One of the most requested new features to the desktop app has been the addition of file sharing. We’ve listened and file sharing is now available in the current version of the desktop app. There is nothing you’ll need to do to have access to the file sharing it will just be there the next time you run the desktop app.
The most obvious change you’ll see is the the big “Share” button on the right side of the menu bar which will allow you to select files for sharing via what used to be called our “give” feature. Just select the files, click share and you’ll be presented with two different options.
File Sharing with the Desktop App
The first option is to send the file (or files) yourself by generating a link that you can email directly to your recipient. The second option is to have us send the files for you. This second option most closely resembles the website “give” that you may be used to.
If you select the first option – you’ll be sent to a new window that contains the link that you can email directly to the recipient of your files. This allows you to customize the message and the email will come directly from you, making it more likely to be received and opened.
If you select the second option we’ll send the email for you but the link your recipient receives will be exactly the same.
We’ve also added public folder functionality to the Desktop App. Any file stored in your Public folder can be right clicked and you’ll see a menu item called “Show Public URL”. Selecting that option will get you a link to that specific file that can be posted in an email message, or a website, or one of your social media sites. That public folder link will continue to work until you remove or rename the file the link points to.
Thanks for requesting these new features. We hope you’ll find them useful.
If you’re a small business using Quickbooks to keep track of your income and expenses you probably share it with your accountant from time to time. If you only need to share the QuickBooks file at the end of the year, when the taxes are due, it’s a fairly simple process. You just create a backup copy of your data file and send it to your accountant for tax processing while you continue to work on the “live” file.
But if you need to share it more often, perhaps with a bookkeeper, you need to be extremely careful that you don’t each make changes to the same data file. If that happens either the changes that you made, or the changes that your bookkeeper made may be lost.
If you may have more than one person, in a different location, working on your Quickbooks file you need to have some sort of file locking process in place so that it’s not possible to have two people updating the file at the same time.
One way of doing this is to just be sure and check with the other person before you make any changes and then be sure to get them the changed file before they make any changes. Setting up a process of checking and double checking will work, but it can be a challenge.
An easier way is to use My Docs Online, with the Desktop Application to access your QuickBooks file. Your file is securely stored at My Docs Online and whenever you or your bookkeeper (or anyone else you designate) opens the file a file lock can be applied that prohibits anyone else from accessing the file while it’s in use.
We’ve got a video that shows how this works here and you can try it out for yourself by signing up for a Free Trial of our Multi-User Enterprise service. Pricing for the service that would secure support two people accessing the file begins at less than $10 per month.
Use file locking when collaborating on the content of Microsoft Office Word documents and files in the internet cloud.
Using “file locking” technology is important when you are sharing a Word or other word processing document with others. A file lock is used to prevent two people from opening and updating the same document or file at the same time, because that would result in one person’s updates wiping out the other’s.
On an office LAN this happens automatically and easily because Word can directly open the file on a LAN server, or even on a colleagues Mac or PC if they are on the same LAN network.
When you share a Word or other word processing file “in the internet cloud” File locking requires special software to do the same thing.
The WebDAV protocol used by Web Folders (and supported by My Docs Online) does this only for Word and Excel, because each application needs to use and understand “WebDAV Locks” and Word and Excel are essentially the only applications that do.
Although Microsoft and Office have supported WebDAV since XP and Office 2003, the support in more recent versions of Windows and Office (notably the combination of Windows 7 and Office 2010) is less reliable. This can be an issue as people upgrade from XP to Windows 7.
File Locking is also implemented in the My Docs Online Desktop App, which has additional benefits, including working with all versions of Windows and Mac OS X, all versions of Microsoft Office Word, and other word processing applications such as OpenOffice, Word Perfect, iWork, and others.
If you’re in business for yourself you know that in small companies you get to wear a number of different hats. One of the hats that I wear for My Docs Online is a QuickBooks hat, meaning that I do the majority of the accounting work.
During the course of a given week I may need to access the QuickBooks file from my home, from the office, or when traveling. There may also be others who need access to QuickBooks so I can’t just keep the file on my computer and hope I have the computer with me all the time.
My solution? Well, it’s My Docs Online of course, right?
(Best viewed Full Screen)
I store the QB data file on My Docs Online and I can access it from wherever I happen to be. The problem with that has always been that if I’ve downloaded the file myself how do I let others know not to use it until I’m through? In the past we’d cobbled together a “check-in” and “check-out” method for accessing the file but it was not a great solution. What we really needed was file locking for QuickBooks so that anyone trying to access the file would know when it was in use.
Well, since we needed functionality we figured you might need it as well so we build it into the new My Docs Online desktop app.
Now when I’m ready to access the QuickBooks file I just launch the desktop app, highlight the QuickBooks file and click the “Lock and Open” button which locks the file and launches QuickBooks so that I can work.
Then when I’m done I reverse the process. I just close QuickBooks, then click the “Unlock and Save” button, which uploads the new file into our account and removes the lock so that someone else can use it. It also moves the file to the top of the date ordered list so that anyone can see that it’s been recently updated.
Being able to apply file locking to QuickBooks has been a real benefit to me while I’ve been testing the My Docs Online Desktop App. If you have the same need for file locking please check it out.
Data theft and loss are two significant areas of concern in today’s society. The world demands and expects instant communication, and much of that communication consists of sensitive information that is stored and transmitted electronically. That means that our sensitive information is not always under our care, custody, and control, and we are forced to make some difficult choices.
How Safe Is Your Information?
