Broadchoice Blog

The ninth release of Broadchoice Workspace brings two major new features and several important enhancements, as well as a number of bug fixes, to make Workspace more powerful and easier to use than ever before.

In addition to the deep Salesforce integration offered in previous releases, we are pleased to announce the addition of similar integration for SugarCRM in this release. We’ve also added email notifications, enhanced the Salesforce integration, and added shortcuts that customers have requested!

Email Notification

Concerned about missing important discussions in Workspace when you are away from your computer? Now you can tell Workspace to send you email containing the messages you want. You can choose to have Workspace email you messages from other users, have messages sent only when you are offline (when you do not have Workspace running on your computer), or only receive replies to your messages, rather than all messages. Never miss important information from Workspace again. Click on “My Profile” in Workspace to set your email notifications to suit the way you work.

SugarCRM Integration

Connect Workspace to your SugarCRM account, and pull in people with expertise and knowledge to work on the deal. Messages, notes, tasks and bookmarks added to a SugarCRM-enabled space are synchronized into SugarCRM and associated with the opportunity from which that space was created. This capability eliminates tedious data entry for the sales teams and results in richer and more complete opportunity data in SugarCRM. Connect your account and increase your sales effectivness today.

The eighth release of the Broadchoice Workspace focuses on two areas: Enhancing the integration with Salesforce to automate more of the data entry process surrounding opportunity management and providing a Free Edition of Broadchoice Workspace to allow even broader collaboration with your colleagues and partners.

Deeper Salesforce Integration

Connect Workspace to your Salesforce.com account, and easily convert your open sales opportunities into collaborative workspaces. This enables you to extend the power of Salesforce to your co-workers and partners to help you close sales. With the new enhanced Salesforce features, activity within Workspace is sync’d to your Salesforce opportunity record. You no longer need to manually update the opportunity details in Salesforce.

Free Edition

We are now offering a free version of Workspace which entitles new account holders to have up to 3 collaborative Workspaces. Existing Workspace Trial accounts, will be converted to the Free edition but will be allowed to keep all of your existing workspaces indefinitely, for free. Invite all of your colleagues to collaborate with you. You and your colleagues will get to experience the benefits of Workspace without having to pay any up-front fees or worry about canceling before the “Trial” period has expired.

The seventh release of Broadchoice Workspace focuses on simplification and ease of use. Most of what has changed was done with the thought of making things as simple as possible for our end users. Here is a high level review of the major changes involved in build 7.

Space Membership Control

You can now control who is allowed to invite people to your spaces. You can either restrict it to just yourself, or allow any space member to invite anyone else.

Navigation Changes

The Workspace navigation has been simplified. People who are a member of multiple spaces will now get an “All Messages” link to quickly let them scan the activity in all their spaces. If you are a member of only one space, however, this item won’t show up at all, simplifying the navigation for people new to Workspace. The previous “My Library” group has shifted to the bottom of the application in a new area called “My Content”. It also gives you access to any Salesforce Opportunities configured for your accounts.

Notifications

When a message is sent to one of your spaces, a notification will appear in the upper right hand corner of your screen. You can quickly reply to a message by clicking Reply in the notification message without needing to return to the application first.

When new notification messages are available the icon in the taskbar (Windows) or dock (Mac) will change providing a visual cue that new content is waiting for you.

Mac/Windows Changes

Windows users will now see menu items on top of the application and OSX users will see options in the menubar. These menu items let you log off, create new accounts and spaces, and invite users to your spaces. The help menu is now utilized to provide links to our latest documents and resources to aid in your Workspace usage.

Help!

In context help balloons are available throughout the application. These balloons provide simple clues as to what each feature of the Workspace provides. For example, clicking on the Files tab of a space you will see a balloon pointing to the + button. This makes it easier for new users to become familiar with what they can do.

Mobile Updates

The latest release of the Broadchoice Workspace also includes updates to our mobile iPhone version. You can now create, edit, and delete notes, tasks, and bookmarks straight from your cell phone. Just finished a job in the field? You can easily mark the task complete with your iPhone and everyone in your space will be notified.

The message feed has also been updated. You can now navigate through a long list of feed items more quickly using pagination. New feed items will automatically load without having to reload the entire page.

Since launching Workspace, we’ve heard many interesting stories about how our customers are using the product to enhance company communication, and keep the field informed and well armed with the right content to help sell, service and build. They are all finding that Workspace can boost productivity through short messaging and direct access to important content, and that spaces are a great repository of reference material for bringing new team members up to speed quickly.

A major infrastructure company is using Workspace to keep field installation teams up-to-date with the latest specifications and design documents on their iPhones. An insurance company is rolling out Workspace to its sales team to facilitate cross-selling and close more opportunities.

The  integration features of Workspace are a huge boost to sales organizations who can now bring in contributors from marketing, partner programs, engineering, vendors, and even customers to tailor their solutions. And in our latest release, sales people are now relieved of the tedious exercise of manually entering Salesforce opportunity activity, as Workspace will automatically upload all events to the opportunity in real time.

If you have a unique application for Workspace and would like to share it with the community, please contact us at the email address below. We’d love to hear your story!

In this blog, you’ll get the latest information about Broadchoice Workspace - who’s using it, how they’re using it, and great new features that are coming up. We’ve built Workspace to enable a new paradigm in collaborating on sales and marketing initiatives. Our users are converting Salesforce.com opportunities into shared spaces where they communicate and collaborate more efficiently to close bigger deals with their customers.

Announced at 2008 DreamForce, Workspace garnered widespread adoption and a large community of new users. Now, it’s your turn to spread the word. The power of Workspace is in connecting people who are working towards a common goal. Take the time to invite your co-workers, subcontractors, partners, vendors - anyone you work with. When we combine the power of our collective minds, we can achieve anything! Thank you for joining the Broadchoice Workspace community.