Thoughts by Your Virtual Ally

Echosign

As a virtual worker I typically never meet my clients, even at the conception of our relationship, so the process of getting contracts signed when we do start working together usually requires that I sign the contract, scan it and email to my clients, who sign it and send it back. The other option to this is to use fax. Not too long of a process, but often requires printing, scanning and emailing. A 3-step process on both sides.

Echosign is a way to make this process much easier, faster, and for those of us wishing to be as green as possible, greener by deleting the printing process.

With Echosign, you can use;

• e-signatures to keep the entire process online (you can use various sign-in methods as your e-signature as well as Facebook and LinkedIn).
• Do it the old fashioned way with printing, signing and faxing.
• Track all signed contracts in your account.
• Integrate in your Google Apps account (see my blog post about this last month).
• Integrate with other tools like Salesforce, and there is an API which allows you to modify in other systems.

You can try Echosign with a free account. It has limitations but does give you a good idea of how it will work for you.

Google Apps Mail

Google has continuously been famed for having great email. And yes like everyone else I have a gmail email account. However, I had never used it for business because I love domain based email addresses for my professional face – that is just my thing!!! And then I found out about Google Apps when my client decided to change our domain based email addresses to this system. Google Apps  are a great way for you to retain your domain based email address, i.e. admin@company.com, but created in the Google interface. For those of you who love gmail this is a super fantastic win-win situation, but be aware a personal gmail address is free and this isn’t. The cost is $50 per mailbox per annum, but as my client and I were moving from a Microsft Exchange Server account this still represented a saving.

Now we get to use the full gamet of google apps via our domain name. Our email page is mail.company.com, and the same is for access to our google docs etc. If we use a range of Google Apps, then we can just have a homepage start.company.com which will list all the apps we are using.

Those famed gmail features are also available:

Labels – which allows you to automatically or manually label each email so that you can link appropriate emails to either clients or particular projects.

Filters – which allow you to automatically reply, delete, archive (move to folder) and various other actions that help to manage the inbox extremely well.

Shared calendar – so that I can schedule, setup and manage events, and meetings for my client Priority mail management – Choose which emails are a priority and gmail will keep them at the top of your inbox at all times for quick review – I love this!!!

Mobile browser – this is my absolute favourite, I just love how well it works on my mobile (iPhone). Nearly as good as using it in a regular browser.

As well as an essential Exchange feature:

Email delegation – so that I can view, and answer my clients emails.

Spam management – postini services which are absolutely excellent.

These are my favourite gmail tools, but there are so many so have a look at what is available: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about_whatsnew.html

Please let me be transparent, and before somebody asks, I am not saying that gmail is my favourite email service. It does not work how I like in Outlook and I REALLY like Outlook, but it does has some sweet tools, and works extremely well as a browser based email, which means it is cross-platform – v. useful

Let’s Mikogo

I recently came across a great screen sharing tool recommended by my colleagues at AssistU. It is so simple and easy to use that I am not sure that I will have enough to talk about here. Simply put, Mikogo is simple to use. It is extremely reliable, and it is FREE. And of course it sits in my realm of special services, because it is also cross-platform. So both PC and MAC uses, as you know, of which I am both, can easily use this software.

Once you have downloaded, and installed the software and set up your user name (email address) and password you are ready to rock in roll.

Here is the entire process:

• Click on the Mikogo logo in your toolbar
• Choose “Start Session”
• And then either provide the information to allow users to login, or simple click "Email Session Information", so that your email client will immediately open, and you can add the email addresses to provide the login information and link.

Although your users need to also download and install the Mikogo software, they do not need to do this before the session. Once they click on the session link, the download and install process is fairly quick so that it does not delay the desktop sharing process too much.

And what do we as VAs need to use screen sharing for? Well, for me, it does make it easy to be able to:

• Make quick, final edits to documents while my clients are watching, so that we can brainstorm the changes and review the effect together, or
• Share screens with clients to approve actions taken or show a process
• Teach a process to handover projects to new VAs, or clients’ subcontractors

Desktop sharing is such a useful, fast and simple process with Mikogo, and having the software icon in the toolbar that can be used on-demand feels absolutely indulgent, – which is just a great addition to my working life.