Thursday, July 22, 2010

Perez Lee of 7-Eleven Phillipines - Socialwok makes us more productive.

“How is Socialwok helping you?” is a series of blog posts where we highlight members using Socialwok in innovative ways.  Tell us how Socialwok is helping your organization and we’ll highlight your story! Stand a chance to win an Amazon Kindle!

How do you use Socialwok?
I am Perez Lee and I work for 7Eleven Phillippines as a Franchise Marketing and Planning Support Manager, under the Business Development Division. My job is to take care of our franchise stores by troubleshooting back end issues and help improve our business processes for 7-Eleven in Phillippines. I use Socialwok in my office to network with my office mates and contacts.
Socialwok is the de-facto private social networking platform for our management team at headquarters to communicate with our field personnel.


How has Socialwok saved your day? 
At 7-Eleven Phillipines, my organization faces the problem of getting employees to communicate and share their ideas openly. At our staff meetings, some of my co-workers will be shy and be reluctant to share their ideas while others will be too
aggressive. Before Socialwok, many great ideas do not get shared. Even if these ideas were expressed during the meetings, there isn’t a systematic and organized way to get more discussions around them. Very often, these great ideas get lost in the process!
With Socialwok, everyone involved in the meetings can post their ideas spontaneously and solicit a better exchange of inputs from among those concerned. More importantly, eveyone can now voice their concerns on any idea immediately and all these interactions are archived and sharable with other members of the 7-Eleven Philippines organization. This is the initial advantage we have discovered, and in time everyone will be joining in on the conversation.
The real value offered by Socialwok is its tight integration with Google Apps, which all my co-workers at 7-Eleven Phillippines use for messaging. We use our existing Google Apps accounts to login into Socialwok and launch it from within Gmail and Google Docs. All my colleagues were able to adopt Socialwok as our business social networking platform very easily and use it for communicating ideas, sharing files and media.

Has Socialwok helped your organization become more productive? 
After adopting Socialwok, we find ourselves more productive in getting ideas implemented . Socialwok has definitely help 7-Eleven Phillipines save money and increase revenues. 7-Eleven Phillipines has many field personal in various store locations throughout the country. Before Socialwok, we had to use Blackberry mobile phones to keep in touch with headquarters by using the expensive and unreliable 3G mobile data network. Our sales people mainly communicate using emails since laptops and broadband connections are cheap. We use our mobile phones for voice communications and do all our media and file sharing through Socialwok. Socialwok has become the de-facto private social networking platform for our management team at headquarters to communicate with our field personnel.

We used to do weekly sales meetings, which required all our sales people to travel back to headquarters from various remote locations. We now file regular sale reports online using Socialwok and achieve the same level of organizational awareness by just meeting in person bi-monthly. The freed up time has resulted in our sales people able to service more clients and increase our franchise revenues!

Learn more about 7-Eleven Phillipines at 7-eleven.com.ph

Sunday, July 11, 2010

New release of Socialwok! Fixed several issues: external invites, email digest changes

We just released over the weekend a minor version of Socialwok. This version has fixed several bugs; external invites, profile page. Below is the change log for this version 
  • Bug fixed: External feeds will now show up consistently when a user clicks on invite email to do external collaboration between organizations 
  • Bug fixed: Followers and external collaborators of a feed will now have their profile picture show up in the collaborator box 
  • Bug fixed: Profile data can now be saved
  • Bug fixed: Files shared from external collaborators will no longer show 0KB file sizes. That has been changed with "--"
  • Email digest have changed to reflect the amount of content you have. Users who have daily digest but do not have updates for that day will no longer get an email digest sent. This is based on feedback from this thread.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Socialwok's Presentation at Google I/O & Picture Gallery Now Available!

Socialwok had a very busy May due to Google I/O, other events like Plato@50 anniversary, IIW 2010 (Internet Identity Workshop) and our travels in Silicon Valley. 
At Google I/O, we launched a version of Socialwok integrated with Google Buzz, Socialwok Desktop (Socialwok plugin for Seesmic Desktop 2). We also got a chance to participate in the Google IO Sandbox for AppEngine where we demoed Socialwok to other conference participants.

Here is a video of our own Ming Yong and Navin Kumar presenting our Socialwok offerings in Google Buzz in the panel, What's the hubbub about Google Buzz APIs?

