Here, I’ll find pre-populated choices for me:



  3. Once you select the report that you want to see, you can then further select all the criteria within that report, and be sure to save that report.



  4. Once you’ve saved it, hop into your cloudHQ account.
  5. Set up your sync pair between Salesforce, and your cloud storage provider; in this case, I chose Dropbox. Make sure you sync Reports, and specifically, the reports in “Lead Reports”.



  6.  You can choose to have this backed up every 15 minutes, 6hrs, 12hrs, or every 24hrs. The major benefit is that you’ll always have it, and any other reports available (and shareable) in your dropbox folder.

Sign up for a free trial at cloudHQ


 

How To Integrate Your Cloud Apps

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For most business professionals, the most commonly used applications are email, notes, and cloud storage. For sales professionals, you could add their CRM application to the list.

The rise of cloud-hosted versions of these apps has led to the development of integration services, including ours: cloudHQ.

You might ask: what’s the difference between integration services?

What you may not realize is that there are two fundamental ways applications can be integrated:

  • Two-way syncing
  • One-way triggered action

At cloudHQ, we use both methods, for reasons you’ll understand in a few minutes. For now, let’s look at the differences between them:

One-Way “Triggered Action” Integration

One-way “triggered action” integration is the digital equivalent of knocking over dominoes.

When a certain action happens, it triggers another action, and another action, and another, and so on, for as many actions as you want.
Here’s an example:

  • Trigger action: You receive an email
  • Next action: A copy of your email is automatically converted to a PDF and archived in a dedicated folder in your Amazon S3 account.

There is an endless number of integrations you can set up using triggered-integration. It is the primary integration method used by many of the most popular integration services currently available.

Two-way “Synced” Integration

Two-way “syncing” integration means you’re keeping data in two different places completely in sync. This goes beyond triggered actions.

Here’s an example of two-way “synced” integration:

You’ve synced a folder in your Dropbox to a folder (aka “label”) in your Gmail.

When you load a file into either the Dropbox folder or the Gmail folder, that file is automatically synced to both locations.

If you delete the file from your Gmail, it will be deleted from your Dropbox folder. Likewise, if you delete the file from your Dropbox folder, it will be deleted from your Gmail folder. The same thing happens with updates.

Two-way syncing integration is not as common as one-way integration. But two-way syncing is extremely powerful, especially when used across platforms, as in our Dropbox/Gmail example; or even across users for team collaboration.

 

 

cloudHQ integration


 

 

When to Use Each Type of Integration

It is tempting to say one or the other method is “better.”

In our view, however, neither method is better. Instead, the question to ask is: “What’s the right method for what I’m trying to accomplish?”

 

When One-Way Integration Is the Right Choice

Let’s assume you need to create a permanent, unchangeable email archive. If you’re in the banking or finance industry, for example, this isn’t just a good idea, it’s a legal requirement.

In this context, one-way triggered-action integration is the correct choice. Ideally, you would set up your archive to automatically save a PDF copy of every email and attachment you send or receive.

 

When Two-Way Syncing Integration is the Right Choice

Let’s assume your team is having version-control problems with your documents.

You and your team are constantly asking questions like:

  • I have two versions of a document. Which one is the correct one?
  • Does the attachment I received in email have additional changes?
  • Is the version in SharePoint the most current?
  • My mobile phone doesn’t work so great with Google Docs. What else can I use for when I’m traveling?

In this case, two-way integration is the better choice.

The ideal process would be to sync folders so that anyone on the team has access to just one version of a document. That way everyone can access only the current version of the file, regardless of how they accessed the document.

cloudHQ Uses Both One-Way and Two-Way Integration Methods

For our part, we’ve designed cloudHQ to use both one-way “triggered-action” and two-way “syncing” integration methods.

If you need to set up an unchangeable email archive, you can easily accomplish this in cloudHQ using triggered actions.

If you need to give access to a folder location to different people working on a project, you can easily do that using a two-way syncing process.

In the end, we know you don’t really care how your data travels back and forth between applications.

