Office365

Automatically Save Gmail to Cloud Storage

August 18, 2016 by selim Dizdar

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:

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

The Complete Mini Guide to Cloud Storage

August 10, 2016 by selim Dizdar

Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, Amazon Web Services, iCloud?

Which one is best?

The answer is: it depends on your needs.

There is no “best” service. But there is probably one or two that are better than the others for your specific situation.

We support five of the six services (everything but iCloud, for reasons we’ll explain in a bit).

In this post, we’ll give you a buyer’s guide for the six major cloud service providers:

Dropbox
Box
Google Drive
OneDrive
Amazon Web Services
iCloud

Start by Defining Your Needs

Before you start evaluating features, first define exactly why you need cloud storage

Common uses for cloud storage include:

Backup
Shared storage
Collaboration with clients
Legal requirements
Delivery of digital products

Your needs should dictate which service you choose, and each of these purposes will need different features.

The 4 Types of Cloud Services

Of the six services we’ll be profiling, they all fall into four broad categories:

1. Dedicated cloud storage (Dropbox and Box)

Dedicated cloud storage services are simple and straightforward.

When you sign up with Dropbox or Box, you’re buying cloud storage directly.

This is different than signing up for Google Apps or Microsoft Office 365, which include cloud storage as part of a suite of applications you get with your subscription.

2. Cloud storage as part of a broader suite of web applications (Google Drive and OneDrive)

Google Drive and OneDrive are usually purchased as part of a broader suite of applications.

With both Google and Microsoft services, you get hosted email, a calendar, word processing and spreadsheet apps (e.g. Google Docs or the web version of Excel), and a variety of other tools—including cloud storage.

3. API-focused cloud storage (Amazon Web Services)

Amazon Web Services is a complex service that’s primarily built for developers and IT administrators. If you’re a programmer, Amazon Web Services is highly flexible and can be customized to do almost anything.

4. Personal cloud storage (iCloud)

Personal cloud storage is best for personal uses. It’s not built for business tasks or collaboration the way the other services are.

The Six Cloud Storage Services

Here are a few specific details for each of the six services we’re covering in this article:

1. Dropbox

If you want simple, effective cloud storage for your files, Dropbox is the service for you.

You can upload any type of file to Dropbox. You can also sync all or some of your Dropbox folders to your desktop. Drop a file in the folder on your computer and Dropbox will sync it to its servers in the background.

This makes Dropbox a great choice for anyone that needs to backup files—or who often works using multiple devices.

Dropbox works on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and Amazon Kindle, among other systems.

Dropbox was primarily built for individual use, but over time the company has added a number of features to improve its use within a business setting.

Strengths:

Ease of use
Multiple devices
Automatic cloud backup

Weaknesses:

Fewer IT admin controls than other cloud storage services

Plans:

1) Personal plans:

2 GB: free
1 TB: $9.99/mo or $99/yr

2) “Dropbox for Business” Business plans:

Pro for individuals, 1 TB storage: $8.25/user/mo
Business for teams, “As much space as needed”: $12.50/user/mo (starts at 5 users)

2. Box

Box is very similar to Dropbox.

It’s easy to use and can be accessed either through the website or by syncing folders to your desktop. It also works across all major desktop and mobile operating systems.

Box—however—was built specifically with IT administrators in mind.

There are more controls over user access, privacy, sharing, and a variety of security features not available (or easily accessed) in Dropbox.

Box’s strong security and sharing features make it ideal for business use.

Individual users might find themselves a little overwhelmed if they try to use Box for personal storage.

But IT administrators should feel right at home.

Strengths:

Administrative controls.

Weaknesses:

Can seem overwhelming to use for non-technical employees.

Plans:

1) Personal plans:

Personal, 10 GB storage: Free
Personal Pro, 100 GB storage: $10/mo

2) Business plans:

Starter, 100 GB storage: $5/user/mo
Business, unlimited storage: $15/user/mo (minimum 3 users)

3. Google Drive

Google Drive comes bundled with a variety of applications in Google Apps for Work.

