Zoho Mail

A couple of days back, Zoho released their email service – Zoho Mail. Zoho provides a comprehensive suite of online productivity applications and their foray into email service is something that surprised me. The question being that there are several well established players in this space and how is Zoho going to win over people and get them to use their email service.

With all this in mind, I had a quick look at what they provide. At first look it looks more like Yahoo Mail. Then a couple of differentiators start to appear. Here is a list of things I could observe after a couple of days of playing with the service.

• There are no annoying ads. This is most welcome.
• There is no limit to Inbox size. This is something done by most email providers today.
• After login, a tab with all the unread emails are shown. Good
• Emails can be organized based on folders or labels whichever is convenient. This I see as something to calm down a section of the crowd which was asking for Google’s blood since GMail does not support folders.
• The standard Inbox, Outbox, Drafts, Sent, Trash and Spam folders are provided
• No default labels. Some of you might like to get started with something like Important, Work, Personal etc. but this is not a problem since new labels can be easily created. This is also somewhat compensated by providing different colored flags to mark emails as Important, Follow-up etc.
• Mails can be viewed in flat mode or threaded mode. Threaded mode is activated by clicking on the chat icon that appears next to the flag. This icon is present only if multiple conversations exist which is a nifty little feature.
• Clicking on the from address of an email lists all emails from that sender in a new tab. This acts more like a quick search and is very useful too.
• Other standard options such as move emails between folders, marek as read or unread are available. But I was not able to drag and drop emails into folders.
• A views pane on the lower left corner helps to view messages that have been flagged, unread, archived and Contacts.
• I was not aware that POP3 was supported until I clicked the Whats New link. So, there we have it, POP3 is supported.
• Mail from other email accounts can be managed using Zoho Mail.
• A set of three icons on the lower left corner provide access to Contacts, Profile and Notifications.
• Attachments could be opened in Zoho’s own online applications such as Writer, Sheet, Show and the like. Zoho Chat is integrated into email so that one can chat with online contacts.
• A big selling point is Zoho Mail can work offline using Google Gears technology which Google themselves have not integrated into their email system.
• The layout can be customized by displaying or hiding certain columns which some users may find useful or otherwise.
• I have two major complaints. One, when I click Compose, a new window opens. Personally, I hate this and like to keep everything in tabs within the same window. An optional three pane layout with the preview to the right end would have been really useful for people using wide screen monitors or laptops.

Though there is nothing to really distinguish Zoho Mail from the big boys up there, people who prefer a neat and clean interface without annoying adds might find this just right. It would be a great value add to people already using Zoho’s services and have to utilise another provider’s services for email.

Trying out Zoho Polls

Its been a while since I tried a product from Zoho. Today I got the time to do it. Zoho Polls helps creates online polls / ratings in well under a minute. Here is what I created. Let me see if it comes up. I tried to add this to the sidebar but unfortunately the poll was not displayed. So I made a post. I already have 4 votes since I created the poll.

Strangely, I was not able to post this entry from Firefox. May be one of my extensions did not like the iframe tag.

Update 1: Looks like something is wrong. The iframe did not come up even on IE. Any ideas, anyone?

Update 2: I was able to post the iframe code on Blogger. So I guess it is WordPress which eats the code. My last try. Let me save directly from the Code tab without going to the Visual tab

Update 3: No luck. Guess what, I had already received a few votes favoring WordPress 3/4. Ironically I am not able to get the poll on WordPress.

Update 4: Ok. I managed to get it online here.

Four things that can make Zoho Writer better

Here are four things that I believe can make Zoho Writer better. I am not so sure if these have already been posted in the forums. But as I use more of Zoho Writer, I felt it can be improved in these ways.

1. I have only one open document. I click on the close button. The highlight on the document name in the left panel disappears. But the content of the document is still visible. When I click New, a blank document replaces the visible(closed) document. It would be nice if the document is actually closed and a blank document is presented.
2. When I delete a document I like to be asked to confirm the deletion of the document. I think this would save the time taken to navigate to the Trash bin and restore the document in case of an accidental delete.
3. When I create a new document and open a existing document, the new document is replaced with the one which I opened. Yes, I know some people prefer it this way. It would be nice to have a way to configure to keep the blank document open while the others are opened in a new tab.
4. I am not able to select columns in a table. I noticed this feature missing when I had to color columns vertically to indicate values.

Of course there could be other things that I have missed. May be they will come up once I get to know the application better.