In many corporations, there is little or no control over the sensitive information that has been entrusted to them. This is true for information exchanged within a business, as well as information that is transmitted to parties outside of the company. Because of this failure on the part of many organizations, legislation has been introduced in some areas requiring protective measures. These regulations include HIPPA, Basel II, SOX and many others. It is not merely sending information that makes it unsafe, it is also the manner of storage that is in question. Items like CD’s, USB sticks, and even tapes are used, and then often placed in a location that is easily accessed by other parties.
Not very long ago, personal and banking information on over 25 million people that had been stored on two CD’s was misplaced in the United Kingdom. On October 18, 2007 these two CD’s, containing information on each family that had filed for the Child Benefit, were sent to the National Audit office.
This correspondence was sent without the protection of postal registration and was not documented.
This constituted a breach of existing protocols, and endangered the financial and physical safety of every person listed in the communication. It was approximately two weeks later that an announcement was made, informing everyone of the existing situation. It quickly culminated in the resignation of Mr. Gray, who was HMRC Chairman at the time.
Another event of data loss or contamination involved the United States Army Reserve. As of May 2010, a contractor had been storing sensitive information on 207,000 reserve members on his laptop. That is risky enough, but when this laptop containing a CD-ROM with Reserve names, addresses, and social security numbers was stolen, the potential for disaster increased dramatically. The two other laptops that were stolen were not in possession of sensitive data. There have not yet been any further complications from this inability for the U.S. Army Reserve to store their information safely.
IT Security Protocols
It is very common for some IT departments to overlook guidelines that pertain to security authorizations. It has been estimated that in more than 50% of accounts, the majority of employees, regardless of employment status, have access to all of the existing files. Given the volume of information that is exchanged between information systems, on a daily basis, it is crucial to guarantee the safety and reliability of the transfer procedure. Most current methods are proven to lack either of those qualities.
Following a well-known incident that involved personal information being sold on eBay, the chief executive of Applied Security was quoted as saying, “ Instead of looking at specific technologies such as laptop or USB encryption, the focus should be on encrypting files and folders at the source.”
It is quite obvious that Mr. Frank Schlottke is correct in his statement.
What Can You Do?
My Docs Online was founded in 1998 to provide a exceptionally secure online environment for the storage and sharing of files globally for enterprise workgroups, small businesses, and for individuals.
The My Docs Online development team is comprised of former Senior Principal Computer Scientists from a leading Internet security firm. Their design and the goals of the My Docs Online Member services are to protect the integrity of the user database, and to prevent access to your files or documents without your knowledge or consent.
We are a privately held corporation located in sunny Naples, Florida in the U.S.A.
Our 10 years of online file sharing and collaboration experience has given us the opportunity to successfully help businesses of all types in over 160 countries with their file transfer and storage problems. Give us a call today at 239-495-1181. We take security seriously and have several convenient plans to fit your needs.
Most of us are familiar with the popular quote that warns, ‘Doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results is a form of insanity.’ How true this statement is, in every area of our lives.
We, as business owners, may have cleaned up our computer files and stopped wasting valuable time trying to email large files to our clients and colleagues, and that is a huge step in the right direction. An account with MyDocsOnline.com has proved to be invaluable. File sharing, file storage, and archiving is now a snap with the drag-and-drop system. In fact, we’ve become an efficiency tornado. Client files are never left on the desktop of our computer…everything is neatly organized and in its proper place.
Personal Files
But what about our personal files? Have you stopped to consider the fact that all the songs on your iPod are wiped out at least once per year?
What about the photos stored on your Blackberry?
Remember when you lost the video of your niece’s first steps?
This is an expectation that seems to be the norm, year after year. When you purchase a new computer, phone, or iPod, you automatically figure that song purchases, photos, and videos are lost. Why is that?
Because that’s what has always occurred. Songs, photos, and other large files have always been at risk of loss, no matter how important or precious they are.
What can we do about this? Amazingly, the answer is pretty simple. You need to get in the habit of saving your photos and songs, just like you do your business files. It’s not a big deal, but most people surf the web for an unlimited amount of time to acquire the song they are thinking of at the moment, without giving much attention to how they will preserve these files for years to come.
When you think about the expense involved… at least $1 per song on iTunes, doesn’t it make sense to store your music library on MyDocsOnline.com?
Photos
What about those treasured family photos? Do you think it’s enough to have an unlimited amount of SD cards randomly stored around the house?
Your photos are your memories of important events, days gone by, milestones, and marked occasions in your life. Do you want to trust them to a memory card or even a separate hard drive? I didn’t think so. With MyDocsOnline.com you can edit your photos, crop them, and change them in any way you’d like before saving them to your online file cabinet.
It’s not rocket science, but it is a change in the way you do things. You used to save photos and song lists on your computer and your phone. Those days are gone. Now you can save them right alongside your business files, and why not? Your personal files and photos are just as important to you as your client’s business files. MyDocsOnline.com provides you with enough space to store personal as well as business files. With our file storage system, you will never have to experience the loss of personal files again. Isn’t that good news?
Contact MyDocsOnline.com today, for all your file sharing and storage needs.
If you’re in business for yourself you know that in small companies you get to wear a number of different hats. One of the hats that I wear for My Docs Online is a QuickBooks hat, meaning that I do the majority of the accounting work.
Data theft and loss are two significant areas of concern in today’s society. The world demands and expects instant communication, and much of that communication consists of sensitive information that is stored and transmitted electronically. That means that our sensitive information is not always under our care, custody, and control, and we are forced to make some difficult choices.
Most of us are familiar with the popular quote that warns, ‘Doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results is a form of insanity.’ How true this statement is, in every area of our lives.