Introducing Improved File Preview (and better Sharing)

One of the key aspects of PBworks is the ability to work with files.  We’ve made files collaborative–you can upload them, set per-file access controls, share them, track their revision history, comment on them, tag them, and link to them.

Some types of files, like web-viewable images like GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs, we display as part of PBworks, and provide thumbnail images you can mouse over while you’re browsing your folders.  We also display the first page of PDFs, for example.

Yet for many types of files, like Microsoft Office documents, you’ve had to download files simply to look at them, even if you didn’t want to make any changes.  This is a problem, for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes you don’t want to download a massive 50MB file simply so you can take a look inside and identify it.  Other times, you may not have the required software to view a file of a particular document type–Photoshop files (PSDs) are a great example.  But the most important problem is simply the inconvenience.  Our statistics show that viewing is about 10 times as popular as editing for PBworks users; that means 90% of the time, when someone downloads a file, they’re simply trying to take a look.

That’s why we just introduced our new File Preview feature.

The new File Preview lets you to view nearly all the most common types of files, within PBworks, and without downloading.  This includes Microsoft Office documents, like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as compatible file formats like CSV, WPD, and RTF, and the ever-popular PDF.  File Preview also works for common image formats like Photoshop (PSD), Illustrator (AI), PostScript (EPS), BMP, and TIFF.

In cases where the document contains multiple pages, you can page back and forth without ever leaving PBworks.

There are some limitations on this first version of File Preview.  File Preview will not work for iWork documents like Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, nor will it work for page layout formats like InDesign or Quark.  And because the File Preview page relies on Flash, iOS users (e.g. iPhone, iPad, iPod) will not be able to page back and forth; if you want to see more than the first page of a multi-page document, you will need to download it.

File Preview is available to all users of our business products (Business Edition, Legal Hub, Agency Hub, and New Business Hub).

P.S. We also some major improvements to our “Share” functionality.  While “Share” was very useful for sharing wiki pages, files, folders, and tasks with existing users, it was difficult to share content with anyone who wasn’t already a PBworks user.  You would have to cancel the “Share,” add the users you wanted to share with, and only then go back and share.  This latest revision allows Workspace and Network Administrators (who have the power to add users) to add new users as part of the sharing dialogue.  This makes sharing with outsiders easier (while maintaining the current policy of only allowing administrators to add new users).

P.P.S. If you haven’t done so already, try out our new Personal Workspace functionality.  And because you’re always the administrator of your own Personal Workspace, you can easily share content on that workspace with others using the new and improved “Share” feature.

Introducing Personal Workspaces

Yesterday, PBworks celebrated the new year by introducing our first major feature of 2012: Personal Workspaces.

A number of our customers told us that they wanted to use PBworks as a place where their employees could store their stuff–files, documents, brainstorms, etc.  One customer even went so far as to dedicate a member of their team to creating a “personal dropbox” for every one of their employees.

To meet this need, we’re introducing Personal Workspaces.

Every business user now has their own Personal Workspace.  While each Personal Workspace includes all the key features of a regular workspace, like wiki pages, folders, and files, they also include special adaptations for their specific purpose.

1) Personal Workspaces are accessible from any screen.

Just go to the Account drop-down menu, and your Personal Workspace will be the first link shown.

2) Personal Workspaces are personal.

While you can access your Personal Workspace from any screen, no one else will even see it.  Network Administrators can join a Personal Workspace, but doing so will alert the owner of the Personal Workspace to the intrusion.

3) You can move items from your Personal Workspace to other workspaces.

Thanks to Move Between Workspaces, you can move a page or file from your Personal Workspace to another workspace.  This lets you use your Personal Workspace for rough drafts or private work, then move the finished product to a more public location.

To learn more about Personal Workspaces, visit our User Manual.

Introducing Multi-value User Profile Fields

Thought we were done for the holidays?  Think again.  We’re still working away here at PBworks HQ.  Today’s new feature is the addition of multi-value user profile fields.

