Collanos Blog

Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 contains some new features, many improvements to existing functionality, as well as various minor enhancements and bug fixes. The focus of this release was to further improve the day-to-day work of users by filling in small but essential capabilities, as well as to lay the groundwork for supporting additional language translations.

New language translations can now be deployed independently from product releases in form of download-able language packs.

Workplace now supports external Hyperlinks and Emoticons (Smilies) in Chats and Discussions. Hyperlinks are also supported in the text areas of Note, Task and Link objects.

Existing contacts in popular social networks can be invited directly to join Collanos.

Many enhancements have been implemented and existing functions polished. See the illustrated Release Notes (PDF format) for more details.

As always, Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 is available in versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The software ships with built-in English, German and Chinese languages. Additional languages will be rolled out in the coming months, using the new language pack delivery mechanism.

The current version 1.3.0.3 is compatible with all previous 1.3 versions, and to a lesser extent to version 1.2, giving teams with mixed installations a smoother transition. The new release is available both as installer from Collanos’ web site and as automatic update process for existing users (Vista users see note below).

Collanos continues to improve the free version of Workplace. Our gratification is a steadily growing, active and vibrant user community. As always, we look forward to your feedbacks! Please help us by spreading the good news, for instance, by inviting your friends and business contacts to join Collanos as well. Thank you!

Release Highlights
This Workplace release contains a number of important improvements and new features:

• New delivery mechanism and simplified support for new languages
• Hyperlinks supported in Chats, Discussions and text areas of Notes, Tasks and Links
• Emoticons (Smilies) added to Chats and Discussions
• Invite contacts from social networks (Orkut, Friendster, MySpace, Hi5, Facebook, Xing, BlackPlanet)
• Improved usability of “Invite to Collanos” dialog
• Functions “Open With…” and “Save as…” added to Conflict Bin (for File objects)
• Central users directory now supports full name search; plus empty searches more meaningful
• Web page names fetched and filled-in automatically in Link objects
• Plus many more enhancements and over 80 issues resolved…

Compatibility
The current version 1.3.0.3 is protocol-compatible with all previous 1.3 versions, and to a lesser extent to version 1.2, giving teams with mixed installations a smoother transition. Users with older versions will obviously not benefit from new features. For example, a 1.3.0.2 user won’t see Hyperlinks or Emoticos in Chats or Discussions, but only plain text representations.

Automatic Update
We strongly recommend upgrading to the latest version. Existing Workplace 1.3 users will benefit from an automated upgrade process. All you need to do is restart your application to trigger the auto-update process. Note for Vista users: On a Windows Vista with the UAC (User Access Control) activated, if Workplace is installed in Program Files, the automatic software update does not work unless you start Workplace with the ‘Run as administrator‘ option.

Download Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3
Just click on any of the icons and download Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 now!

User Forum
We always like hearing from you! Feel free to share your feedback, post your questions and engage in discussions right here or - even better - on our Community Forum. Thank you.

Today we made available release 1.3.0.2 - a pure maintenance release for Collanos Workplace. It fixes a number of defects and limitations discovered since the launch of the main 1.3 version three weeks ago. Furthermore, this maintenance release reduces the load on CPU, bandwidth and overall traffic volume significantly. Several optimizations were applied to the replication engine. All users should update to this version to guarantee smooth operation of Collanos Workplace.

For more information, please check also the release notes.

Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.1 is an important release of the multi-platform P2P team collaboration solution. This version contains a number of new features, major improvements to existing functionality, as well as many enhancements and bug fixes. The focus of this release was to further improve the overall user experience, fill-in functionality gaps, and increase the collaboration productivity of dispersed teams.

These goals have been achieved with the following measures. The core P2P content synchronization algorithm has been further enhanced with the much anticipated “fetch from any” capability. Team members can now synchronize with any other team member, even if the original content creator is not currently online. A brand new real-time instant messaging subsystem is replacing the old “send a message” function. The new instant messenger supports informal ongoing chats with all existing contacts, outside the scope of team workspaces.

To improve the life of Task intensive workers, a new “All Tasks” perspective has been introduced. Tasks from all folders of all workspaces can now be viewed, filtered and changed in one location.