You just need your files and data to be there when you need it.

And that’s what we’re here to do—for you, and your entire team.

 

Headquarter Your Cloud Now
 

Top 12 Apps to Run Your Business From Your Phone

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Wish you could just run your business directly off your phone?

It’s more possible than ever, thanks to a wide variety of business applications designed to work on phones and tablets.

To better manage your business on the go, here’s our countdown of the top apps you should choose.

Slack-logo

12. Slack

Spending too much time sending emails back and forth to co-workers? Try Slack instead. Slack allows you to set up “channels” for just about everything. You can also send private messages to individuals on your team.

11. Mint

Mint is designed to help individuals keep track of their money. But if you’re a business owner, it can be just as useful to you.

Need a quick snapshot of all your bank account balances? Open the Mint app and you’ll have it within seconds. Want to easily tag purchases as reimbursable or tax deductible? Mint can handle that too.

Evernote-logo

10. Evernote

Never forget a thought or a to-do item again. Instead, write it down in Evernote. It will then be easily available from any of your devices, including your laptop or PC.

9. focus@will

If you work from coffee shops or other loud places, it can sometimes be difficult to focus on your work.

Pop in your ear buds and open focus@will, a streaming service that plays music specifically mixed to help you find your ideal state of “flow.”

8. Buffer

Running social media campaigns of any kind? Buffer allows you to set up your posts in advance, and it’s relatively intelligent with how it posts to native apps in order to make it look more natural to that app vs. other schedulers we’ve found.

7. Freshbooks

Business is about money, and the FreshBooks mobile app will help you keep track of everything you need to run your business. You can even receive payments and send invoices, directly to and from your phone.

6. Google Sheets

Like Google Docs, Google Sheets doesn’t have as many features as Microsoft Excel. But if you simply need a basic accounting spreadsheet, Google Sheets is more than sufficient. Like Docs, Sheets saves changes automatically, tracks revisions, and makes sharing extremely easy.

5. Google Drive, Amazon S3, Box

Google Drive, Amazon S3, and Box are all solid alternatives to Dropbox. Of the three, Amazon S3 is the most powerful, while Google Drive is attractive due to its integration with the Google Docs and Sheets apps.

Dropbox-logo

4. Dropbox

Even with the growth of competitors, Dropbox remains a leader in the cloud storage space, and is popular for both business and personal users.

3. Outlook for Office 365 Mail

Office365 Mail has been gaining popularity among business users. Many professionals are used to using Microsoft Outlook for email. They’ll feel right at home in the Outlook app with Office365 Mail.

2. Google Docs

Google Docs doesn’t have as many features as the Microsoft Word product many of us grew up with. But it does have enough of the basic features you would need to:

  1. Create a document
  2. Collaborate with others
  3. Save your document (It actually saves to the cloud automatically)
  4. Track revisions
  5. Share documents by sending a link—no attachments required
Gmail-logo

1. Gmail

You can use a personal Gmail account, or you can host your email on Google’s platform through Google apps. Either way, Gmail remains the most popular full-featured email client in the world.

Gmail overtook Hotmail for total number of users in 2012 and hasn’t looked back since.

Is There A Downside?

The great thing about all these services is that they let you access the same information whether you’re on your phone, a tablet, or on your desktop computer.

The only downside is that they’re not always very good at talking with each other. That’s why we created cloudHQ to help you manage your data in multiple platforms and across applications. If you’d like to know more about how our service works, we invite you to sign up for a free trial.

Email Is Still The Star

Even with all the new apps, email remains the most-used communication channel for most business professionals. In fact, the average employee spends more than 25% of his or her day on email.

That’s why syncing email with other applications (such as Evernote or Dropbox) is so beneficial. We’re going to be in our email anyway. Syncing data to a folder in our inbox allows us to share and access information, without having to go hunting in another application. Save time and improve your productivity with cloudHQ:

 

Start Your Free Trial
 

3 Power User Tips for iCloud Mail

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iCloud-Mail-logo

By some estimates, there are over 450 million iCloud users worldwide.