Google Drive works extremely well for anyone who regularly uses Google Docs, Google Sheets, one one of Google’s other web applications.

Many businesses choose Google Apps for email hosting—wanting to take advantage of the Gmail platform.

Along with Gmail, Google Apps users get 30 GB of Google Drive storage automatically. Up to 1 TB of data per user is available as an upgrade.

Google Drive comes with robust built-in sharing features.

You can easily share links to Google Docs or Sheets, and you can also quickly share links to any type of document stored in Google Drive.

Strengths:

Part of Google Apps
Collaboration and sharing

Weaknesses:

No option to buy Google Drive for Business as a standalone service

Best for:

People who need a variety of tools for their business
Client-based businesses that often send documents back and forth to clients
Gmail users or heavy users of other Google applications (e.g. Google Docs or Google Drive)

Plans:

1) Personal plans:

15 GB: Free
100 GB: $1.99/mo
1 TB: $9.99/mo
10 TB: $99.99/mo

2) “Google Apps for Work” Business plans:

Google Apps, 30GB storage: $5/user/mo
Google Apps with unlimited storage and Vault: $10/user/mo

4. OneDrive

Unlike Google Drive, OneDrive can be purchased a la carte, although it is most often purchased as part of an Office 365 plan.

If you subscribe to Office 365, you’ll also get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and a variety of other apps.

If you’re comfortable using Microsoft Office products, OneDrive is a natural extension and can be easily integrated into your normal workflow.

If you use OneDrive, you’ll have to get used to the applications file storage system, which tries to store and organize files for you—sometimes with more success than others.

Strengths:

Designed for business
Available a la carte or as part of Office 365

Weaknesses:

File organization system takes some getting used to.

Plans:

1) OneDrive for Business:

1 TB: $5/user/mo
5 TB: $10/user/mo (requires five or more users)

2) Office 365 with cloud storage:

Business Essentials, 1 TB storage: $5/user/mo (email not included)
Business, 1TB storage: $8.25/user/mo (includes email and other apps)
Business Premium, 1TB storage: $12.50/user/mo (includes all apps, fully installed Office on PC/Mac)

5. Amazon S3

Amazon Web Services is the most flexible cloud service on our list. This includes Amazon S3 storage (The “S3” stands for “super simple storage”) and Amazon’s other offerings.

Amazon Web Services is a fantastic choice for app developers or those delivering digital products.

It also offers a “pay-as-you-go” pricing, meaning you’ll only be charged when you actually transfer data back and forth to Amazon’s servers.

If you’re not technically savvy, however, Amazon is a lot to try and understand and might be one to avoid.

Strengths:

Flexibility
Options for developers
Pay as you go pricing available

Weaknesses:

Complexity makes it difficult for non-technical users

Plans:

Amazon has a wide variety of pricing plans. You could pay as little as a few pennies a month for the service, or as much as hundreds of dollars per month, depending on how you use the service.

See Amazon’s pricing page for more on how you’ll be charged for the service.

6. iCloud

cloudHQ does not support iCloud integration, but we sometimes get asked if we think iCloud is a viable cloud storage service for business purposes.

In our opinion, the answer is: probably not.

iCloud is designed to work seamlessly with a personal Apple account.

For example, iCloud is great if you want to access photos you take on your iPhone from your Mac or iPad.

Apple generally makes it difficult to share iCloud files with others. Since much of what people store in iCloud is copyrighted music, movies, or books, this makes sense.

In short, iCloud is a great service for your personal media files.

We do not think—however—that iCloud is a good cloud storage option for business purposes.

Strengths:

Works well across multiple Apple devices

Weaknesses:

Not designed for business purposes
Does not integrate with other services
Difficult to share files or collaborate

Plans:

Personal iCloud plans:

5 GB: Free
50 GB: $0.99/mo
200 GB: $2.99/mo
1 TB: $9.99/mo

How to Sync Folders Across Platforms

If you’ve read this article but are new to cloudHQ, we want to remind you that you can easily sync folders across the different cloud services we covered in this article (except for iCloud, which doesn’t sync with any service outside iCloud itself).