To facilitate moving data in from and out to the operating system, a number of functions were added. Dragging and dropping of folders now works also from “inside-out”, i.e. whole workplace folder structures can easily be dragged and dropped to the file system. As an alternative function, users can also use the new “Copy To…” function. Finally, File objects can now be opened with any application, using the new “Open With…” feature. Many more enhancements have been implemented. See the illustrated Release Notes (PDF format) for more details.

As always, Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.1 is available in versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The software is available in English, German and Chinese translations. The current version 1.3 is compatible with the last version 1.2, which will give teams with mixed installations a smoother transition. The new release is available both as installer from Collanos’ web site and automatic update process for existing users.

Collanos is proudly improving the FREE basic version of Workplace with each new release. Our gratification is a steadily growing and vibrant user community. We look forward to your feedbacks! Please help up by spreading the good news. Use the built-in “Invite to Collanos” tool and invite all your contacts and friends. Thank you!

Release Highlights
This Workplace release contains a number of important improvements and new features:

• P2P “Fetch From Any” replication algorithm
• Persistent Instant Messenger
• New “All Tasks” perspective
• New “Open With…” function on File objects
• Drag and Drop workspace folders to file system
• New “Copy To…” function to file system
• Automatic detection of “inconsistent members”
• Plus many more enhancements…

Compatibility
Workplace versions 1.2 and 1.3 are protocol-compatible with each other for all basic operations. Mixed teams will be able to work together. Users with old versions will obviously not benefit from new features and improved capabilities. Furthermore, even 1.3 users will have limitations when interacting with old users. For example, a Workplace 1.2 user and a Workplace 1.3 user won’t be able to use the new instant messenger together.

Automatic Update
We strongly recommend upgrading to the latest version. Workplace 1.2 users will benefit from an automated upgrade process. All you need to do is restart your application to trigger the auto-update process.

Today, the new version of Collanos Workplace, 1.3, will be made available. The foundation of Collanos Workplace has been thoroughly optimized and the teamwork functions have been largely extended. Collanos now includes a Team Instant Messenger environment. In addition, Collanos Workplace 1.3 sets standards as to a comprehensive user task management. Team members can work with their own Windows, Mac or Linux systems, and the results will be available to the other team members on the internet –as simply and fast as using a server-based solution.

Collanos has boosted the technology behind its p2p (peer to peer) platform. Any online team member can ensure that all other team members, even if online only for a short period, have access to the most up-to-date workspace content.

The most noticeable improvement from a user´s perspective is the new task management function which is now accessible from all across Workplace. In an overview window, the user can view, track and maintain all the tasks across all his workspaces. In addition, a new Collanos Instant Messenger has been integrated into the teamwork environment. It allows team members to conduct dialogs, discuss issues and work out creative solutions by using the chatting function.

The extensions of version 1.3 will allow Collanos to develop and offer new features in the upcoming months. “The extensions of the peer-to-peer technology allow Collanos partners and service providers to offer value-added services”, explains Franco Dal Molin, president and CTO of Collanos Software. “These offerings include persistent, secure and reliable data storage, permanent team synchronization and the possibility to access workspace content from the browser. Messaging is planned to be augmented with team messaging and voice/video functionality. As in task management, other relevant team work tasks will be supported Workplace-wide, for example, in the form of team calendars and other tools for planning and change management.”

Workplace 1.3 is seen as the turning point for Collanos to establish itself clearly as the leading cross-company teamwork environment on the internet. Peter Helfenstein, CEO of Collanos Software, is convinced: “The solid foundation to support ad-hoc teamwork has been established. Teamwork has always been of great importance. In our globally networked world, effective teamwork has become the crucial factor of success. With Collanos Workplace 1.3, the required platform and tools are now available to everybody.”

Collanos macht heute die neue Version seines Collanos Workplace 1.3 verfügbar. Das Fundament von Collanos Workplace wurde massiv verbessert und die eigentlichen Teamworkfunktionen wurden wesentlich erweitert. Collanos ist nun auch eine Team-Instant-Messenger-Umgebung. Zudem setzt Collanos Workplace 1.3 neue Standards für umfassendes Task-Management der Benutzer. Teamworker können mit ihrem eigenen Windows-, Mac- oder Linux-Rechner arbeiten, die Ergebnisse stehen den anderen Teammitgliedern im Internet trotzdem genauso einfach und schnell zur Verfügung wie beim Einsatz einer Server-basierten Lösung.