That means at least some of you are using iCloud Mail.

The Problem with iCloud Mail

iCloud has advantages and disadvantages.

It does a good job with photos, and it provides an easy way to backup data from your iPhone or iPad.

However, linking iCloud to services like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Office365 can be a major challenge.

For example, what if you use Google Drive for storage and want to create a backup folder for all your emails?

If you use iCloud for your email, there is no direct way to connect your email to a Google Drive archive location. It only works if you use iCloud’s storage; which, as we all know, is not free.

The story is similar if you try to share or backup your iCloud Mail. It only works if you use iCloud sharing; under no circumstance will the folks at Apple allow you to backup or share any document, email, or picture to a cloud storage service that isn’t Apple owned. But that’s okay, because we have a handy-dandy work around for you:

How to Sync iCloud Mail with Other Cloud Services

By using cloudHQ, you can easily create an archive of your iCloud Mail in any cloud storage system you prefer, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, or Microsoft Office365.

It works just like our services do with Gmail and Office365 Mail, allowing you to sync a folder in your iCloud email with a folder in another email service or cloud storage system.

For example, to create an archive for your email in Google Drive, you would create a Google Drive folder, then use cloudHQ to send a copy of every email you receive in iCloud Mail to the dedicated Google Drive archive folder.

Google Drive Folder

It also works in reverse.

If you set up a shared folder in Google Drive and sync that folder to your iCloud Mail using cloudHQ, you’ll be able to see anything in the Google Drive folder directly from within your iCloud Mail folder.

3 Power User Tips for iCloud Mail

There are a variety of ways you could use this new feature. Here are a few examples of things you could try.

1. Selective Sharing

Consider the example of a realtor who uses her iCloud Mail for both business and personal messages.

If she wanted to share some of these emails with her assistant, her options would be:

Forward the emails, which works, but creates numerous back and forth emails that are difficult to keep track of.

Give her assistant direct access to her iCloud Mail, which would mean the assistant would see both the business and personal messages.

cloudHQ’s new iCloud syncing feature provides a third option:

Use cloudHQ to share selected emails by dragging them into a shared folder. The assistant will be able to see any email messages the realtor places in the shared folder, including their attachments.

iCloud-email-folder

2. Make Documents Easily Available Through Your Phone

Consider the realtor example again.

She often receives emailed attachments from her assistant as she’s out in the field showing homes or working with potential clients.

As anyone who often receives attachments knows, it’s a challenge to keep track of these documents. You have to dig through your email to find them. Then you have to figure out if you have the most current version.

By syncing an iCloud Mail folder using cloudHQ, the realtor’s assistant has a much more efficient method to deliver documents to her boss.

By syncing a Google Drive folder to the realtor’s iCloud Mail folder, the assistant can simply save new documents into the Google Drive folder. The realtor can access the document directly from her iCloud Mail on her mobile phone.

The great thing is that the realtor will only find the most recent version of the document in the shared folder. Unlike email attachments, previous versions of the document will not be available. Instead, cloudHQ archives previous versions when they are updated and leaves only the most recent version in the synced folder. That means there is little to no room for human error.

icloud-email-folder-mobile

3. Back Up Photos

cloudHQ provides several options for backing up your email attachments. As described earlier, you can have cloudHQ back up every message you receive. But if you prefer, cloudHQ can also only backup your photos that you receive in your iCloud Mail.

To do this, you would set up a photos folder in a cloud storage service such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

From then on, any photo you receive in your iCloud account will automatically be backed up in your cloud storage folder.

Benefits of Syncing Your iCloud Mail Email With Other Services

When you sync your iCloud Mail using cloudHQ:

  1. Never anything to download
  2. Automatic backup of your emails and attachments
  3. Version control—only the most recent version of a file is available and old documents are archived automatically
  4. Easy sharing between co-workers, contractors, or partners in other organizations. Just set up a shared folder and everything in those folders is automatically accessible when you share it out.