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Socialwok Desktop: Partnership with Seesmic on Socialwok plugin for Seesmic Desktop

This afternoon at Google IO we will announce our partnership on stage at Google IO. Here is Seesmic's blog post on this partnership. Socialwok will shortly be available for Windows and Apple Macintosh desktop systems through the Seesmic Desktop. Existing Seesmic users can install the Socialwok plugin for Seesmic Desktop 2 and post status updates directly from the desktop. 
Below are some of the cool features of the Socialwok Desktop
  • View and post status updates with rich media like web links
  • Access your shared Google Docs and download your organization's files 
  • Search your organization's knowledge base using keywords
  • Aggregate side by side all your social media services like Facebook, Twitter and Socialwok 
View and post status updates to your home feed including the preview of rich media content like web links. 

Access Google Docs shared by your co-workers and download files directly to desktop

Aggregate all your feeds together by using Socialwok side by side with other social media services like Twitter and Facebook

Socialwok Desktop is still in beta. So any feedback on issues, problems, or features is very welcome. Feel free to leave this feedback using the comments below.

Learn more. Download. http://www.socialwok.com/desktop

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Socialwok Outlook Connector: Bringing Sharing and Collaboration to Outlook

At Socialwok, we believe in the power of bringing social productivity and collaboration to the enterprise. One of the key platforms for office productivity is Microsoft Office. We are excited to announce the beta release of Socialwok Outlook Connector to help businesses share and collaborate within Outlook. Here is the blog post by Microsoft on Socialwok. Here is what you can do today to start bring business social sharing to your Outlook client.
  1. Download the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector from Microsoft (Outlook 2003, 2007, or 2010 is required)
  2. Once that is installed, download the Socialwok Outlook Connector
  3. Restart your Outlook and follow the instructions to connect your Socialwok account to Outlook. Note: Socialwok Outlook Connector supports Google Apps, Gmail and any valid work email addresses.
Here are the key benefits of what the Socialwok Outlook Connector can do for you
  • Keep track of what your co-workers and clients are working on or sharing with you - See the latest activity of any Socialwok member who e-mails you right at the bottom of the email. See what emails they have previously corresponded with you, attachments and their status updates. If they have a profile picture, you will see it too.
  • Get the latest contact information of your Socialwok  – E-mail addresses, profile details, and photos from your Socialwok network will start appearing in an Outlook Contacts folder named “Socialwok” – so now you’ll always have the latest contact information from Socialwok close at hand. You’ll also be able to e-mail your Socialwok network contacts by just typing their name into the Outlook “To:” box and letting Outlook fill-in the rest.

We brought Socialwok to Gmail through the Socialwok Gmail Gadget, so that our users can access their Socialwok network from inside Gmail. We got a lot of positive feedback for that tight Gmail integration. We hope that by bringing Socialwok to another popular email client like Microsoft Outlook; many more users can enjoy the power of business social productivity and collaboration from their inbox.

Socialwok Outlook Connector is still in beta. So any feedback on issues, problems, or features is very welcome. Feel free to leave this feedback using the comments below.

Learn more. Download. http://www.socialwok.com/outlook

Monday, May 3, 2010

Fixed: Multiple Keyword Terms & Simplified Search User Interface

One extremely cool feature in Socialwok is our consolidate keyword search: where you can find any post, person, file or feed based on keyword search. This has allowed many companies like Alien-Eye and Marlowe Law Office to use Socialwok as their knowledge management tool; their organization share and use search to access all their shared data. Socialwok just got better as a knowledge management tool for small businesses! We made the below improvements for consolidated keyword search.
  • Support for multiple keyword terms for AND query instead of OR query only
  • Simplified the search user interface to only present categories
Our improved search user interface only show categories (posts, people, feed) that have positive results. We search for keyword "Private" and it shows feeds and posts with the search term "Private" in them.

Support for AND queries using multiple keyword terms "private" AND "mentioning". The list of results is smaller for this AND query

These search improvements bring Socialwok closer towards being a social productivity tool with excellent knowledge management capabilities.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Fixed email addresses for feeds & people

We have made a major change to the email to feed or person feature in Socialwok. There is now one unique email address for each feed and person in your Socialwok network.
  • To share into a feed in your Socialwok network, send the message to:
    [name of feed]+[domain]@socialwokmail.com. To see what email addresses to send for each feed, click to see the profile for each feed.
To share into a specific feed in your Socialwok network, compose email to [name of feed]]+[domain]@socialwokmail.com. 