Collanos hat die Technologie seiner p2p (Peer-to-Peer)-Plattform mit der neuen Version weiter ausgebaut und verfeinert. Bereits ein einzelnes online Teammitglied stellt sicher, dass alle anderen Teammitglieder, wenn auch nur kurzzeitig online, die Ergebnisse der Arbeiten der Teammitglieder auf dem allerneuesten Stand zur Verfügung haben.

Den wohl grössten funktionalen Schritt für den Benutzer bietet Collanos mit dem neu eingeführten Workplace-übergreifenden Task-Management. Der Benutzer kann alle definierten Tasks über seine sämtlichen Teams hinweg in einer Übersicht einsehen, tracken, pflegen und ergänzen. In die Teamwork-Umgebung wurde zudem ein neuer Collanos Instant Messenger integriert. Teammitglieder können so in gewohnter Weise mittels Chatting Dialoge führen, Probleme diskutieren und kreativ Lösungen erarbeiten.

Mit den Erweiterungen der Version 1.3 legt Collanos die Basis, um seinen Benutzern in den nächsten Monaten weitere neue Funktionen zur Verfügung zu stellen. „Die Erweiterungen der Peer-to-Peer-Technologie erlauben, dass in Zukunft Collanos-Partner oder Service Provider Mehrwertdienste anbieten“, erläutert Franco Dal Molin, President und CTO von Collanos Software. „Diese Angebote reichen von der permanenten, sicheren und zuverlässigen Datenhaltung, hundert Prozent verfügbarer Teamsynchronisation bis hin zum Zugriff auf die Ergebnisse der Teamarbeit nur über Browser. Messaging soll bald um Team-Messaging und Voice-/Videofunktionen ergänzt werden. Analog dem Task Management werden weitere relevante Teamworkaufgaben in Zukunft Workplace-übergreifend unterstützt, so beispielsweise in Form von Teamkalendern sowie weiteren Planungs- und Change Management-Werkzeugen.“

Der neue Release 1.3. ist für Collanos Ausgangspunkt, um sich definitiv als die führende firmenübergreifende Teamwork-Umgebung am Internet zu etablieren. „Das solide Fundament, um das ad-hoc Teamwork professionell zu unterstützen, ist nun gelegt“, ist Peter Helfenstein, CEO von Collanos Software, überzeugt. „Teamwork war schon immer wichtig. In der global vernetzten Welt ist gutes Teamwork der Erfolgsfaktor schlechthin. Die dafür benötigte Plattform und die Werkzeuge stehen mit Collanos Workplace 1.3 ab sofort jedem zur Verfügung.“

Collanos Software wishes you a happy and prosperous New Year.

2008 will be important for Collanos and hopefully quite exciting for you, one of our thousands “pioneering users”!

Collanos Phone Beta:

We’re starting the year with the introduction of valuable new (and free) functionality!

In cooperation with our voice services partner, Translumina Networks, we just launched the first Beta version of Collanos Phone, a service with voice, video and instant messaging features. The Beta program will demonstrate the robustness of the new offering. We hope you will enjoy these great new features. Your experiences and feedback are highly regarded and valuable to us and the entire Collanos user community. Please check it out and share your opinion on our Community site.

After the Beta phase (should last a couple of weeks) we will launch Collanos Phone 1.0, including premium voice features, allowing you to be called from the public telephone network as well as to call team members’ phones.

Integrated in the Phone is a multi-protocol instant messaging capability, allowing you to use Collanos Phone as your instant messaging front end to AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ and Jabber.

Note: Collanos Phone uses the same “Collanos Name” and user profile that you have already created with Collanos Workplace.

Collanos Workplace 1.2:
As you may be aware, we recently launched a much improved version of Collanos Workplace, 1.2. After migrating the supporting infrastructure to this new version, it is now required for all users to upgrade to Collanos Workplace 1.2. Earlier versions (V1.1 and older) are no longer supported by the network infrastructure.

The next version of Collanos Workplace, 1.3, including the long awaited team synchronization functionality as well as new messaging capabilities, will follow very soon.