Ultimately, syncing your iCloud Mail with other services lets you and your team work together with higher productivity.

As most of us would agree, no one enjoys spending 20 minutes digging through emails looking for an old attachment.

Bonus! It Works with Other Email Accounts Too

Finally, if you use Gmail, Microsoft Office365 Mail, Yahoo!, or Hotmail, everything we’ve described for iCloud Mail also works in those services as well.

 

Sync iCloud Mail
 

Photo credit: © Apple dot com

The Golden Rules for Archive Storage With Microsoft Office 365 Mail

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backup_msoffice365mail_amazonS3

cloudHQ is proud to announce support for Office 365 Mail.

Adding Microsoft Office 365 Mail to our list of supported applications means that you’ll now be able to share, replicate, and backup emails directly through cloudHQ.

The Golden Rules for Archive Storage:

  1. Archive storage should be under your control.

    • You should have direct access to your archive which is independent of the service that is archiving your data.

  2. Archive should be stored in standard format which is not proprietary. In other words, your archive must not be in some proprietary format defined company that is doing your archive. For example, archives created by some other backup services are in proprietary format which can be read only thru that backup service. That is bad since that backup service might not be around when you need to access your archive.

  3. Archive your files using a large cloud storage company, such as Amazon.

For companies who are not in the finance or banking industry, you could also consider cloud storage options to include Dropbox or Google Drive; especially if your company is already set up on one of those services. Check with your legal team about regulations for companies in your industry.

2 Major Benefits:

  1. Archive your company’s Microsoft Office 365 Mail to your backup storage location in a way that’s compliant with SEC 17 a-f(4) and with CFTC 1.31(b)-(c) regulations.

    • The benefit of doing this is to ensure that e-discovery is accessible and that no emails will ever get lost.

  2. Save all your company’s Email attachments to a dedicated folder in your backup file system like MS Sharepoint or Dropbox, instead of having them disorganized and located throughout your employees’ inboxes.

These features are configurable for everyone in your organization with just a few clicks. We’ll take a closer look at why you should archive all your emails and separate your email attachments.

Scenario 1:
Staying Compliant with SEC 17 a-f(4) and CFTC 1.31(b)-(c) Regulations

If you work in the finance industry, your company is probably required by law to keep your electronic files “preserved exclusively in a non-rewritable and non-erasable format.” That includes your email.

If your company uses Microsoft Office 365 Mail, you can now use cloudHQ to automatically archive all your emails in a way that’s compliant with these regulations.

To stay compliant, we recommend Amazon’s S3 service in combination with Amazon Glacier to host your email archive. Together, S3 and Glacier provide a cloud storage solution that’s reliable and accessible.
You could also use cloud storage provided by small backup companies such as Backupify. However, we caution against storing your long-retention archives that is provided by a smaller company instead of one that is more secure like Amazon.

Smaller companies might go out of business. It’s the truth. Startups often get acquired, leaving customers unsure of what the future will hold regarding a small company’s service, and your data storage it claims to safeguard.
It’s important that storage for your long-retention archive be under your direct control, not owned or managed by the same company which is actually performing your backup. And, most importantly, your long-retention archive should be managed by an established cloud storage company, such as Amazon. Amazon cloud storage will be available for years to come; and additionally, you know the they are passed the risk of being acquired.

Scenario 2: Saving Your Email Attachments

How many hours have you spent digging through old emails trying to find attachments?
Instead of trying to remember who sent the email or what the subject line of the email was, cloudHQ lets you create a filesystem folder to automatically collect any attachment you receive in your Office 365 Mail.
This way, all your attachments will easily be available in one easy-to-find folder inside your OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or SharePoint account.
This can be set up individually, or your system administrator can set up a folder for each user in your company with just a few clicks.

New Office 365 Features Coming Soon

We have dazzling new features coming out for Office 365 Mail users! Stay tuned to be able to:

  • Automatically sync an Office 365 Mail folder with a folder in any cloud storage (OneDrive, Google Drive, SharePoint, Dropbox, Egnyte, etc.).
  • Share an Office 365 Mail folder with anyone in the world (not just inside your company).

