General Consultant Discussion

As a followup to yesterday's excellent webinar on the Evernote and Dropbox tools available to you as part of your 90 Minds membership (we maintain the whole thing so you don't have to do any of the heavy lifting! ) --- Dropbox is a service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere, and share them easily. Any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, your phone or tablet, and the Dropbox website. Dropbox also makes it easy to share with others. And if your computer melts down, you can restore all your files from the Dropbox website with a couple clicks. In our case - 90 Minds is maintaining a ""master"" Dropbox which they then share with you. As a result all the 90 Minds files automatically synchronize into your Dropbox. If you install DropBox to a customer computer -- all the files in Dropbox then sync to the customer computer saving you the time needed to install source disks, patches, etc. DropBox --- What I have done on upgrades (and I've written about this before): 1. In advance of installing a test upgrade - login to the user's server 2. Install DropBox (see my notes below) 3. Selectively sync the files I want (Right click the DB icon in right hand corner task bar - there is a setting for this on your Dropbox client when installed to the server). Most importantly here are some things I've found regarding selective sync that caused me to change my approach a little: a. With selective sync - anyone at the customer site can right click the Dropbox icon in the task tray and start syncing up all folders from the Dropbox you installed (This is bad if you've installed your personal DropBox with pictures, etc). b. For that reason I've stopped using my personal Dropbox on user upgrades c. Instead create a separate paid Dropbox ($99/yr) and use THAT Dropbox to collect the incoming share from 90 Minds d. Put ONLY the 90 Minds share in that Dropbox (Have Robert send the share to that Dropbox address) e.Install only that separate Dropbox to the user server f. This way you don't care whether someone at the server makes changes to DropBox and starts synching every file from that Dropbox because it is not holding your personal stuff -- it only has that 90 Minds share (which is all read only so they cannot delete/add). This is the fastest and most trouble free way I've found to prepare a server for an upgrade - it beats the heck out of individually transferring files and dealing with slow downloads. Usually I will RDP to the server, install my customer Dropbox and then leave the session running overnight and let Dropbox transfer all the files. The share that Robert sends you to you will be read only so you don't need to worry about deleting or adding anything to the master DropBox. I have also started to use Basecamp and adding in people from the customer site to share messages with and ask that they reply directly to the Basecamp messages and create/change to-do lists for open issues. This is LOTS faster than trying to weed through emails that people send back and forth and extracting and tracking problem reports. It takes a little effort to get the users on board with this but it smooths the process quite a bit and everyone is in the loop because group messages go to everyone on the upgrade project.

Link to slides and recording of that presentation -- https://90minds-com.socialcast.com/messages/24396372?ref=group

Anybody who has a one-off situation where they want to test this -- I'll be happy to share my login/password to my end user DropBox so you can see how it works.

@WayneSchulz so you're using BaseCamp for project, why not use Evernote? I've used both but as I delve into Evernote more, I'm thinking that I'd prefer to consoldidate solutions. There is a nice feature you can set for a notebook to 'alert' you if anything is added/changed. I'm using this to be notified of pending submissions.

I have found with customers/end users not everyone wants to create an account or be bothered to login to whatever system I use. The thing I use the most with Basecamp is the ability to add people to a project and they don't need to login. They get updates by email. I use the messaging to alert about progress and when people reply to a message it goes to everyone on the project. In most cases I find that's as deep as customers have wanted to participate with me. When I am able to create shared to-do/tasks in Basecamp and get the customer to participate in the testing it is a lot more efficient to share notes right on the tasks than to have these unwieldy back and forth email messages. I find that Basecamp is a little better at storing files. Lots of ways to do this and I won't say this is the best way. Certainly not the only. Seems to be working for me. Another benefit of Basecamp is that I start the project right away - keep all the notes in one place. In about 25% of projects something comes up and the customer defers or doesn't get back to me. Then I just archive the project. When the customer is ready I re-activate and am back on track with what I was doing.

Excellent points, I forget that some user do not like dealing with logins. Agree the file storage is better in BaseCamp, and those to-do-lists easier to maintain.

I would love to have an offline conversation with anyone who has developed a procedure that works --- or one that didn't work. I've been pushing forward on Basecamp sharing with customers. Previously I did most of it internally because the user participation wasn't great. As of now I encourage everyone to join and for those who login and actually participate with entering and completely To-Do items it is a big help.