Both the new Collanos Phone Beta and Collanos Workplace can be downloaded from http://www.collanos.com/downloads. We look forward to reading about your experiences. You can be assured, while 2008 has just started, it will be an exciting year for Collanos users!

We are excited to announce the availability of Collanos Workplace 1.2.
This new release includes major technical improvements along with some new features:

• P2P content replication now synchronizes workspaces much faster.
• Computer resource consumption has been significantly reduced.
• Mac OS X and Windows Vista users will enjoy improved compatibility with their OS.
• Offline users are notified immediately via email when invited to a workspace.
• Import contacts from existing address books in other applications and invite them to join Collanos.
• Provide feedback and communicate issues directly (with all log files automatically attached) to Collanos technical support.
• Many minor improvements, including user interface, traffic optimizations, and more.

When running Collanos Workplace 1.2 you may be asked to change your Collanos Name. This is due to a new formatting rule that has been introduced to lay the foundation for future features, including the Collanos Phone and other voice services that will be rolled out very soon.

Important: Download the new version and install it over your old Workplace installation. Your existing workspaces will be updated automatically. Synchronization will work only between other 1.2 Workplace versions. Make sure ALL your team members upgrade as well.

You can find more detailed release notes on the Collanos Forum. We are confident you will enjoy the new power injected into Collanos Workplace and look forward to getting your feedback on the Forum or via email.

Download and install Collanos Workplace 1.2 today!

Often we get emails from users asking why we are not steering head on to the enterprise market. For now, Collanos Workplace is all about allowing our users to create ad hoc teams, very likely because they don’t have the resources, time and skills to license a SharePoint, Groove, Groupwise, Notes, etc (or ramp up their entire team on the latest flavor-of-the-day, ‘cool’ hosted collaboration tool, which may be cool but not enough to be adopted by the entire team).

As a result, the SMB market is where we have home advantage. That being said, often we find enterprise users using our application as it still beats the complexity of running some of the afformentioned enterprise solutions. Furthermore, Collanos bridges the gap of being able to collaborate on a team project with organizations external to the brick firewalls of these tight enterprise systems.

Below is a correspondence between our team and a user bringing up some great points about why and how Collanos can fit in the enterprise market:

“Dear Collanos,

…There are a few issues that would need addressing to enable this product for an enterprise, and I am not sure as to whether doing this goes against the ‘decentralised’ model that collanos uses. You would need some of the centralised controls. You would want the ability, for example, to limit certain people from inviting members from outside the organisation. Additionally, from an IT admin point of view I have concerns that I would not know what was floating around the business. In the standard client/server environment we can easily check which files are where, what they contain etc. Having a ‘closed network’ which is what peer-to-peer does, would mean that we would be blind in this respect. The lack of instant messaging logging is also of concern.

The issue of files being deleted / altered, and then users waiting to get them back would also be an issue. Again, in client / server we keep back-ups of all files on the server so it is an easy thing to get them back. I do not know how we would achieve this in a p2p environment. We trailed Groove before Microsoft had bought it and they seemed to address this issues by having servers in the loop - back-up server, relay server etc. I understand that with Groove now you can upload/download content to Sharepoint servers. This whole centralised modelling may be stepping away from the way you envision your product evolving though, although I actually just regard them as a ‘bigger client’ in the loop.

What we were looking for was a simple way for certain teams to work together better. We are currently implementing Lotus Notes as our email system and that obviously has very strong collaboration functionality. However, it does require initial set-up and ongoing maintenance by IT - your type of product is a very quick way to get keep everything in the one place and just ‘work’.

Maybe you could enable your product to sync with a Lotus Domino server like Groove does with Sharepoint? This would certainly help address many of the issues above.
Collanos Member”

Collanos’ response:

“Dear Collanos Member,

Many thanks for the in-depth comments. I understand you points very well. As I mentioned in our first email, we are really targeting a more ad-hoc teamwork environment. Very valuable enterprise needs are as such second priority to what you call to an extent the “simple way for certain teams to work together better”, fast, ad-hoc without administrative hurdles. The price we pay at the moment is that we cannot fulfill typical enterprise needs.

The idea of to be an extension to Lotus reaching beyond the Enterprise came up several times, not only from us. It could make a lot of sense.