Whether you need to stay compliant with government regulations, or you just want to find email attachments when you need them, our new Office 365 Mail sync service is the perfect solution.

 

Get Started Today
 

Photo used under Creative Commons from GotCredit

How To Survive a Harassment Suit Filed in Your Organization

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In the eventuality of a harassment incident between employees, it’s your job as a business owner to prepare your organization’s compliance with the law. If you don’t, you can expect monetary repercussions that are easily avoidable. There are 3 aspects to know:

1) Where It Happens Doesn’t Matter For An Organization To Be Held Accountable.

slack in slack

In order for your organization to be found guilty, the physical location of where an employee endures harassment by another, usually makes no difference if it’s in a business environment. Allow me to explain: if they’re together at a business affair, or at the office, it’s clear that there’s an in-person interaction of which you might have better control over. However, with the onset of employees working from home, sexual harassment can still occur within platforms that encourage employee conversation. Some of these platforms are: Podio, Asana, Yammer, and Slack.

2) You Are Blind.

Worse, is that your IT department could be caught completely blind. Imagine that you have rogue employees who rebel against using whatever platforms your IT admin asks them to use, and decides to use their own apps to get a specific job done. Slack, for example, is a popular one because of its ease of use, ability to conversate freely, and speaking of “freely”, the service itself is free to use. Here, you have work projects and assets in a space that is 1) unprotected, and 2) unmonitored. Therein lies the big problem with respect to cases like harassment… it’s not only IT that’s blind. It’s you, too.

When it comes to the law, if a victim is able to produce screenshots or other tangible evidence of his or her harassment, the courts will ask your organization to produce your copy of these conversations… only, you won’t have them since you probably didn’t even know that Slack was being used for your work project. And more often than not, the perpetrator will have deleted these conversations, leaving your organization’s fate completely in the hands of the courts.

3) Know the Law.

If there is any sexual harassment suit in your office, the court will ask you to conduct an “e-discovery” investigation. In this investigation, they are looking to “discover” and match the proof that the plaintiff presents (like a screenshot, for example).

It’s noteworthy to mention that although some apps archive messages, they often can’t restore deleted conversations, which then, legally, puts a company in jeopardy should a case go to court.

Failure for an organization to provide documentation is a de facto admission of guilt, which prove expensive, regardless of whether a case is settled in or out of court. The law simply doesn’t look kindly on the corporate version of “the dog ate my homework.”

 

IT departments can protect companies against the risk of sexual harassment lawsuits as a result of app conversations, thanks to cloudHQ.

Solution: Archive Everything.

When employees want to work in other apps, most IT admins will ask them not to for a variety of reasons like: security risks, lack of integration with their primary platforms, etc. Unfortunately, most employees don’t even ask their IT admins, or they defiantly choose to work in other apps despite what their IT administrators say.

You know the old saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”? It’s never been more true today- especially when it concerns social apps. In fact, Slack, the newest productivity and messaging app space for teams, is routinely described as an ‘email killer’ that’s ‘taking over offices everywhere’, and now has over 1,000,000 daily active users. If you can encourage employees to use any apps that help them be more productive, you can protect and archive all their work as a company asset.

You probably already know that with a cloudHQ integration, you can archive Gmail conversations into PDFs. Well, you can now do the same with Slack- you can archive Slack conversations and direct messages as PDFs, and have them replicated to your Google Docs account, or Amazon S3, Dropbox, etc.

Whenever a chat is deleted, it will automatically get archived as a PDF. Every strand of a conversation is timestamped, simplifying e-discovery, if lawyers were ever involved.

Protecting your organization, your organization’s assets, and your employees is just good business. Slack, and other team communication apps is often left in the wilderness, beyond the oversight of IT or legal departments. This is easily fixed via cloudHQ, so talk with a cloud expert today and start archiving your records.

Talk to a Cloud Expert 
 

 

Photos used under Creative Commons from illustir

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