Volerro

Volerro Introduces Task Management, Milestones and Calender View

Many of our users already know that Volerro is the best way to create and refine strategic content with their teams. A few weeks ago, we added chat and screen sharing to make it easier for our teams to collaborate without leaving Volerro. Today, we’ve made Volerro even better by adding task management, milestones and project calendars. Let’s take a look at the new features in an example project.

As always, we start with the Dashboard and select the Project of interest.

 In this case, we’ve created an example project called (coincidentally) Task Management. You’ll notice that our project view looks pretty much the same but if you look closely you’ll see some new details.

Let’s look at the “done” board. You’ll notice a date in the upper right corner.

This is the new Milestone feature. Now your team can easily set target dates (or Milestones) for important project steps. If you want to set a milestone on a board, it’s easy, just “edit” the board and you’ll find the new Milestone date entry field shown below:

The Milestone feature is a quick way to keep all team members aware of target dates. It’s great for sprints and almost any other project methodology.

Task Management

Now let’s take a look at the new task management features. The image below shows this new feature at a glance:

Current Volerro users will see that we’ve simply extended our “Card” functionality to create a “Task”. Cards are still easy to add to a board by simply clicking the card icon at the bottom of the board. But now a Card can become a Task by assigning 1 or more responsible team mates and adding an optional due date. In the above image, we display a number of different tasks in various configurations.

You’ll see how we display:

• Tasks assigned to more than one person 
• Tasks that are pending
• Tasks that are completed
• Tasks with a due date
• Tasks that have been created by a document annotation or comment

We’ve made it super simple to assign a task, set due dates and mark completion right from within any card; as you can see below:

It’s also easy to convert any document comment or annotation into a task. Just click the new “Make Task” option in the annotation (shown below):

The create task dialogue will appear:

Just assign the task, set an optional due date and you’re done – the task shows up right next to the comment or annotation (see below). This option is perfect for teams working on revising complex content from PowerPoint to full motion video.

Calendar View

While we think our “boards” are an incredibly easy way to view tasks and content at every project stage. However, we thought it would be helpful to view a project according to the due dates for each task. There’s no better way to do that than with a calendar view – so we thought we’d add it!

Take a look either in the Project View or on The Dashboard and you’ll see this new calendar view selector:

The calendar view is a great way to see all of your tasks at a glance:

Each Task, along with its color code and completion status is shown on by due date. If you want edit the task, simply click on it and the task editor will drop in. If you want to move the task – simply drag it to the appropriate date. 

The calendar view also comes with a month navigator and a “today” button to help you quickly jump around the calendar. Take a look at next month, and you’ll see pending tasks and our “Done” milestone in black and white.

Users can use the view selector in the upper right corner to switch between traditional “board view” of a project and the new “calendar” view.

Summary

We hope you like our new Task Management, Milestone and Calendar View Features. With these new features we are one step closer to realizing our vision of delivering the most complete content collaboration platform available in the cloud.

Please take it for a test drive and leave us feedback on your experience. As always, we’ve provided complete documentation in our help section.

Now your team can assign tasks, set milestones and view it all on a single calendar - it’s Teamwork Simplified!

Volerro Available In Google Chrome Web Store

As of last week, Volerro is now available as an app through the Google Chrome Web Store.

The Chrome Web Store is an online marketplace whose primary purpose is to help Chrome users find a wide range of apps, extensions and themes designed for the Google Chrome browser. It does this by supporting search, providing categories of apps, and displaying lists of various kinds, both curated and auto-generated. Each app is displayed with its own details page where you can read user reviews and leave ratings. The store makes it easy to explore and try out apps.

Within the web store, you will find Volerro under “Productivity” apps in the task management category, or simply do a search. Once you “+ Add To Chrome”, it will be even quicker to get into Volerro to start creating, refining, and distributing great content with your teams. Now, instead of typing in the Volerro web address, simply click “Volerro.” It’s just that much more user-friendly.