We are working on closing some of the enterprise gaps though. Instant messaging will be improved and stored. We are looking at integrating with server peers that will allow back-up and potentially can store a superset of team Workplace data. And to improve Identity Management and the recognition of users is something that we will need to address.

At the moment we are positioned differently and I think that we can create a lot of value for ad-hoc teams working together professionally with Collanos, more professional than using just email to support document-rich inter-company processes.

I am very glad to keep you posted on all our plans and new deliveries. Our goal is clearly through the “consumer” to play more and more a role in the enterprise. Feedback like yours is invaluable for us. If you still see areas where in the context of your business a process can be supported successfully with a collaborative solution like Collanos, we will be glad to learn about it. I think that Collanos also has a role in helping people to improve their work culture to share with their teams and to reuse. From there they can move up into the enterprise-class collaboration league. My experience is that it is most of the time more about cultural barriers than missing technology if collaboration fails.

Many thanks.

Collanos “

Would be very interested in getting your comments on this topic. You can respond directly to this posting or on the related board on our user forum.

Nothing like starting the today with a new great review of our product. Actually, there were two great blog postings by two different users who work for the same company AWH Weblog.

Brent and Jesse submitted their objective (truly unbiased) review of Collanos Workplace, including some cons, which we are always welcoming so that we can further improve our products. What’s more, Jesse even provided a step-by-step installation guide for those of you first installing our peer-to-peer based team workspaces solution. Brent brings up some very valid points:

“Personally I was excited to test this product because I feel workplace communication and collaboration is weak in most companies…finding a product to help the process without adding extra work has been a challenge, until now…”

Collaboration adoption is extremely weak at non-enterprise companies (even enterprise adoption can be argued)…simply since we always default to same old out-of-context email. Organizing your content around team workspaces/projects is the fundamental value Collanos provides. Once you ‘think out of the inbox’, it’s hard to fall back to email when working on future team-based projects.

Brent also highlights a key Collanos differentiator, separating us from the many hosted team collaboration solutions currently out there, comparing the client vs. browser experience:

“…honestly I found the interoperability via a client much better than most online collaboration tools I have used…As well I found the overall interface well thought out and enjoyable to use.”

The reason being that with a rich client you get a rich experience, something you are so familiar with from other client applications such as Windows Explorer/Finder, folder navigation, Instant Messengers, etc. granting you immediate comprehension of the Collanos application with zero training required.

The work-offline advantages of Collanos are a no-brainer for those of us even with 10% network downtime throughout the day. The user interface and experience are just as important to get full team adoption, embracing the least tech-savvy member of the team. Otherwise, it’s back to email…

Areas for improvement, such as better permission management and hosted workspaces are already in the works (as is VoIP integration, calendaring and more) but we always like to hear from our users what is their most burning requirements (See related board on our user forum).

We applause Brent and Jesse’s thorough analysis and review of Collanos Workplace and encourage others to follow suit and share with the entire Collanos community how to make the best of Collanos and let us know where we can improve.

We are excited to announce the availability of an update to Collanos Workplace 1.1.

As opposed to past updates, this specific update will not pop-up automatically when you open the application. You will need to visit our Downloads page, select your operating system and download the installer. Once you have completed the download, close Collanos Workplace, run the installation and when prompted where to install the application and application data be sure to select the existing locations of your current Collanos Workplace application and data. This will assure you are updating your existing application and data and not creating a new installation.

Important bug fixes, performance enhancements and new features have been introduced with this update. For more detailed information, read the release notes on our user forum.

The update also includes tasks that improve the storage of Collanos Workplace data and CPU performance. In certain scenarios, just after the installation, updating the data store might lead to heavy CPU load. In such cases, it is recommended to run the updated version of Collanos Workplace for the first time during a period where the PC is less loaded with other applications, for example overnight.

Also want to take this opportunity to welcome our two new Collanos Country Ambassadors, Paulo Xavier of Portugal (Ranked #12 in number of Collanos users) and Sergio Burdiles of Chile (Ranked Country #45). Want to represent Collanos in your country, campus or industry and help us get the Collanos word out or perhaps share with the Collanos community what your team is doing with Collanos via our Spotlight Series? Send us an email.

As always, looking forward to your feedback. Please share it with the entire community by posting it on our user forum.

Sincerely, Gil Heiman