For example, if you have Google Drive as your primary cloud storage service and you’re working with a contractor who uses Dropbox, you do not have to open a new Dropbox account to share a folder.

Instead, you can sync a folder from your Google Drive account directly to the contractor’s Dropbox folder by using a simple two-way sync in cloudHQ. Whatever you put in Google Drive, your contractor will automatically see in Dropbox in real time, and vice versa.

This can be done for any combination of cloud services.

For a free trial, visit our getting started page.

Get Started

16 Free Chrome Extensions to Boost Your Productivity

June 22, 2016 by selim Dizdar

We’ve recently released a host of free Chrome productivity extensions for Gmail.

They are all free.

If you have Gmail or host your company’s email through Google Apps, you can use any of all of them.

Each one is designed to help you do more, faster, and better.

Here’s the complete list:

1. Gmail Label Sharing

This is our most popular Chrome extension. You can use it to:

Share a bunch of emails all at once with an unlimited amount of people who have an email address.
- How? Just create and share a Gmail label. You can put as many emails into your labels as you like. Anyone you’ve invited to share your label will have instant access to see it as a Gmail label in their Gmail too (or if they don’t use Gmail, in their email folder regardless of what email provider they use). This eliminates the need to send or forward any emails one at a time, which usually just gets confusing.
Chat about specific emails in your Gmail label with anyone that you’ve shared your Gmail Label with.
- Small caveat: Sorry non-Gmail users, to use this feature, you need to be using Gmail.

Install Gmail Label Sharing.

2. Slick Email Templates

Create beautiful emails using free, pre-designed templates. Great for:

Private announcements
Party invitations
Congratulations
Newsletters

Once you’ve chosen a template and personalized your message, you’ll be able to send it just like any other email you send with Gmail. New templates are added all the time.

Install Gmail Email Templates.

3. Gmail Shared Todo

Create a shared to-do list for you and whoever you’re writing an email to. Keep track of accountability and watch your productivity rise!

Install Gmail Shared Todo.

4. Edit Emails in Google Docs

Save a Gmail message to Google Docs with one click.

This is great for creating an email collaboratively with your team. Before sending off that important email, you can save it to Google Docs and collaboratively work on it with your assistant, boss, or your entire team.

When it’s really important, team feedback is a good idea.

Install Edit Emails in Google Docs.

5. Convert Google Docs to Gmail Drafts

This is kind of like a continuation of #4 above, but it works the other way around: convert a Google Doc into a Gmail draft with one click.

All the formatting from your Google Doc will automatically carry through to your Gmail draft. Just don’t forget to take advantage of Google Drawings, Google doc templates, charts, tables, and images! Really, the possibilities are quite endless.

Install Convert Google Docs to Gmail Drafts and keep your perfect formatting.

6. Save Emails to PDF

Easily save Gmail messages as PDF documents to your computer. Simply click the “Save to PDF” button. Your email will be converted to a PDF and immediately downloaded to your computer.

Install Save Emails to PDF.

7. Save Emails to Google Drive

Save your Gmail message (and attachments) to Google Drive with a single click. SO helpful.

Install Save Emails to Google Drive.

8. Save Emails to Dropbox

Save any Gmail message (and attachments) to Dropbox with one click.

Install Save Emails to Dropbox.

9. Save Emails to Slack

Save any Gmail message to Slack with one click. This gives you one complete record of a conversation around a topic, instead of having to search between Gmail and Slack to find who said what about a project.

Install Save Emails to Slack.

10. Save Emails to OneDrive

Save any Gmail message (and attachments) to OneDrive with one click.

Install Save Emails to OneDrive.

11. Save Emails to OneDrive Business

Save any Gmail message (and attachments) to OneDrive Business with one click.