 We’re constantly looking for ways to make it even easier for users to access Volerro and share it with others.

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Teamwork Simplified with Integrated Presence, Chat and Screen Sharing

At Volerro, we’re constantly looking for ways to simplify the way teams create, refine and distribute strategic content.  This week, we’ve released three new features to help your team collaborate better and get results faster. They are:

1. Presence – Ever wondered which of your team members is online? Now we can tell you!
2.  Chat – Now that you know which team members are online – go ahead and start a chat session!
3.  Screen Sharing – Want to hold a virtual team meeting? Share your screen with a single click!

Our New Presence Feature Shows You Who’s On-line Right Now

Now when you log into the Volerro Dashboard, or any Volerro Project, you’ll instantly know which of your team members is online. 

Just take a look in the header and you’ll find online team members show with an orange glow behind their profile pictures (avatars). See the area highlighted by the red box below:

On closer inspection, you can see that we also show the total number of users online. See Below:

On the Volerro Dashboard, we show you all of your team members (from any project) who are online.

In the Volerro Project View, we highlight those of your team who are online with an orange highlight:

In the example above, 4 of the 7 project members are currently online. 

So now that you know which of your team members are online, let’s show you what else you can do!

Chat, Multi-Person Chat & Multi-Session Chat

Chat with a single teammate:

Start a chat with a team member simply by clicking on any member with an orange highlight. Tool tips indicate the members’ name. Clicking starts a one-on-one chat session as seen below:

Now you’re chatting with your teammate using a familiar chat format (see below).  Just type what you want to say and hit enter (or hit the send button). You can hide chat (to focus on another chat session) or leave the chat by clicking the appropriate buttons.

 Chat with multiple people or a team:

If you want to start a multi-person chat, simply click on “view members” (see below) :

Then select the members (from the list) you with which you want to chat and click the chat button (see below):

Now you’re chatting with your team!

Multiple Chat Sessions:

With Volerro, you can have multiple chat sessions open at the same time. We’ll show you all of your open chat sessions at the bottom of the screen (see below). You can switch between chat sessions by simply clicking on the session selector at the bottom of the chat widget.

Now you can multi-task across all of your projects in one place!

Share your Screen with a Single Click!

Say you want to hold a scrum meeting with your extended team and you want them to see what you see as you drive the meeting. Now you can start a screen sharing session using our Join.me integration.  We use join.me at Volerro because it is a zero-overhead screen sharing solution that is ridiculously easy to use.

To start a meeting, simple click on “members online” from the team area in the project or dashboard (see below):

 Then select the team members you need in your meeting and click the join.me button:

Once you click the join me button, all of your team members will get a meeting invitation (see below). All they need to do is click the “Join Meeting” link and their in! There’s no software for them to load, no firewall concerns to worry about. It just works. This is great for working across the enterprise with colleagues or across the country with clients and vendors!

Now you don’t need to leave Volerro to facilitate a virtual meeting. It’s screen sharing, simplified!

No other collaboration suite makes it this easy

We’re driven to streamline the way your team creates and refines strategic content. Each week we launch another compelling feature to help your teams reduce content chaos. If you’ve used another collaboration or project management tool, you’ll recognize that none offer integrated chat and screen sharing. Don’t try this with any of the other leading project management or collaboration tools.  It’s another Volerro first!

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Update Content in One Place, Share Instantly Everywhere.

It’s a common problem. Sales teams are constantly in need and searching for the latest and greatest information to share with customers. Marketing teams are constantly updating and producing new content for Sales and other teams, while trying to ensure the outdated content is no longer being used.

Last week, we shared with you Volerro’s ability to build PowerPoint slide libraries and full PowerPoint presentations from a list of individual slides within a board. Volerro supports the ability for all of that content to be linked so that when “master” slides or other content types are updated, those updates are reflected elsewhere.