Zoho Projects – Become a Project Manager

Yes, finally I got some time. And guess what I did. I went back to see what Zoho product I have not laid my hands on. I set sight on Zoho Projects, the online project management system. It is similar to MS Project but it is hosted online. It is free as long as you want to work only with a single project.

Traditionally Zoho has been churning out great online apps that are equivalents to their desktop cousins. And this time too I had a great time playing around with the application. Lets get started. Once registration was over and I logged in, the first thing to do was to create a project and set its properties and users.

Then I created a few tasks, attached them to a task list. You can specify the date, priority and the percentage completed for each task. Milestones can be added as and when necessary. The owner of each task would be notified of the task details. You can upload any project document. A single project has 100 megs of space and that should be sufficient as long as only important documents are uploaded.

You can convene a meeting without ever leaving the application and another email would be shot to all the participants. You can select who will attend the meeting. The meeting feature is a nicely thought out one. Another unique and highly useful feature is the Forum. Users can post their queries or opinions and other users can comment on them. Very neat!

A built in calendar tracks the tasks, milestones and meetings. You can create a new task, milestone or a meeting right from the calendar. The Administrator can view any of these items for a particular user or all users. Another great feature of Zoho Projects is it allows users to record time against the tasks. Effort and cost estimation becomes very easy.

Any project management software should be able to give a report of the activities. Users can see a Gantt Chart of the project as well as the % Complete for each of the tasks. Open milestones can be viewed in the Milestone report chart.  Project activity is tracked and all the changes are listed in the bottom portion of the dashboard page.

You can even let your clients track your work and that is certain to boost the confidence he has in you and brings transparency and credibility to your organization and the quality work you do.

I should say that Zoho Projects is a very easy to setup and use web based project management application. It took me just under 5 minutes to get going. It provides all the necessary features in the free version and its ease of use could well prompt some businesses to upgrade to the Premium Version. I think it would be great on the part of Zoho if it can provide at-least 3 projects in the free version.

A lot of screenshots for you…

   

   

 

Zoho Wiki

Zoho Wiki! Here is yet another great product from Zoho. You can create your Wiki in a flash. No more ads in Wikis and a you have a full featured WYSIWYG editor without any limitation on the number of pages

Zoho has been providing great online apps like Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet. Now comes Zoho Wiki. I have tried in the past to create Wikis on some popular sites such as Jotspot and Wetpaint. I found myself crippled as I could not create more than a few pages – 5 if I remember – or the free account was ad supported. Even if all those could be put aside, I would be taken aback by the simplistic editors provided which were hardly capable of producing any professional content.

Zoho Wiki is a welcome change. There are no ads, the Wiki is clean. There are no limitations to the pages and subpages that can be added. You also get a full featured WYSIWYG editor. Zoho has used the same editor that it uses for Zoho Writer. That means you have the power of a word processor to create your Wiki.

In Zoho Wiki, each paragraph can be edited separately with the help of the Constrained Editor. The Wiki can be customized easily. There are about 5 skins from which you can choose and the header, side panels can be customized. You can even add your own logo to the header.

Zoho Wiki comes with access control. You can either make your Wiki public or keep it among your peers or just yourself. Similarly the editing can be controlled. Readers can post comments on your topics. I found something annoying here. No one post a comment until the Wiki is made public. This is bad since the content could be vandalised. It could have been better if comments could be turned on/off across all pages universally no matter what the access level to the Wiki is. I did not notice much difficulty using the Wiki except at one point. When I create a new page from the Dashboard, I have to either click on that page to access it or remember the page URL. It was not shown in the Navigation bar. Sub pages however had no problems and showed up below the parent page.

Zoho Wiki comes with RSS feeds. You can obtain the latest content, updated content of pages or just one page. An automated versioning system is maintained and a line at the bottom mentions the version number along with the author, the person who modified the page and when it was modified.

I would say that this product – keeping aside the few annoyances mentioned above – is yet another great show from the Zoho people. Now that Google has accquired Jotspot, I can see competition in this space since Google may release a completely new product with no ads or limitations.

Here is a screenshot

Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator is an online database application. In other words it lets you maintain your to-do list, progject progress, issues in a project or just your friends addresses. This is another great product in the line that already includes ZohoWriter and ZohoSheet. Getting started is as easy as login, register and create the application of your choice.

