Let's talk business

Softalk Podcast

Stuart and I have been invited to give a podcast interview on how we began and grew Softalk. The director of The Video Podcast Company Ltd has invited us to his studio to give a 30 minute interview. Watch this space to see how we got on.

Are you a happy user of OfficeTalk?

As part of the launch activity for OfficeTalk 4.5 I've got a couple of quick requests.

1. Some OfficeTalk customers that would like to be featured as customer stories on this blog and as customer case studies on the main Softalk website.
2. People who are willing to share their favourite tips for getting the most out of OfficeTalk.

If you'd like to do either (or both) then hit me off-list by:

Email stuartb@brucemarshallassociates.com

Telephone London (UK) +44 (0)20 7870 5322 or New York (USA) +1 212 461 4853

National Small Business Week 2006

Today is the start of the National Small Business Week in the USA. Jeff Cornwall, director of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship thinks that talk is cheap and that national government structures such as the Small Business Administration need to modernize and replace their industrial era bureaucracy with something more fitting for the 21st century.

Customer Story: East Aurora School District 131

Aurora is one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the state of Illinois with a population of more than 142,000. It is located in Kane County 40 miles west of Chicago on the Fox River and I-88 Tollway. East Aurora School District 131 is made up of 17 school communities with 11,000 students and 1,300 staff.

Keeping track of staff changes and communicating between the different schools in the district is essential. Before implementing the new solution, the district had previously given hard copies of its staff directory to every one of its 1,300 employees. It became increasingly difficult to update this directory and by the time the hard copy was produced, it was usually out-of-date before they were even delivered. 

Gary Tollaksen, director of instructional technology for the district looked at a wide range of solutions that were available. "We researched a variety of options before finally selecting WorkgroupShare. Other contact management programs we tried always failed."

Gary Tollaksen and the technology team at East Aurora School District 131

WorkgroupShare enables staff to search and find contact details and also access co-employee calendars which has improved the organization and efficiency of the schools. WorkgroupMail also provides a district-wide email solution. "Technical faults have been almost non-existent in the district and on the odd occasion when it has been required to get in touch with Softalk, assuring help was on hand conveniently and quickly," added Tollaksen.

"For Aurora East School District 131 the security of the system is paramount so I'm reassured to say that we have had no security issues at all with this product."

Tollaksen summed up the district's experience of WorkgroupShare by saying, "We are very pleased with this product. The staff that use WorkgroupShare are especially pleased. The ability to update our contacts real time is the major plus for us. We love the product and the new version should only be better."

OfficeTalk 4.5 is released

Please welcome OfficeTalk to the 21st century!

After several months of great customer feedback, we are proud to announce that OfficeTalk 4.5 has now been released. The improvements over the previous version are significant. Have a look at the release notes for a list of changes.

We very much value the feedback the OfficeTalk community has given to us over the months. We are confident that the product has benefitted greatly as a result of their cooperation and look forward to continuing feedback on version 4.5.

OfficeTalk wish list

On the OfficeTalk forum there is a post by "an all-time supporter and former distributor" that creates an OfficeTalk wishlist. I thought that this was worth 'promoting' to the blog. Use the comments to let us know what's on your wishlist.

Webrunner's wish list was:

• synchronization with Pocket PC.
• connection to exchange server.
• importing of file structures (complete directories).

My wish list is:

• synchronization with Pocket PC (after years of using a Palm I've just switched to a T-mobile MDA Pro (which is a badged HTC Universal running Windows Mobile 5).
• proper notes similar to those in Outlook - can be very basic and only need categories and ability to have public or private links.
• ability to duplicate projects or create a project template. Many of our projects are the same thing where we have to repeat the same tasks over and over again. The ability to copy an old project structure and then edit it would make this much quicker.
• directly dial contacts using Skype (or other VOIP system) and automatically opening a conversation (caller recognition and opening a conversation would be even better).
• synching/linking OfficeTalk tasks/projects with mind mapping software such as MindManager (interestingly this was one that Softalk joint CEO Stuart Prestedge also mentioned recently in his post on Getting Things Done with OfficeTalk). My projects frequently start in MindManager and its frustrating and time-consuming having to convert all the arms into tasks.

What's on your OfficeTalk wish list?