Install Save Emails to OneDrive Business.

12. Save Emails to Box

Save any Gmail message (and attachments) to Box with one click.

Install Save Emails to Box.

13. Save Emails to Salesforce

Save any Gmail message (and attachments) to Salesforce with one click.

Install Save Emails to Salesforce.

14. Save Emails to SharePoint

Save any Gmail message (and attachments) to Sharepoint with one click.

Install Save Emails to SharePoint.

15. Save Emails to OneNote

Save any Gmail message (and attachments) to OneNote with one click.

Install Save Emails to OneNote.

16. Save Emails to Egnyte

Save any Gmail message (and attachments) to Egnyte with one click.

Install Save Emails to Egnyte.

More Free Productivity Tools Coming Soon!

We’re hard at work on more free productivity tools for you and your team.

To see our full list of Chrome extensions, visit cloudHQ’s page on the Chrome Web Store.

See Chrome Extensions

10 Step Guide To Hiring Remote Contractors

February 24, 2016 by selim Dizdar

When you bootstrap your business, every dollar counts—which is exactly why hiring help from overseas has become so popular the last few years.

2 Types of Outsourced Work

Outsourcing makes the most sense in two situations:

Mundane tasks to free up your time for more important things.
Skilled tasks when you need help doing something, because you lack the skills yourself.

In this article, we’re going to focus on the first situation: outsourcing to free up your time.

Here is the seven step guide to help you outsource effectively:

1. Make Sure the Contractor Has the Basics

When you outsource, you’ll be looking for employees or contractors with certain skills.

Everyone you consider will need a few basics. These are things such as the ability to read or write in English (or your preferred language), the ability to follow instructions, and having a reliable computer and Internet connection. Usually, you can rely on how well they’re rated by other customers.

2. Get the Right Skills

If you are looking to outsource basic tasks, you can hire a general virtual assistant with basic skills for a few dollars an hour.

If you’d like to outsource more complex work, look for someone to be your executive virtual assistant. In addition to basic tasks, an executive VA can respond to emails, type up correspondence, and even make outbound phone calls to prospects or business partners.

3. Check Their Work, Especially in the Beginning

The whole point of outsourcing is to free up your time—not create extra supervisory duties for you.

At the beginning, however, you’ll need to take time to make sure the work is being done correctly. Just be prepared to spend some time on this. At first, it might take more time than you were spending doing the task on your own—which can be frustrating.

But as you work with the contractor over time, they’ll get better, and you can spend less time checking their work.

4. How to Choose the Right Person

Our best advice is to do a few small trial projects with a new employee or contractor to see how things go.

That way you can see how they work, without getting stuck with someone who isn’t quite right for you.

5. Know Where To Find Help

There are dozens of places to find help.

UpWork is one of the more popular ones. You can find people there to take care of almost any task, for a variety of prices.

Other options include Freelancer.com or even Craigslist. There are also services that can match you with an overseas employee if you need additional help.

6. Require Regular Check-Ins

Some companies expect their outsourced help to send them a daily message about what they did, how it went, and any problems they had.

Whether you require daily check-ins or something a little less regular, your contractors should be keeping you informed of what they’re doing on your behalf.

7. Document a Step-by-Step System

Our biggest insight from our experience with outsourcing is this: Before you hire someone to do anything for you, take the time to document exactly how you want the task to be done.

You should create detailed, step-by-step instructions that leave nothing to question. You can even use something like Screenflow to make a video showing exactly what you want the contractor to do.

This is especially important when you’re hiring someone inexpensive to do basic tasks for you.

If you don’t create precise instructions, you’re going to spend a lot of time fixing mistakes—probably more time than you would have spent simply doing the task on your own.

8. What You Can Expect to Pay

Here are the some cost ranges you can expect for different kinds of outsourced help:

General Virtual Assistant: $3-8/hr
Executive Virtual Assistant: $5-10/hr
Graphic Designer: $5-$20/hr
Web Developer: $10-$30/hr

9. What Not to Outsource

Working with contractors is great. It can save you both time and money and allow you to scale your business in ways you can’t do on your own.

