Today we launched a new Highrise feature that makes it a lot faster and easier to file a note or email under a case or deal. This new feature will save you clicks and time — especially when filing a lot of notes/emails one after another.

One thing that I note related to this new feature is that it appears that you must be in Excerpt view in order for the new feature to work. I was trying to do this from the List view and it doesn’t seem to work from within that view. I have queried the guys at 37signals about this and I’ll update any information that they provide.

Kevin and I have racked our brains, small as they are, to come up with a way to Bcc the Highrise Dropbox in an automated way. We’ve spent countless hours fiddling with Apple’s Automator, and we’re still at ground zero on this. Until now that is…

While doing a little more research late last week on the topic of automatically Bcc’ing the Highrise Dropbox, I finally came across a hack for Apple Mail that does just this. I’d like to offer a big shoutout to Travis Vocino of Vocino Labs for originally sharing this out. The hack does of course require that you are comfortable with using the terminal application and entering information via the command line. ***Please read the entire post before performing the hack.*** Here is the hack:

1. Open Terminal.app
2. $ defaults read com.apple.mail UserHeaders
3. If nothing shows up, you don’t currently have anything set and you should be golden to move to the next step.
4. $ defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"BCC" = "dropbox@YOURDROP.highrisehq.com"; }'
5. Restart Mail.app

When I first completed the hack I was quite excited. I restarted Mail as instructed and quickly used the hot key combination command+n to create a new mail message. I was quite disappointed when the new mail message opened up and I didn’t see anything in the Bcc field. My first assumption was that perhaps since I was running a newer version of mail that the hack didn’t work. Fortunately, my trusty sidekick and business partner, Kevin Gilbert, decided to go ahead and send some test emails anyway. What we found was that the hack did in fact work, it just doesn’t place anything in the Bcc field.

A word of warning, if you use the Bcc field a lot or with any regularity, be aware that performing this hack will cause Apple Mail to only send a Bcc to the Highrise Dropbox, regardless of what you enter manually in the Bcc field. In plain English, executing this hack means that you cannot Bcc any other contact besides the Highrise Dropbox even if you manually type their email address into the Bcc field.

To learn more about Highrise, click on the graphic at the beginning of this post or the link below. Give Highrise a NO-RISK 30 day FREE TRIAL. We offer Highrise Implementation and Consulting Services so please let us know if we can help in any way.

1. Within your Email client, navigate to the culprit email. (That would be the one that you sent without bcc’ing your Highrise Dropbox and it should be located in your SENT folder).
2. After locating that email, hit the Forward button in preparation to forward it on to your Highrise Dropbox.
3. Before you forward the email to your Highrise Dropbox, you’ll want to go and change the From information. At present, it should show that the email was from You. You’ll want to edit this so that the email shows From the Contact or Company you wish to link it to in Highrise. Here’s how:
4. Email currently shows this information: From: Me <me@mail.com>
5. Edit this information to show the Contact name and email address that is in the Contact record in Highrise, ie: From: First Last <firstlast@mail.com>
6. Once you have edited the From information, make sure that you have entered the forwarding address to go to your Highrise Dropbox.
7. Hit the send button and then check your Highrise Dashboard. You should see the email there, linked to the Contact or Company that you specified in step 5.

Highrise is an amazingly efficient and easy to use Client Relationship Management application that is completely web based. Click the Highrise graphic above to explore Highrise in a little more depth and find out how to get your 30 day free trial. We offer Highrise Implementation and Consulting services so feel free to call on us if you need assistance.

Helpful relevant links for this post: Highrise, CRM (Client Relationship Management), Highrise Consulting Rates

]]> http://digidsolutions.com/2009/07/23/forgot-to-bcc-your-highrise-dropbox-no-problem/feed/ 0 http://digidsolutions.com/2009/07/16/were-movingto-the-cloud-our-hub-on-the-web/ http://digidsolutions.com/2009/07/16/were-movingto-the-cloud-our-hub-on-the-web/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:11:42 +0000 Jarrod Skeggs http://digidsolutions.com/?p=1079 Our Hub on the web

In my recent posts, I talked about our move and also shared a little background about what really began driving us to make the move. If you haven’t read those posts, take a few minutes and get caught up before you dive into this one. It will make a lot more sense if you do so.

What we’ve learned through this move is that the WordPress “engine” is a great foundation and very capable of powering our one-stop Hub on the web. This is not just the case for a small two person company like Digital Design Solutions. There are many HUGE organizations using WordPress. Want some examples? How about…

• United States Postal Service
• Ford Motor Company
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• American Express
• University of GA

So at this point in time, we’ve fully embraced WordPress as our Content Management System and web development platform of choice. In fact, at present, between Kevin and myself, we have five web properties that are running WordPress. These include our business sites and our personal sites. We’re also in the process of helping a number of new clients develop their Web Presence utilizing the WordPress platform.

Here, at DigiDSolutions.com, we’ve created a full on communications Hub that we use for staying connected with our clients and prospects. If you take a look around you’ll find a number of very important connecting points. We really liken these connecting points to the Spokes on our Hub. All of these Spokes are web or cloud based services. As well, each of them is accessible outside of and independently of our Hub but, we’re integrating them all here to make it easier and simpler for our existing and future clients. I’ll list them below and I’ll be discussing each of them in a good bit of detail in future posts in this series.

Marketing and Social Media – On our Tribe page you’ll find quite a few connecting points. You’ll first notice the Social Media icons. These aren’t just pretty graphics, they actually link you back to our Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and LinkedIn pages. At the bottom of that page is a form that can be completed for opting-in to receiving our email marketing communications

Highrise Client Relationship Management (CRM) – If you take a look at our Contact page you will see a form which new visitors can complete in order to make contact with us and talk about how we may be of service to them. What is great about this form is that once they complete it and hit the submit button, their contact information is entered directly into our Highrise CRM database.

Project Management – If you hover over the Tribe link in the menu bar you’ll notice a sub menu item entitled, Project Center. We’ve integrated our online Project Center so that it functions right here within our website. Our primary reason for this is that we want our clients to be able to visit one web page to interface with us, regardless of what type of information or communication is necessary.

Support/Help Desk – On every page of our website you’ll find a Support tab on the left hand side of the page. Again, we wanted to make it simple and easy for our clients to submit a Support or Help Desk Ticket from our website.

Billing/Accounting – Hover your mouse over the Tribe link in the menu bar again and you’ll also notice a sub menu item that is entitled Your Account Info. This is where our clients can go to login and check on the status of their account with us. Once logged in, clients can see and print their outstanding invoices, pay their invoices electronically, and can also see whether their payments have been received.

Hopefully you get the idea here. Our website is the Hub that our clients use to interact and communicate with us. All this is and so much more is possible with the WordPress “engine“. We have a number of other additions and plans in the works; what we’re doing with WordPress so far is really just the tip of the iceberg. That’s why we are now offering WordPress and Web Presence Development Consulting. If you, your organization, or anyone else you know is in the process of considering a new website, or an enhancement to their existing website, please let us know. We would count it an honor and privilege to receive your referrals. As a way to thank you, we’re offering an unlimited, 10% referral fee for every new referral that you send our way. Just have your referral mention the Promo Code DDSHUB in conjunction with your name when they first contact us.

So, you’ve heard by now that we’re moving…to the cloud. Throughout this series of blog posts we’ll be explaining and sharing our entire experience with you. This post should really frame everything and give you an overall perspective on why we’ve decided to make this move.