Example: email address used to login to Socialwok is jimh@whitehouse.com, the email address for the marketing feed is marketingtweets+whitehouse.com@socialwokmail.com
  • To direct mention a specific person in your Socialwok network, send the message to [1st part of user email address without domain]+[domain]. To see what email addresses to send for each person, click on each person's profile.
To direct mention a specific person, compose email to [1st part of user email address without domain]+[domain]@socialwokmail.com. 


Example: If the direct message is for user ming@whitehouse.com, the email address is ming+whitehouse.com@socialwokmail.com

For more examples and details on this, please visit our updated help page for email integration,

Sunday, April 25, 2010

New feature: Email digest

We just rolled out a long overdue feature; email digest. Users can now get daily, weekly or biweekly email digest of their "Home" feed activity. By default, all users will receive weekly email digests. To change your email digest settings, click Settings > Notifications

To access your email digest preferences, click Settings > Notifications

Here is an example of email digest in Gmail

This is a beta feature and we welcome feedback or bug reports at our Socialwok group. Check out your Socialwok email digest today!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Our Social Media Suite now supports publishing to your Buzz profile!


Google just announced the launch of the Google Buzz buttons and Socialwok is one of the first web services to implement them. Our users can now publish their status updates from Socialwok to their Google Buzz profiles in one click! This functionality will be part of our Social Media Suite enabling our uses to do social media marketing on all the major social media services on the web; Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and now Google Buzz. Check out our previous blog post on our social media publishing capabilities

Here is how we support the new Google Buzz buttons. I just posted a status message with a YouTube video link and want to share it in Google Buzz
A status message with a Youtube link. Click "Publish" to share it with other social media services

Socialwok now supports publishing status updates to your Buzz profile as well as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

To publish to Google Buzz, click on the Google Buzz option to initiate a pop-up of the Buzz post

Successful publishing of the Socialwok status update to your Google Buzz profile

Want to try this new exciting addition to our Social Media Suite? Sign up for Socialwok right now at our website or our listing at the Google Apps Marketplace!

Sunday, April 4, 2010

New Features: Private Feeds, Multiple Domain, Image preview, Mentions in comments

We would like to thank all our users for giving us great feedback through Google Talk, Socialwok Group and email. To streamline the feedback giving process, we now have a feedback form where users can answer a short survey and help us improve Socialwok!

Today, we are happy to announce several exciting new features as a result of our users' feedback; Private Feeds, Multiple Domain login support for web & mobile, Image Previews as thumbnails, Mentions in comments.

Private feeds
In our company Socialwok network, I find myself wanting to keep certain discussions private from the interns we have hired. Previously, we had to use email. Now, I can create private feeds to keep these discussions confidential. The administrator of the private feed has to invite other users to be members of the private feed in order for those users to get access to the private messages. To create a private feed, click on the  button. The new feed setup wizard has a private option as a checkbox.


All private messages and feeds will be indicated by the lock icon as shown above.

Multiple domain support for web and mobile
Many of our users actually have multiple lives :-) or multiple Google Apps domains. One domain could be for work and another domain is for non-profit volunteer activities or family. In the past, our users had to use two separate browsers or login only to one domain at a time. That pain is now over! Socialwok supports logging into multiple domains in a single browser. So update your bookmarks! 


After logging in, you are now redirected to your very own domain restricted URL of socialwok. For example, for a Google Apps domain @voiceroute.net (the domain is 
voiceroute.net), it's http://app.socialwok.com/a/voiceroute.net/

For the mobile web version, it's 
http://app.socialwok.com/a/voiceroute.net/MobileSocialwok.html

After you log in, you can add a link to your iPhone's home screen right away, and it will be specific to your domain. For multiple domains, you can create as many as your want.

As for users of our Socialwok Gmail gadget, you don't have to worry. It will simply just work. Now if you log in to Socialwok using multiple Google Apps domains, you will get the gadget working in all your Gmail windows or tabs.


Image preview as thumbnails
One of the commonly requested features by our users is thumbnail preview of images shared. Socialwok now supports the thumbnail previews of image files attached to an update as well as from website links.

Socialwok provides a thumbnail gallery preview of all images grabbed from a website link posted in an update

Users can preview using thumbnail any attached image files for an update


Direct Mentions in Comments

Occasionally, my colleague Navin may post something very interesting that I would like to bring to the attention of Vikram or interns in the company. I can now comment on the update in question and mention Vikram or the "Intern" feed that all the interns are following. This commented update with mentions will appear in Vikram's home feed as well as in the "Intern" feed. Check it out!