Zoho the creator of an online suite of collaborative applications such as Writer, Show and Sheets now has integrated with Facebook. Facebook users will now easily be able to view, edit and create documents, presentations and spreadsheets, and invite other users to collaborate.
Zoho is known for easy to use, fully functional, online applications. Collaboration is as easy as inviting someone to your workspace. Now this easy to use program has been ported to Facebook.
Zoli from Zoli’s Blog mentions that he still isn’t sure what he is doing on Facebook, and honestly, I am still figuring it out myself. Surveys state that Facebook is heavily used by the College Crowd. From Raju Vegesna, Evangelist at Zoho.
This is just the beginning and we plan to add more features to this application. We think this will benefit our current users 30% of which are students.
Gary King says he doesn’t think that Zoho will be used that much on Facebook. Being new to Facebook, I am not sure, but I don’t think this rings true. If Facebook is a site where college students spend a lot of time, it makes sense that students will want to easily collaborate with friends from this site, and Zoho does make this collaboration simple.
TechCrunch addresses the question about having to create an additional account to use the Zoho Suite of Tools. I think this is a valid concern, and I will be interested to see how Zoho addresses this issue going forward.
Personally I think ease of use, access and functionality will win students over to Zoho. The following is a walk through of signing in and using the application.
Sign In
First off, you will need to sign up for Zoho on Facebook. On this screen you can sign in using your existing account, or create a new account.
Continue for a walk through.
Welcome Screen
After you sign in, you are presented with the Welcome Screen:
The Welcome Screen lists the documents you are working on, and the Friends available in this space. The following can be done at the Welcome Screen
- View, Edit Create or Share Documents
- Invite Friends to your Workspace
- View Documents Others have Shared to You
Edit Document
From the Welcome screen you can edit, create, or view any word, presentation or spreadsheet documents. Editing a document, brings up the Zoho interface in a new browser window.
Use the interface to edit, save and manage your document.
Shared Documents
From the Welcome Screen, you can also view documents that have been shared to you, at this time, I don’t currently have any documents shared to me.
Invite Friends
From the Welcome Screen you can Invite Friends to collaborate on the documents you are working on.
OK – I just started Facebook and I don’t have a ton of friends yet, that doesn’t make me a bad person. It could make me lonely, except I have a wife and a 13 year old daughter.
Summary
Zoho excels at creating an online productivity suite of tools.
If you use Facebook, and have a need for a document writer, a spreadsheet or a presentation creator, then this is a tool that you should definitely check out.
Technorati tags: Zoho, Facebook, Zoli, TechCrunch, Gary King, Web 2.0, Collaboration
July 3, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Thomas:
Once again, thanks for a great writeup. This Zoho application for Facebook is just 1.0. As with other Zoho Apps, it’ll improve fast and it will only get better. I am off to adding you to my facebook
.
July 4, 2007 at 9:25 pm
As Raju said above, we have already had an update making the sign-in process a bit simpler. You don’t need to sign-in every time to Zoho inside of Facebook now.
July 5, 2007 at 9:04 am
Raju and Arvind – Thanks for the update.
I have always appreciated that Zoho takes feedback seriously, and implements suggestions that adds functionality to the application making it better.
July 18, 2007 at 6:28 am
thats really good information. well done.
July 19, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Just wanted to say cool blog
cool blog !!
there you go i said it
July 22, 2007 at 1:49 am
Hi Thomas – thanks for the Zoho-FB walk through. I’ve just set up an FB group for the New Media Open Innovation Exchange, linked to http://www.innovationexchange.net. I’m trying to use Zoho-FB, but in my welcome screen don’t get the ability to invite friends to collaborate. Hmm – will carry on researching. Do drop by
July 22, 2007 at 10:41 am
Ozonew4mWebmaster – thanks for the kudos, I appreciate it.
David – My Zoho welcome screen has actually changed a little bit since this screen shot. Now that I my friends have added the Zoho application to their profile, adding friends is now at the top of the screen. So having friends that have the Zoho App installed will change where the Zoho Friends box or Welcome box is located.
August 22, 2007 at 1:00 pm
[...] A commenter on the above post pointed out that the Zoho online office app on Facebook is a collaborative tool. You can work on Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations, and then request collaborative feedback from a group in Facebook – more info on that here. [...]
October 1, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Good job, very useful information it will come in handy some day. THANKS!
June 21, 2009 at 8:01 pm
[...] For Office work, all 3 major web office suites offers facebook integration. You can chose from Zoho Online Office Suite , ThinkFree Docs or Google Docs for Facebook. For a detailed comparison of the 3 web office offerings, jump here. Thomas provides a walkthrough for Zoho on his blog. [...]