We accomplish this incredible convenience through a “Distribution Project”. A Distribution Project is a type of project used for housing content intended to be distributed to users for Read-Only and Print-Only purposes.  Never again will you have to worry that the sales team is using outdated materials or that the latest branded presentation is in the hands of the executive team.

To create a Distribution Project, all you need to do is check the “Is this a Distribution Project?” check box upon creating a New Project. 

When content is copied into a Distribution Project, Volerro automatically creates a read only linkback to the original content. We do this for two reasons:

1. It ensures that content is not modified by the broader audience who is consuming the content.
2. It allows us to automatically update distributed content automatically if the original content is revised.

As with all of our new features, we made it easy to use a Distribution Project. First, select the content you want to distribute and copy it to the Volerro copy zone (it’s like a clipboard):

Then simply select the Distribution Project you’re using for your extended team  and pull the content from copy zone into the project.

When you copy into a Distribution Project, Volerro automatically creates a live link to the original content that is read-only. We designate this by adding a small link icon to each piece of content.

You can see an example of these links below:

Once copied into a Distribution Project, that content may no longer be edited or annotated - it can only be viewed, downloaded or printed. The best part? When the original content is edited or replaced, it will automatically be updated across ALL Distribution Projects the content was copied to. No need to remember which projects have the content, which users have visibility to it, or which version they had. Just update the original content. Volerro takes care of the rest.

Convenient, isn’t it?  That’s what we’re aiming for - to simplify the way teams create, refine and distribute content.

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Want a PowerPoint Slide Library? Volerro makes it simple!

We’ve all been there. You have a presentation coming up, and you need to either build or find the content for it. You know Joe gave one last week, and he likely has a bunch of the PowerPoint slides you need, but he’s on vacation. Marketing probably has some of what you need, but you don’t know who to contact to have it in time to prepare for the presentation. And you know this potential new client was pitched by your company a year ago, but you have no idea what was presented to them and the salesperson who did it is no longer with the company.

Wouldn’t it be great to have all of these presentations available in one place that was easy to search?

One of Volerro’s coolest new features is its ability to build PowerPoint slide libraries and full PowerPoint presentations from a list of individual slides within a board.

A PowerPoint file is just one of the many file types Volerro accommodates. Now, in addition to sharing and collaborating on complete PowerPoint presentations, you can also use Volerro to house individual PowerPoint slides from which sales, product, marketing, business development and others can custom build their own presentations. And Volerro supports the ability for content to be linked so that when “master” slides are updated, those updates are reflected elsewhere.

So, how easy is it to build a slide library?

Step 1: Upload a large slide deck holding your slide library and select “Break into Individual Slides”;

Step 2: Categorize slides using boards to help your team find what they need;

Step 3: Add tags to help users find the slides they are looking for.

And, how easy is it to then build a presentation?

1.  Browse or search for the slides you need.

2.  Move the slide(s) into the “Copy Zone”.

3.  Create a new board to build your presentation, and put your slides in the order you prefer.

4.  Select “Combine into PPTX” from the “Board Options” dropdown menu.

The presentation will be built in the order the slides are listed from top (beginning) to bottom (end) of the board. The master.pptx file will download to your computer.

It’s that easy.

Now, what time was that presentation?

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Volerro Featured as an App for Kanban

Last week, About.com posted an article in their section on Collaboration Tools which featured “7 Kanban Board Tools for Project Collaboration.” Volerro was cited as one of these tools.

The article, authored by Ann Augustine, discussed how these tools are “becoming popular online project collaboration tools for digital marketing programs, software development, and even innovation social gaming techniques…”  The application of Kanban boards to projects and processes across the organization helps teams to visualize workflow and improve productivity.

Regarding Volerro, Ann said, “…Volerro appeals to digital marketers, and has a natural fit for software and product development. Volerro’s unique annotation feature facilitates collaboration on video timelines, web pages, and documentation of any kind.”

Thanks to Ann and About.com for putting us in the company of some other fantastic tools out there.

Have you tried using Kanban methods for your projects?

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