Our user profiles are an important part of PBworks; Network Administrators can add any fields necessary to allow the members of their organization to share their skills and find one another.  One drawback, however, has been that each profile field could only accept a single value.  If you created an “Office” profile field, each person had to choose whether they belonged to New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, even if they split time between more than one.

Today, we’re enabling multi-value user profile fields.  Now users can add multiple values to a single profile field, and this information will show up in search results.

Don’t worry; we’ll still support regular single-value profile fields; Network Administrators can choose whether or not to enable multi-value profile fields, and how they’re configured.

In the words of the classic advertising slogan, now you can select both “Tastes Great” and “Less Filling”!

Multi-value User Profile Fields are available on all business products, including Business Edition, Agency Hub, New Business Hub, and Legal Hub.

Introducing Multi-file Zip Download

One of the convenient features that PBworks customers use a lot is the ability to upload multiple files at once.  This is a great time-saver when uploading files like photos, images, or related documents.

Unfortunately, web browser security settings prevent you from downloading more than one file at a time.  It’s not a PBworks restriction; it’s a web-wide restriction.

Fortunately, we’ve just released a feature that allows you to getaround this restriction and download multiple files, and even multiple folders.

The new Zip Download feature lets you compress multiple files into a single .zip file, which you can then download.  You can include multiple files from a single folder, or even multiple folders and subfolders.  When you extract the files from the .zip archive, all the folder and sub-folder relationships will be preserved.

While it was possible to download an entire workspace as a .zip file before, this was restricted to administrators, and seemed like overkill when you just want to download a subset of the workspace’s files.  The new Zip Download feature is accessible to all users.

And even if you’re downloading a ton of files, we’ve made it easy.  If you don’t want to wait for all the files to be processed for download, just click a link, and we’ll email you when the .zip file is ready for you.

Zip Download is now available at no extra cost to all our Business customers (including Agency Hub, New Business Hub, and Legal Hub).

For step-by-step instructions, visit our user manual.

Introducing Network Folder Settings

Products, like living things, evolve in response to their environment.  They build on what currently exists to add new functionality, or refine how things already work.

Take our latest feature, Network Folder Settings, for example.

PBworks began by allowing you to set up a single workspace for collaborating with your team.

We built on this by allowing you to bring together all your workspaces in a single network.

As the number of workspaces in networks proliferated, we allowed you to create network folders and subfolders to organize them.

Now we’re taking the next logical step by allowing you to edit your Network Folder Settings.  For some time, you’ve been able to write descriptions and upload a logo for each workspace.  Network Folders, on the other hand, were limited to a simple name.

Now, you can do the same with Network Folders.

If you’re using your network folders to organize the projects you’re executing for a key client, you can now upload that client’s logo and add a description.

If you choose not to many any changes, PBworks will continue to work for you just as it did before.

Introducing Move Between Workspaces

One of the great strengths of PBworks is that it’s easy to get started.  Just create a wiki page, upload a file, or email a workspace, and you’re off and running.  This openness helps encourage participation, and lets your team build on each others’ efforts.

But this openness has its downsides.  It’s hard to determine an exact structure in advance, because in many cases, you’re on uncharted ground.  This is the first time that much of this information has been organized anywhere other than on private hard drives or email inboxes.  It’s also the case that as your team grows, you may find the need to reorganize.

While PBworks made it easy to move wiki pages, files, and even entire folders around within individual workspaces, moving content between workspaces was a pain.  You had to manually cut-and-paste wiki pages, or download and re-upload files, and even then, this tedious manual process didn’t carry over key information like comments or revision history.

That’s why we’re delighted to announce that we’ve added “Move Between Workspaces.”  Now you can move a wiki page, file, or folder, between workspaces in your PBworks network, and the moved item will retain all the relevant information, including comments, revision history, and tags.  We’ll even remember which users had starred a particular item, and move that association as well!