But the bad news is that contractors come and go.

If you want to build a business for the long term, outsource skills that take time, but not much actual skill.

Whatever your “core competency” is—however—keep those tasks in-house.

10. Managing Data With Outsourced Contractors

Finally, the use of different communication apps is a commonly frustrating situation when outsourcing work.

You might have your company email and cloud storage in Microsoft Office 365, but your new virtual assistant might use a personal Gmail account for work messages and a personal Dropbox account for sharing files.

We created cloudHQ as a way to solve exactly those kinds of problems.

With just a bit of setup work, you and your new contractor will be able to easily share information and documents back and forth, without you having to add any new licenses to make it happen.

Get Started with cloudHQ

Top 12 Apps to Run Your Business From Your Phone

February 1, 2016 by selim Dizdar

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.

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.

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.

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:

Create a document
Collaborate with others
Save your document (It actually saves to the cloud automatically)
Track revisions
Share documents by sending a link—no attachments required

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

Salesforce Reports: Inside Conversations

January 5, 2016 by Graciela

If you use Salesforce as your CRM, you have access to a powerful drag-and-drop report builder inside your Salesforce account.

Need to show your boss every sales opportunity created in the last 90 days? How about every closed sale? Or every opportunity lost?

Salesforce can handle all of these queries with ease.

You can even automatically run your reports on any schedule that works for you. These can then be downloaded as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or exported directly into Google Sheets, Office 365 Excel Online, or MS Office 365 Excel. However, not everything is that rosy.

The Problem with Automated Reports

Automated reports in Salesforce provides you with dozens of spreadsheets. Each spreadsheet a snapshot of a certain point in time. If you’ve scheduled daily reports, you’ll have a new report each day that’s generated by Salesforce; which in and of itself, is pretty good.

Unfortunately, Salesforce doesn’t merge sheets together or give you one master sheet that always has the latest information.

This collection of sales spreadsheets makes collaboration inside your reports extremely difficult.

For example, if you type a note in today’s report in the spreadsheet you are viewing the report in, your note won’t be carried over into the updated spreadsheet the next time Salesforce runs the report. You lose your note, and your sales person never even sees it.

cloudHQ solves this problem by merging your Salesforce reports together. This allows you to type notes into the report and preserve those notes, no matter how many Salesforce reports you run.

Before: A Big Communication Problem

Let’s take a look at what this looks like without cloudHQ.

Here’s a daily Salesforce report showing all open prospects. We’ve exported it to Google Sheets.

This report was distributed to a manager, who entered comments about two accounts.

The next day, Salesforce sends us the same report with updated data. The problem is: the manager’s notes from the day before are now lost.

Salesforce simply created a new report. It didn’t merge today’s daily report with yesterday’s report.

This means using the collaboration tools built into Google Sheets is almost entirely useless. The same is true if you use Office 365 Excel Online or MS Office 365 Excel.

After: Communication Is Easy, And Helps Close More Sales.

Now let’s see what it looks like when using cloudHQ to merge the daily reports from Salesforce.

We start with the same report from day one:

As before, a manager adds two notes.

The next day, Salesforce runs and exports a new spreadsheet as scheduled, with daily prospects.

This time, however, cloudHQ merges the data in both reports.

The result? The data is updated, and the collaboration notes are preserved.

Don’t Forget to Take Advantage of Collaboration in Google Sheets and Office 365 Online

Collaboration is one of the biggest benefits of online spreadsheets.

Unfortunately, Salesforce’s automatic reports aren’t set up to allow effective collaboration.

cloudHQ’s new report syncing feature restores the collaboration feature, making it much easier to communicate back and forth with managers and other team members about what’s happening with your sales and marketing efforts.

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3 Ways To Boost Your Business Productivity with Office365 Mail

December 10, 2015 by Naomi Assaraf

There are always unknown, obscure workflow tips that translate into the difference between a thriving business vs. one that’s eventually going to close their doors.

Below are 3 ways to think about using MS Office365 Mail to give you a leading edge on the competition.

1. Internal Project Management

Let’s suppose you’re a project manager for a marketing team, and your current project is to design a consistent process for your company’s social media accounts.

Several other teammates work on the project with you, including a copywriter, a graphic designer, and a web developer. As you work, you exchange dozens of emails back and forth, many with attachments.

Folder sharing will let you keep all documents and communications about the project together in one place.

3 Major Benefits:

All documents and emails will be archived and accessible to everyone who’s working on the project.
If someone leaves the company mid-project, his or her communications will still be searchable by remaining team members.
If a new employee joins the project, the team will be able to easily provide access to all project files and communications.

2. Project Management with an Outside Contractor

Office365 has a built-in feature that allows two people to share a folder within your organization. That’s great, but what if you have to work with an outside contractor or a project?

Normally the only way you’d be able to share documents is by emailing files back and forth. This is inefficient and difficult to manage as a project moves along.

Major Benefit:

Folder sharing eliminates sharing problems by letting you give folder access to an outside contractor who’s not using the same platforms that you are (this is especially great for Upwork/ODesk freelancers).

3. Human Resources Updates

Many companies have their HR documents stored in a central Office365 OneDrive Business folder. Employees are given read-only access to that folder. However that approach doesn’t always work very well.

Some employees don’t work in front of computers all day. They primarily work from mobile devices where they don’t have easy access those OneDrive folders.

More often than not, HR departments send email blasts to everyone at the company whenever new copies of HR documents are updated. How inefficient and annoying with multiple foreseeable problems:

Employees might save their updated documents in the wrong folders, making them difficult to locate later.
Employees might accidentally delete the email that had the updated document attached.
Over time, employees will receive multiple versions of documents. It can be easy to become confused which one is the right one.

The cloudHQ folder sharing process resolves these issues. When HR updates a document in the OneDrive Business folder, employees will automatically have access to the most recent document through the Office365 Mail folder in their email, and the older version is deleted from employees’ email folders for total same page synchronicity.

5 Major Benefits:

Employees will know how to easily retrieve the latest version of HR documents.
Employees who only use mobile devices will have easy access to company documents through their email on their phones or tablets.
Only the latest version of each document will be available. Old versions will be deleted from the shared folder and won’t be accessible to employees.
HR won’t have to send blast emails every time a document is updated.
Email requests to HR for “the latest version of the employee handbook” should decrease dramatically.

Here’s how to sync MS Office365 Mail a folder to Sharepoint below:

Sharing folders in a flexible way offers your business a huge productivity boost.

If you’re not yet a cloudHQ user, try it out by signing up for a free 15-day free-trial. No obligation or credit card required.

Get Started Now

Teams Are Comfortable with Email, but Not OneDrive or SharePoint

December 1, 2015 by Graciela

If you spend your entire day working out of your inbox, you’re not alone. One survey suggests white-collar workers now average 3.2 hours per day reading, writing, and managing work email.

Email is the one piece of software everyone becomes an expert at using because of its adoption rate and inherent familiarity.

At the same time, many companies use Office365, OneDrive, or Office365 SharePoint as their document management system, but many employees just aren’t comfortable using either of these solutions. In fact, many don’t even know how to access OneDrive or SharePoint at all.

Take mobile employees, for example. They primarily use their phones for communication like sending emails or texting other members of their team. If a document they need is hidden in a OneDrive Business cloud storage repository, they often don’t know how to access OneDrive Business from their phones.

The resulting user flow is highly inefficient: Those mobile employees send an email to a teammate from their phone and then that teammate tracks down the file to send it back as an attachment. This happens a lot, and worse, it represents countless hours in lost productivity.

Bottom line: finding documents is nearly impossible for remote employees.

As we’re about to show you, there’s a much easier way to get around this annoying time suck.

Announcing: Office365 Mail Folder Sync and Sharing

As we’ve already identified: Employees live in their E-mail. This can actually be a blessing in disguise. When you use cross-platform sharing for specific folders, it allows for all members of your team to access OneDrive Business or SharePoint documents directly from their Office365 Mail email folders.^[1]

Wherever they are—and whatever device they’re using—they’ll be able to easily access current versions of all your company’s documents.

There’s No Process Change.

For employees who manage your document repository (HR, marketing, etc.), they’ll be pleased to know that they won’t have to change one iota of their current process.

Employees who maintain your documents will continue to have full access through OneDrive or SharePoint. Their access or process never changes.
Anyone with a password can still retrieve documents through a web browser using the OneDrive web portal just as they’ve always been able to do. This too, never changes.

The only thing that changes, is that you can give your employees the choice to access documents from their email folder so that documents are easily retrievable.

For example, you could share the following Sharepoint, OneDrive, or Office365 folder with a user’s email folder:

Marketing materials
HR documents
Documents related to a specific project or initiative

How Cross-platform Folder Sharing Works

1. Distribution: One-to-Many Sharing

Using cross-platform folder sharing, you can distribute all files from a central OneDrive Business folder into your employees’ mailboxes.

Each file that’s added in the OneDrive Business folder will be automatically uploaded into the email folders of your employees.

If you change or update a file in OneDrive Business, the old versions will be automatically deleted and replaced with the new ones for everyone with access to the folder.

3 Major Benefits of Distribution:

No more emailing “the latest version” to a distribution list.
For example:

New employee hires will automatically have access to the database. You won’t have to “put together a packet” for them.
Employees will have access to the document database directly from their email.
As long as your employee is connected to a cell signal, they’ll have access to the most up-to-date documents. This works in iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

2. Aggregation: Many-to-Many Sharing

cloudHQ cross-platform folder sharing can be used to enable many-to-many sharing where some users mainly use Office365 Mail while other use Office365, Sharepoint, or OneDrive.

To do this, you’ll establish a two-way sync between a central OneDrive Business folder and a folder within your employees’ email accounts. Whatever gets placed in any of your users’ email folders, will automatically get replicated into your OneDrive Business folder.

All changes are reflected in both platforms, but cloudHQ also backs up these files automatically, ensuring that your message and document archive system is preserved and safeguarded.

4 Major Benefits of Aggregation:

All messages or documents are searchable to anyone with access to the folder either in Office365 Mail or your company’s file management system: OneDrive, Sharepoint, Office365.
Messages and documents are automatically archived.
Sharing information becomes simple, regardless of which platforms teammates work in.
Emails become PDF files in your cloud storage archive, where each email can easily be shared with a link to its PDF file from your Office365, Sharepoint, or OneDrive.

Pro tip: This is especially great for referencing an email within in an email!

3. One-to-One Sharing (Including Cross-Platform Sharing):

Finally, cloudHQ cross-platform folder sharing lets you easily share an Office365 Mail folder with anyone, anywhere.

You can share your Office365 Mail folder with partners or clients who use Google Apps Gmail or any other mail service for true cross-platform sharing.

3 Major Benefits of One-to-One Cross-Platform Sharing:

Easy sharing of large amount of emails
Version control
Convenience to choose which email platform to use in order to access the information

Sharing folders in a flexible way offers your business a boost in productivity. If you’re not yet a cloudHQ user, try it out by signing up for a free 15-day free-trial. No obligation or credit card required.

Get Started Now

Footnotes:

^[1] If you use Google Apps for email, everything we discuss here can also be accomplished using Gmail labels.

Photo used under Creative Commons from wocintechchat

NEW: Attach A Cloud File Directly From Your Gmail

September 3, 2015 by Graciela

There are over 900 million daily active users currently using Gmail. It’s a simple and intuitive email platform, and it happens to have an impeccably great integration with Google Drive, a collaborative office suite that often competes against Microsoft Office 365. Unfortunately, there are only 240 million daily active users using Google Drive, which means that there are 660 million users who are using Gmail, but not Google Drive. So, if you’re one of those users who don’t use Google Drive but you use Gmail, you don’t really benefit from this integration… and we’re here to assure you that you’re not alone.

Many organizations choose to use other primary cloud platforms like Box, Dropbox, or Egnyte, but still rely on Gmail as their email platform. In this case, employees usually need to download files to their desktop, and then send it out by uploading it into Gmail. It’s a tiresome process to go through, just so that you can attach a file in Gmail to send it to someone.

cloudHQ is a Google Chrome extension that offers file attachment support for platforms like Box, Egnyte, Google Apps, Office 365, Dropbox, Evernote, Salesforce and more. The extension works exactly as you’d expect it to in just a few easy steps.

Step 1: Install the Google Chrome Extension
1. From within Chrome, click on the extension link
2. Click Add To Chrome
3. From the popup, click “Add”
Step 2: Composing your email with an attachment:
1. When composing your email, attach any of your files from Box, Egnyte, OneDrive, etc. by clicking on the cloudHQ icon button directly from your email:
2. A popup window will appear where you can intuitively navigate your cloud platforms for the files or folders you want to attach in your email, like so:
3. The shared link to a file or folder then gets attached to the message just like any other file attachment
4. Send your email!

If you’re looking for the fastest way to attach files in outgoing Gmail, from your any of cloud accounts ─ our chrome extension is it. Whether you’re using Chrome on Windows, Mac, Linux, or ChromeOS ─ this extension has you covered.

Get the extension now

Photo used under Creative Commons from Claude – 小科

Simplify Your Sharing

August 5, 2015 by Graciela

The Interwebs of Contractor Collaboration: How to Keep It Together

A lot of startups and SMBs are hiring external contractors who have large files to deliver, but contractors face 2 major hurdles:

Sending or receiving large files
(downloading 1G file over a 4G connection will take close to 2 hours):
Once you’ve sent a folder to a client, they can’t rename your file, they can see your (often) personal email address if it’s linked to your Dropbox account, and if you delete the folder after having shared it with your client, your client might reapproach you months later asking for it again.
Anonymity:
Contractors who use their personal Google accounts for their work often find themselves on a slippery professional slope. If you use you Gmail account that shows your name@gmail.com account, you’ll look unprofessional, and if you share any large folders via Dropbox or Google Drive, you’ll easily find that your clients will see your account name- again, it’s often a personal account. The questions begs to be asked: How do you achieve professionalism and yet still provide the work to your clients?

Unique to cloudHQ, you can now send folders directly from within your Google Drive, and you will be able to also ping your employer, teammate, or client automatically when you’re finished your job. They’ll get an email notification to get snapshot of the folder you sent, along with the date and time. Once you’ve shared it, you can add to it or delete it, but your client will always have access to the initial file you sent. This is great because they can rename the folder, they don’t need to download or upload anything, and you’ll have time stamped proof in your archives that you delivered the work.

By sending your folder via cloudHQ, you can send your work in a static format from your Google Drive folder directly to the client while protecting your account privacy. Your clients don’t need to use Google Drive to get your folder either; they’ll receive your document via cloudHQ and will be prompted to access it in any of their cloud services like Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. The current issue with other sharing services, like Dropbox for example, is that you can only share it with read/write access, which is a further security risk if you only want your clients to be able to read your work- not to be able to edit it.

You’ll also be able to “Request a file” from your client in case you need more material in order to complete your job. Your client or teammate will be prompted to include the material that you need in order for you to properly finish your job. (i.e. supporting documents, image specifications, etc).

Click on the “Get Early Access” button below. This is a simple and organized way to work with Odesk, Elance, and UpWork contractors, as well as to let team members in your company know when you’ve completed your section of the task.

Get Early Access

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

1. Install a Free “Save to” Chrome Extension

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

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