I had an option to either start an application from scratch or use one of the templates. Or I could just import the Excel spreadsheet I already have. I took the simpler approach of creating an application from a template. I clicked on the “Create new Application” and selected Issue-Manager from the template list. I named my application “im” and clicked on the “Create” button.

A few moments later, I was in the form design screen. It took me a while to realise what I am supposed to do. Once I was clear, I went ahead and started customizing. I immediately felt that I missed an auto-number field which is very essential and could have been provided right away. May be I can write a deluge script for it but I did not dirty my hands with scripting. Yes, you can script your application for complex tasks.

I can choose to keep my app to myself or open it up to the world. That depends solely on the purpose of the application. But you can change your mind anytime and make your app public or private.

The other great thing was that I can use the data capture form on any of my webpages or blog post. Thats a really cool way to capture data from your audience. It does away with complex coding and design to either get feedback from your users or get them report issues with the new product you launched.

Overall Rating: Its a easy to use online application, can get started in a couple of minutes, some users do expect some power which is lacking.

Screen Shots

Tech support for free online office apps

Over the last week, I had been trying out various web based office applications like Zoho, EditGrid and Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Whatever I had written about them had got some visibility and some tech support

So, how was the tech support? Very Good indeed! Both the Zoho and EditGrid teams help me solve my problems in almost a day. That is quite fantastic becuase I spend about an hour a day on these applications. It might be too long for others, but still I feel this level of support for a free app is really good. Thanks to both Zoho and EditGrid teams

Ok. Here is the problem and the solution offered, just in case any of you out there are facing it.

Zoho – I did not receive the confirmation email. I had to verify my email address. Else, my account would be cancelled within 5 days. The Zoho team, confirmed my account on my behalf.

EditGrid – Spreadsheets did not load when I used Firefox. I had a few extensions installed. The problem was that I had “Show XMLHttpRequests” enabled option in my Firebug extension. Once I disabled it, EditGrid worked like a charm.

Zoho Sheet vs Google Spreadsheet

After Zoho Writer, it was time to get on and try Zoho Sheet. Instead of just writing about what it is, this time, I decided I will compare it with a similar product; Google Spreadsheet though it is not a separate entity anymore. It is now available from Google Docs & Spreadsheets

As I was researching on this, I came across this fact-sheet. This could be pretty old. But I will not be so specific about the details on what I list here. I tested both applications on Firefox 1.5.0.7

Rows and Columns

Zoho Sheet

I did not come across anything that stated the max rows and cols. But this is how far I went
Max Rows – 150. You can keep inserting rows.
Max Cols – AZ. For average use I think this is more than sufficient.

Google Spreadheet

Max Rows – 100. Insert after that
Max Cols – T. Insert after that

Usability

Zoho Sheet

Very easy to use. The user interface resembles a desktop spreadsheet. Standard tasks like align, sort, changing font, accomplished with single click

Google Spreadheet

Easy to use. Some standard tasks like sort need more than a click as these functions are placed in a separate tab.

Features

There are a lot of features on both these applications. But I have listed the ones that set them apart.

Zoho Sheet

• Starts with three default sheets. Sheets can be renamed.
• Has a fill series option which Google Spreadsheet does not have.
• You can create charts with Zoho which is not available in Google Spreadsheet. The charts get updated as you update values in the cells. Charts can be made public and shared with others.
• Comments can be inserted on cells
• Looks like there is a problem in un-merging merged cells.

Google Spreadsheet

• Starts with one sheet. More sheets can be added.Sheets can be renamed.
• Google Spreadsheet has a Formula tab which makes it very very simple to apply sum, average and a host of other Math, Financial, Logical, Date, Statistical formulae

Finally…

Both apps can export the online document to CSV, HTML, PDF, Excel and OpenDocument and allow you share, publish your spreadsheets. The Look and Feel of Zoho is better compared to Google SpreadSheet. You can upload Excel spreadsheets to both applications.

If you need a bare minimum spreadsheet to calculate a few things, you can use the Google Spreadsheet. If you need something more, then I suggest you try out the Zoho Sheet.

We all love screenshots, don’t we? Here is one screenshot from each of the applications

Zoho Sheet

Google Spreadsheet

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Disclaimer: This is just my opinion on what I had observed from these two applications after using them for a while for my own purpose. I might be wrong in mentioning something and features could have been added/removed by the time I write this. I cannot be held responsible for anything you do after reading this post. Always check with the application websites for details before using the application. Above all, I neither work for Google nor for Zoho.