The only things that aren’t moved are custom security settings (because the user rosters often differ between workspaces, it wouldn’t make any sense to carry these settings over) and changelist items (because if you edited a wiki page X before you moved it from Workspace Y to Workspace Z, that changelist item ought to appear on Workspace Y where it actually occurred).

If you’ve been holding off on reorganizing your network, now’s the perfect time to get started.

Move Between Workspaces is available on all network editions (Business Edition, Legal Edition, Agency Hub, and New Business Hub), immediately, and at no charge.  For more details, visit our user manual.

New: “Sticky Notifications”

Notifications are a great way to stay on top of your work.  It’s great to find out when others have made changes to the content you care about.  But that’s the rub–how can PBworks know what content you care about?

Originally, PBworks simply notified you about every change on every workspace you belonged to.  But as our customers grew in size and activity levels, this became overwhelming.

Then, we shifted to our current digest-style notification emails.  But these emails didn’t account for the things you considered really, really important.  So we upgraded our starring system so that you could star both pages and files, and so that you received immediate notifications about changes to starred content.

But it’s tough to remember to star everything you find interesting.  A good product gives you the ability to get what you want.  A great product gives you what you want without your asking.

That’s the principle behind what we’ve called “sticky notifications.”  What this means is that whenever you upload a file, edit a page, or comment on a page or file, we know that you consider it important, even if you didn’t remember to manually star it.  We’re now tracking the items you touch, and automatically sending you notifications when other people make changes after you.  This is similar to the way you get notifications when people update a Facebook thread you’ve commented on.

If for some reason you don’t like them, don’t worry.  Each individual user gets to choose whether or not to receive them

For more details, visit our user manual.

Coming Soon: Improved LiveBar

Ever since we launched our real-time collaboration features, our business products have featured the LiveBar in the lower-right corner of your screen.  This nifty little tool let you chat with colleagues, trigger conference calls, and see the latest activity notifications, all without ever leaving your current screen.

The LiveBar has been so successful that we’ve decided to expand it.

Starting on Monday, the LiveBar will include three new features: Starred Items, Tasks, and Add an Item.

These new features will make PBworks even easier and more powerful.

Starred Items:

Starred items have always been a useful feature for marking what’s important to you, but they had the disadvantage of requiring you to either A) navigate to the workspace containing the starred item, or B) access the starred items list from your Dashboard.  Either way, it took many extra clicks to get to the item you needed.

Enter Starred Items on the LiveBar.  From any screen, you can now click on the yellow star in the LiveBar to see a list of your most recent starred items, and it takes just one more click to view a complete list on your Dashboard.

Tasks:

Tasks are also an integral part of the product.  But until now, if you wanted to see your full task list (across all your workspaces), you needed to return to the Dashboard view.  With the new LiveBar, all you have to do is click on the Tasks symbol (the checkbox) and you’ll see a list of your upcoming tasks.  As with Starred Items, you can click through to the Dashboard for a complete list.

Add an Item:

Finally, one of the most important things about collaboration is being able to add information quickly.  The new Add Items feature lets you add new wiki pages or upload files from any screen.  Just click the add symbol and select your desired action.  If you’re on a particular workspace, we’ll default to uploading to that workspace, but we’ll give you the chance to select any workspace and any folder as the location of the new page or uploaded file.

The improved LiveBar will be rolling out on the night of Monday, September 19.  Check it out, and leave comments on this post with your reactions!

The PBworks Status Page

Are you experiencing difficulties accessing PBworks, and wondering if it’s a local problem, or a system-wide issue?

Find out the answer on our status page.

When issues arise, the status page is the quickest way to get our official take on what’s happening.

Most of the time, the status will be Normal.  But if it isn’t, we’ll let you know what’s happening, and how to contact us if you’re facing an emergency.

We’re Hiring Engineers!

We’re continuing to expand our engineering team, and have three open positions we need to fill.

As usual, you can read all about the perks of working at PBworks on our jobs page, including weekly massages, our own grand piano, and of course, working on a great product that’s used by millions of people every month.

The three open positions are: