Will Central Desktop make a Mac version of their CD-Outlook plugin?

Apple just announced that Entourage is out, and Outlook is in, for the Mac version of Office 2010.

It won’t be available until late next year, but this should be promising for those who aren’t fans of Entourage.

So will CD be making a Mac version of their popular Outlook Plugin? Let’s hope so.

How to move a file stuck in the middle of Central Desktop’s Attachments folder

When we first started uploading files to Central Desktop, we sent a lot of files into the abyss that is the “Attachments” folder, by forwarding an email. Since then, we have changed the way we store these same files, but have a few that are still ’stuck’ in attachments, along with about 10,000 other files.
Fortunately, CD’s search feature is robust enough to find the files. The bad news is, if we want to move the file, we can’t, unless we locate the file in the attachments folder and then either drag and drop it to a new folder, or use the checkbox and the More Actions menu.
Or at least that was my only option until I thought of this work around:
Using the search feature, find the file, and navigate to the file’s “Details” page. From there, you can tag the file with a unique tag, I chose “moveme.” Then it’s as simple as clicking that newly created tag. CD will take you to a listing of files with that tag (hopefully only the one you just tagged.) Now you can drag n drop the file(s) to a more appropriate space.

Custom Tabs: Not just for CD Workspaces anymore

MitchCardwell over at the Central Desktop Forum just gave me a great idea: You can use the custom tabs for static searches.

If you have a search you perform regularly, say for tasks which contain the phrase “widget orders” in the NY Regional workspace, but don’t actually feel like navigating to the NY Regional workspace, navigating to tasks and looking around for widget orders, you can use the advanced search dialogue to create just about any search parameters you’d like, then use the returned URL as the link in your custom tab.

This is also a great opportunity to use on-demand drag-n-drop zones, too. This method will be a lot easier to “push” out to other users than some of the previous methods I had employed.

It doesn’t have to just be CD searches and drag-n-drop zones, either. You can use a Google search, the link for the weather report for your region or you could even use the URL for the Facebook search of that ex-girlfriend’s name that you’re hoping to find on Facebook (assuming you are using Central Desktop for a very organized exercise in cyber-stalking.)

If you have any non-workspace uses for custom tabs you want to share, leave them in the comments.

Lack of Posts

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I just got back from my marriage and honeymoon. In an effort to remain married for more than just a few weeks, I didn’t post.
I’m back now, and hope to churn out a few more ideas.
Feel free to leave a comment if you have any ideas you’d like to see me write up.

Another Outlook-Google-CD Sync Update

Google has fixed a major issue where the Google plugin disabled Outlook’s Desktop Search. That’s good news for anyone who used Desktop Search.

It’s also good news for anyone looking to make the switch from local or hosted exchange to Google Apps. The transition can be a little difficult, especially for the less tech-savvy users. The Google plugin can make the transition nearly seamless.

And for new business ventures, the combination of Central Desktop and Google Apps presents a very easy, very scalable, very quickly implemented collaboration and email environment. Keep up the good work, both of you.

On-demand Drag n Drop zones

I love Central Desktop’s “Drag n Drop” upload capability. It is probably the one feature I use more than any other on a consistent basis. If I need to upload a batch of files to a folder, it never fails me. But the Drag n Drop is only good for uploading files in bulk, right? Not neceissarily, if you know how to tweak a URL or two, you can upload files quickly and easily to any folder you specify and even tag them at the same time.

Status Updates

Quick post on Status Updates-

If you haven’t tried out the new Status Updates feature, which adds Twitter-like micro-blogging capabilities to your Company or Enterprise Central Desktop plan, then you need to do so.

It’s dead simple and adds a nice bit of extra communication, especially for those of us with multiple stakeholders offsite. You can even hook it up to Twitter and Facebook, syndicating your status to the outside world.

There’s no client, yet, to display these updates anywhere besides the dashboard, but several feature requests have been made to create internal application blocks to embed the update feeds into a wiki. There is also no way to push updates into CD’s status tool, but between Twitter and CD’s APIs, that should be easy enough to fix.

Here’s Central Desktop’s help center article on Status Updates, including pushing updtes from your mobile (US customers only, for now.)

Anyone else enjoying the Status Updates feature? Tell us about it in the comments.

Outlook – Google Sync update

So I’ve been using Google’s Outlook Sync utility for a few weeks, and I have a little bit more to add.

First, as Isaac Garcia pointed out, Google’s Outlook Sync plugin breaks Outlook Desktop Search. I’ve never been a Desktop Search user. I found it to be a little sluggish. Google Desktop still works flawlessly, so does the basic Inbox search bundled with Outlook. Google’s trying to work with Microsoft to get this cleared up. Since it’s not something that effects me, personally, I haven’t really found it to be a deal breaker.

The plugin has seamlessly created a three-way sync between GCal, Outlook and Central Desktop’s calendar. That I love. I also now have continually sync’d contacts (made even better by Google’s expanded contact fields.)

On the other hand, I’m not at all happy with a few bugs created by the plugin:

First, one of my favorite Labs features was Canned Responses. I had several different signatures set  up, many replies templated. This feature saved me a ton of time, and the Google Sync plugin broke it. I think the Canned Responses feature was tricking the web version into storing these text snippets as “Drafts” but not counting them in the Drafts label. Once I sync’d with Outlook, those responses became labled as drafts in both Outlook and the gmail on the web. I can, of course, use Outlook’s great “Insert Quick Parts” feature along with the signature support inherent in Outlook. But I don’t work out of Outlook, exclusively. So I miss those canned responses when I’m working out of gmail.

Second, Outlook just doesn’t get tags. It tries to interpret each tag as a separate email. So anything in my Inbox in gmail, which also has a tag (or two or three) gets sync’d to Outlook as 2+ emails. Since I prefer gmail’s filtering over Outlook’s, I end up with tons of duplicate emails. This is annyoing, to say the least, as it rapidly expands my .pst file, but it also is a huge hinderance when it comes to starred items being recognized as tasks.

I like to use gmail’s stars to create a task list. Double that up with the Multiple Inboxes Labs feature, and you’ve got a great task list right in your gmail inbox. I was very excited to have that sync’d with my CD account. But this became a problem when Outlook started interpreting each label as a separate email. Outlook also interprets each email in a conversation which has been starred as “flagged.” Outlook, in turn, considers that email to be a task, which gets sync’d to CD.

So if we look at one gmail “conversation” in which I receive an email regarding the Jones Account. I tag it “Jones Account” and also “Updates to Accounts.” I also star it, to keep it in my todo list. I send out a request for some clarification, and get a response back. That’s three emails. Gmail considers it to be one conversation, with one star, or one task in my todo list. Outlook would sync, and interpret it as 9 tasks, one for each of the tags”Inbox,” “Jones Account” and “Updates to Accounts,” multiplied by each of the three emails. That gets really messy, really fast.

So, after a few weeks, I have to say that, overall, I like the Outlook Sync Plugin from Google. Using it in collaboration with the Central Desktop Outlook Plugin, I have seen a pretty big increase in efficiency of importing emails into CD. I also absolutely love having three-way calendar syncing.

And after changing some of my processes, I’ve eliminated most of the troubles I listed above.

I have to highly recommend the plugin to anyone thinking about migrating to Google Apps for their email provider.

Google Apps Adds Outlook Sync

Released just yesterday, Google has added another weapon to it’s Microsoft-killing arsenal: Full, 2-way sync with Microsoft Outlook.

Now users of Google Apps’ Premier Edition can sync with Outlook. That’s Email, Calendar and Contacts. (And starred items automatically are added as tasks [at least in 2007.]) And even more powerful, it acts as an import agent to pull your existing email, contacts and calendar items out of your Exchange account and into your new Google account.

So what does that mean for us, the Central Desktop Power Users? It means that the Central Desktop Outlook Plugin is now available to Google Apps users.

CD calendar and Google Calendar should stay in sync, which is a huge request in Central Desktop’s Forums. This will also mean free/busy access by extranet clients outside of your domain.

Starred emails will now appear as tasks in Central Desktop.

And emails can easily be pushed up to a Central Desktop file or attached to a database record.

I have already tried syncing a google account with Outlook and so far, so good. I’ll see how the CD Outlook Plugin works, and give a more detailed report.

In the meantime, check out the plugin’s intro video:

I think this could be a huge step forward, for both Google and Central Desktop.

Firefox Quick Searches

Firefox comes with a great feature that I just recently discovered: Quick Searches.

They allow you to create a bookmark of a search, with the search string left out. All you have to do is type your bookmark’s “Keyword,” a space, then your search string.

And here’s the good news: Central Desktop’s advanced search feature makes this a must try Central Desktop hack.

First, read this Lifehacker article for how Firefox Quick Searches work.

Now to create the Quick Search.

Start by opening the advanced search dialogue. It’s probably in the upper right hand corner.

You can add anything you want to the search words. The most important part is limiting the search to only the workspace(s) you want, tags you need, file type or CD items (tasks, databases, etc.). This will give us our search string starter.

Setup your search parameters in the Advanced Search dialogue

In the example, I’m limiting the search to only Database Records in the workspace “The Rug.” (It ties everything together, you know…)

The search words don’t matter as much here. Again, all we want to do here is make sure our search query limits the results to the workspace(s), tags and types we require. You can use any combination you want to design your perfect search.

Hit “Search Now,” and you’ll be taken to a results page. This will give us our URL.

Create the Bookmark

At this point, you can bookmark this URL and you will always get the same results. But you don’t want that. You want to be able to find the database record or task you’re looking for.

So we take this part of the URL:  search?q=anything%20will%20do&q

And remove everything between q= and &q then replace it with %s giving us:

search?q=%s&q (you’ll want to keep the whole url intact, just replace your original query with %s . The %s acts as a variable. Any search string you use will replace the %s. It’s as if you had taken the time to re-do your original Advanced Search. Only a lot faster.

Next step: Create the Quick Search.

Open the Bookmarks Organizer: Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks (Ctrl+Shift+B) and right click on “Bookmarks Menu.” Select New Bookmark.

Add a keyword and a description for your Quick Search

Enter the search URL we just created into the “Location” box. Add a name and description for the bookmark.

You’ll need to define a Keyword for the Quick Search. The keyword is the short bit you type into the address bar in Firefox to activate the bookmark. I like to keep them short to save time. In this example I chose “rdb” for Rug Databases.

Hit the add button and we’re all done. Now we test it out.

Just go to the address bar (Ctrl+l) and type your keyword “rdb” then a space then anything you want to search for.

Obviously you'll want to enter an appropriate search parameter

And that’s that.

A few advanced tips:

To limit to a particular database or task list, just put that database or task list name into the “these exact phrases” search box when creating your search. Central Desktop indexes the database and task list names, so they act as limiters on your search.

Use (Alt+Enter) to open your search in a new window. This way you can keep on the correct page and see your results in a new window.

As long as you have one tab open to Central Desktop, these searches work from anywhere on the internet, so when the boss calls and ask “Where’s the Penske File?” you don’t have to open up the correct workspace in CD, navigate to the proper folder, and scroll to locate the Penske File. You just have to type in your Quick Search keyword and “Penske” and there’s the Penske File.

Next up, using this same principle with Ubiquity.

Do you have any other ways you’ve been using Quick Searches in CD or elsewhere? Let me know in the comments.