HyperOffice: An Online Workplace for Businesses on the Go Web-Based E-Mail, Documents, Calendars and More Jamie Bsales
E-Mail, Documents, Calendars and More
The individual components in HyperOffice are surprisingly full featured. The Web-based, business-class e-mail features virus checking, spam blocking and POP and IMAP support. The Calendar module mimics Outlook's fairly closely. You can choose among daily, weekly and monthly views, overlap shared calendars of different users or groups, schedule meetings via pop-up invites sent to prospective attendees and set reminders.
The document-sharing features will be a real boon to businesses that have employees scattered across locations, or that need to get documents approved by outside clients. You can drag-and-drop files from your local drive to the online My Documents folder for others to see and, if you so choose, edit. Each of your registered users gets a 100MB online HyperDrive for storing files on HyperOffice's servers (additional space is available at a nominal cost).
The personal and group Contacts areas can be used as a light CRM application, thanks to what HyperOffice calls "Interlinking." You can associate a given contact with particular tasks, documents, meetings and so on. The Tasks module lets you assign tasks to group members (and notify them that you've done so), and you can view tasks by assigner, due date or status. There's even a handy Gantt chart so a manger can see where tasks overlap.
One handy feature not typically found in other solutions is Voting. You can poll a group of employees about a particular subject (say, where the next sales meeting should be) by giving them choices; HyperOffice tallies the results for you. A Links section lets individuals collect often-used URLs, while a Notes section lets you post random information that others might need to see.
If all this sounds like a lot for your employees and clients to learn, don't be put off. The interface is self-explanatory, and you get access to free online training modules that walk you through the various features. There's also live (by phone) group training available for $110 an hour.
In his nearly two years of using HyperOffice, Ross reports he's had no technical issues with the service. And the one or two times his group has needed help, they simply clicked on the support link on their home page. "The turnaround time for support was amazing," he says.
Of course, HyperOffice isn't perfect. It doesn't yet offer videoconferencing, so businesses that do a lot of virtual meetings will need a separate provider for that. And like all online applications, performance is dependent upon your connection speed.
So if all you need is group e-mail or a shared, online calendar, HyperOffice is probably overkill. But if you need any two (or more) of its modules, HyperOffice starts to make sense. It gives your employees and clients a single point of entry to all their communication and collaboration needs, while simplifying the administration of a suite of apps for you.
Jamie Bsales is an award-winning technology writer and editor with nearly 14 years of experience covering the latest hardware, software and Internet products and services.
Pros: Provides your employees and clients with a single point of entry for all their communication and collaboration needs, simplified and straightforward administration
Cons: Lacks videoconferencing capabilities, hosted service means performance hinges largely on your connection speed