A little background

Our move to the cloud really began in late 2008. During our end of year review and planning one of our biggest topics of discussion was our website and blog. At that time, we were using a very capable WYSIWYG, (What You See is What You Get), Website design software package called Rapid Weaver. We chose Rapid Weaver as our Website design software shortly after we began business. Our primary reasoning for making this choice was the WYSIWYG feature because at that time, we knew just enough HTML and CSS to be dangerous. Rapid Weaver had the ability to create a blog page and we initially used that feature until we quickly realized how inconvenient it was to use. Essentially, every time we wanted to add a new blog post, we had to open up the software, draft the blog, and then re-publish the changes to the website. While this is not a huge deal if you only have one person blogging, it is quite inconvenient when there are multiple authors.

In an attempt to make it easier for both me and Kevin to blog at will, we opened a Typepad account, largely because it was web based and either of us could access it from a web browser (and because Kevin really liked the iPhone interface). Our dilemma with that however was that we had a fairly static website at one web address and our blog located at a completely different web address. So, if we got traffic to our website, people didn’t have access to our blog content, and if we got traffic to our blog, people didn’t get a lot of the important information they were looking for about our company. Plus, we were paying a monthly fee for Typepad as well as paying a monthly hosting fee for our website.

So, to bring this back around to the subject at hand, we discovered and began investigating the WordPress platform late last year. Both Kevin and I had heard about WordPress in the past, but had never really given it much consideration because we thought that it was quite similar to Typepad. What we learned was that WordPress is quite possibly the most innovative Content Management System platform in the world. As we began to investigate and learn more about WordPress, we realized that it was exactly what we had been looking for when we started our business three years ago. We realized that WordPress had become much more than a blogging engine, and could function as our Hub on the web and be a central place where our clients and prospects can connect with us.

In the next post, I’ll be giving you some examples of how we are utilizing WordPress as our Hub.

In case you didn’t hear, you can win one (1) of four (4) Web Presence Development Packages that we are giving away by simply following us on Twitter. If you haven’t done so, go there now and follow us. The drawing for the Web Presence Development Packages takes place on August 1, 2009.

I’m probably not the world’s best marketeer, (pretty sure that title belongs to Seth Godin), but there’s one thing about marketing I believe in 100%. Talk about how your business or organization outshines the competition. In this case, they were probably attempting to be honest. Honesty is important in marketing, but these folks needed to spend just a few more minutes in the tagline brainstorming session. I dare say that, “Closest to the River” or “Friendliest Staff” would have served them better.

What are you thoughts? Leave us some comments.

Happy Independence Day from DDS.

We’re moving…to the cloud. You’ve probably heard of the cloud, but just in case you haven’t here’s how Wikipedia explains it:

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.

Another term that is often used interchangeably with the cloud is Software as a Service, or SaaS. Essentially, the software lives in the cloud, on someone else’s technology infrastructure, and it is accessed over the internet with a web browser. Simply put, by moving to the cloud, DDS won’t have to continue to invest our hard earned capital in Server ownership and maintenance. Instead, we’ll be paying a monthly subscription fee for the Software as a Service (SaaS) that we utilize.

Since we began business, a little more than 3 years ago, we’ve utilized some very good desktop applications that have helped us run every aspect of our business. Many of these desktop applications connect back to a Server side application running on our Macintosh OS X Server. These applications have included Daylite, Billings, and MYOB Account Edge, to name a few. They are top notch and they have served us very well.

As great as these applications have been, we’ve concluded that moving to the cloud is what will help DDS continue to to bring our Clients the best service and value in the long term. There have been many factors that have impacted our decision and we’ll be sharing those and chronicling our move to the cloud experience here on our blog. It is our hope that by documenting our experience here that we can help you and your company make a determination about whether such a move is right for you and, if so, hopefully you can learn some best practices. You might even learn a few things that you shouldn’t do.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for us along the way, please leave us some comments. We’d really like to engage as many of our readers as possible during this process.

We’ve decided to make the DDS birthday celebration a month long event. So, here’s what we have planned…

We’re going to be GIVING AWAY some of our services for FREE. Yes, you read that right, FREE! Here’s how the giveaways will work:

• We’re giving away four (4) free Website setup and design packages. On August 1, 2009 we will select the four (4) lucky winners. They will be drawn at random from our Twitter followers. (Please visit DDS Birthday Celebration Rules for details).

To enter, just click on the Twitter icon in the right hand sidebar and make sure you are following us. Or, click this link: Follow DDS on Twitter

We’re really excited about how our business is growing. Because of our growth, we have embarked on some really big changes at DDS. We’re excited about these changes and know that they will benefit not just us, but you, our clients as well. We’ll be talking about these changes during a series of blog posts that will begin on Wednesday, July 1 ,2009. Be sure to visit our subscribe buttons over on the right hand sidebar and get subscribed in whatever manner you wish so that you can learn about the changes and how they will benefit you and your business.

I’m going to go ahead and let you in on the biggest change that we are making. WE’RE MOVING!!!

I can’t really say any more than that at the moment. You’ll have to subscribe or check back in here to get the details.

Once again, we’d like to say thanks for making the past three years a huge success for DDS!

• New MacBook Pro 15″ – improved display, improved battery life, processor speed increases, SD Card reader now included, entry level price dropped to $1,699.
• Enhancements to MacBook Pro 17″ – entry level product now has 2.8 GHz processor and 500GB Hard drive, entry level price dropped to $2,499.
• MacBook 13″ Aluminum is now MacBook Pro 13″ – tops out at 8GB RAM and 500GB Hard drive just like 15″ big brother, entry level price drops to $1,199.
• MacBook Air – entry level price drops to $1,499, processor clock speeds bumped up to 1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz, and 2.13 GHz.
• Safari 4 is out of beta. (It is super fast BTW).
• Snow Leopard to ship in September – $29 upgrade for existing Leopard users, $49 family pack available too.
• iPhone 3G S – launches on June 19, 2009 in North America and parts of Europe, the S stands for Speed, will ship with iPhone OS 3.0 (which is available on June 17, 2009), includes Video Recording/Edtiting, Voice Control, 3 megapixel camera with auto-focus. Available in 16GB or 32 GB option at $199 and $299 respectively. iPhone 3G 8GB option continues to be available and price is reduced to $99.
• iPhone OS 3.0 – available on June 17, 2009, free to iPhone owners, $9.99 for iPod touch owners, over 100 new features including cut, copy, paste, and spotlight search.

I didn’t think so.

Please note, this does not change my impression or perspective on Adobe even a little bit. Adobe SUCKS as far as I’m concerned. Always has…always will. Until of course Apple buys them. LOL.

As of June 2, the One to One membership will only be offered to customers who purchase Macs through Apple’s direct channels – our retail stores and the Apple online store. The price for the program will remain $99. Existing customers will be able to renew for one additional year for the same price as well.

What is it that’s driving Apple to tighten these guidelines? Is the program becoming too popular? Is this part of Apple’s strategy to drive more sales through their direct channels?

I’ve heard from various sources within the Apple retail channel that the program’s popularity has begun to grow exponentially. In fact, Apple had to re-word their verbiage about six months ago to reflect and communicate that one-to-one was subject to availability of time slots, according to one source.

What do you think?

Part of what our business is about is helping clients maximize the use of the Apple/Macintosh platform. We work with a number of different types of businesses including some Graphic Design firms and Graphic Design departments. So, back on October 3, 2008, we helped a Graphic Design client get a new iMac setup for a new employee. As part of this new setup, the client purchased a copy of Adobe CS3 Design Standard. The client was fully aware that CS4 would be shipping in the very near future but we needed to get the new employee productive as quickly as possible. Once CS4 was released Adobe made an announcement regarding eligibility rules for receiving a free CS4 upgrade. Before you ask, yes, we followed their eligibility rules and request guidelines to the letter of the “law according to Adobe”.

On November 8, 2008, we received a letter confirming eligibility and indicating that we needed to call their customer service telephone number to confirm all the details of delivering the CS4 Upgrade. We placed the call, they took all the pertinent information such as the shipping address and told us to look for the upgrade within the next 7 to 10 business days.

Fast forward 6 months. Today was call number 4 to Adobe’s “lack of” customer service department. I must be honest folks, I said some bad words. I probably made the lady on the other end of the line feel about an inch tall. Here is their excuse for not shipping the upgrade after the previous 3 calls:

I’m sorry sir, but apparently the order was rejected because we do not have a shipping address on file.

No joke! Not only did they ask for it and confirm it during the last 3 telephone conversations, I double checked it online with our customer profile. Could they not at least auto-generate an email indicating that further information was needed to ship the Upgrade? Anyway, once again, I have yet another “order number” and am assured that they will use expedited shipping to get this delivered to our client.

Look for an update on this post sometime Monday because she said that we should receive a confirmation with the shipping information by then.

If you are too busy to check this out right now, this paragraph from the opening section will hopefully motivate you to go check it out later:

Social media didn’t create content marketing, but it’s an unsurpassed tool for getting it distributed. On the flip side, great content gives social media life, by giving people something more interesting to talk about than what they’re ordering right now at Starbucks.

With the Daylite touch application you can manage your business on the go without the bulk of carrying a notebook computer. Some of the features of Daylite touch include:

• Multi-user Calendar management
• Contact management
• Opportunity management
• Project management
• Task management and delegation

We hope you’ll come out and join us as we demonstrate how Daylite 3.9 and Daylite touch compliment one another.

I’ve had just a couple of hours of hands on use so far but everything works as billed. I can’t believe that the folks at Marketcircle packed so much into this app. I love the fact that even the emails that are linked to my contacts, opportunities, or projects are included in Daylite touch. Very, very powerful. I will be putting it to the test over the next few days. Check back in shortly for more detailed information.

The biggest thing that I am noticing is how fast the database loads and refreshes now that it is running on PostgresSQL instead of OpenBase. I connect to our Daylite Server over the internet and my up bandwidth tops out at about 384K. (Yes, that’s a “K” so not very fast). When Daylite was running on OpenBase, (you know, 4 hours ago), my usual routine was to start the login process, go grab a fresh cup of coffee, make a pit stop at the restroom and return to my desk to wait another minute or two while the login process finishes. Not the case now. Less than a minute.

I also notice substantially increased quickness as I navigate around the different objects in the Daylite 3.9 desktop app.Delegation and notification updates are happening in a much shorter time span too. So basically, if another user invites me to a meeting or delegates a task, opportunity, or project to me, I’m getting notified within just a few moments. This is great.

More to come…

• Migrating your existing Daylite database
• Things that get broken after the migration
• How the new Daylite touch app. compliments the desktop app.

Also, check in over at StudioD.tv for screen casts that detail the back-end changes such as the new Daylite Server Admin interface.

Daylite Touch Submitted to the AppStore

March 7, 2009 on 1:14 pm | In Apple, Business, Daylite, General

Exactly one year after Apple released the iPhone SDK and exactly one year after we began development, we submitted Daylite Touch to the AppStore yesterday.

Daylite Touch is major milestone for us as a company. Not only is it our first mobile app, it is also a milestone for small businesses. You’ll get functionality that even large scale enterprise systems don’t have, such as scheduling meetings with colleagues right from the phone you can also view their calendars. You’ll get power features such as open projects with linked tasks, appointments and notes from all users. You’ll get really useful “on the go” features such as the home screen with everything you have to do today and tomorrow. And more…

via Marketcircle Blog.

We always recommend that as a rule you do not run a Beta application on a production computer or server. Beta applications are given beta status for a reason. The biggest reason is that the developer, in this case Apple, needs to find out what bugs still remain, a la plugin breakage. While we are excited about Safari 4 and the capabilities that it will bring, please refrain from installing it on a computer or server that you rely upon to conduct daily business.

If you have already installed Safari 4 on a production computer or server, use the uninstall utility that Apple so wisely included with the Beta download. If you are having trouble with any of this please either open a Help Desk ticket or contact us by email.