DejaOffice 1.2.2 for iOS Now Available

Posted on June 2, 2011 by David Z

DejaOffice 1.2.2 is now available from the iTunes App Store! We’ve added and improved a number of things, but the two biggest features we’d like to talk about are a separate contact database and “group by” options.

Our Own Contacts Database

We’ve created a separate Contacts database for DejaContacts. Previously, we used native iPhone Address Book to store our data. While this is convenient, it affected usability because we were forced to render our data only as fast as the iPhone Address Book allowed us to.

No more! With our own database, we can optimize speeds to best suit our app and it’s purpose – accessing thousands of business records instantly.

Please note: It is very important that you run the Import Contacts function if you’ve previously synced DejaOffice via CompanionLink. If you skip this step, you could potentially duplicate or delete all of your contacts data!

If you’d like to take advantage of features that the native address book offers (such as caller ID), you will still be able to sync DejaContacts with the native Address Book.

New “Grouping “ Feature

A powerful new grouping feature allows you to organize data in more ways. In our last email we showed you how categories are a highly efficient way to organize data. But what do you do for more granular control?

That’s where grouping comes in.

DejaOffice can sort your contacts by company, category, city, or city and zip code. For example, picture this scenario: you’re traveling to Atlanta and, while on the plane, you use DejaOffice to bring up a list of all your contacts that live there. You can now easily browse through this list and catch up with nearby clients or old friends.

We’re really excited about these new features and think you’re going to love them too! In fact, we’d love to hear how you will be using the new grouping feature.

DejaOffice for Android 1.11.7 Beta Improves Calendar View, Adds Ringtone Management

Posted on May 31, 2011 by David Z

Click to Enlarge

Update: DejaOffice 1.11.7 is officially available in the Android Market.

The latest beta of DejaOffice for Android brings a host of new features, interface improvements, and bug fixes. In this post, I’d like to highlight two of them.

First, we’ve improved the calendar “Month View.” With a large amount of data in DejaCal, the month view could get fairly crowded and hard to read. By cleaning up the interface, we’ve made it much easier to view your agenda. For now, you’ll need to enable “Tablet Mode” to see this change.

Second, due to popular request, we’ve added custom ringtone management to DejaContacts. Now, when creating or editing a contact, you’ll be able to assign a specific ringtone. You can also assign ringtones to categories, making it easy to determine if an incoming call is business or personal! Of course, for custom ringtones to work, you’ll need to be syncing DejaOffice with the native Android contacts.

These are just two of many great new features and improvements in DejaOffice for Android 1.11.7 beta. Full release notes are available after the break, and you can download the latest beta today from www.dejaoffice.com/androidapp. Continue reading →

DejaOffice for Android 1.11.6 Adds Great New Features, Beta Out Now

Posted on May 16, 2011 by David Z

We recently released an update for DejaOffice for Android and we’ve added some great new features that I think you’ll really like. For the full release notes, head over here. In this post, however, I’d like to highlight 3 of my favorite new features: Group By for DejaMemos, Roll Over options in DejaTasks, and an option that allows you to add a number to DejaContacts upon completing a call!

Group By in DejaMemos works similarly to the Group By feature we added to DejaContacts in version 1.11. In DejaMemos, you’re now able to group memos by category, then sort by subject or most recent. The combination of grouping and sorting allows you to sift through large databases of memos much more easily than before!

Roll Over is a great new feature that helps ensure you’ll never miss an overdue task again. You can now bump the due date of a specific overdue task or all overdue tasks to today’s date. Of course, if you aren’t able to complete everything on your daily task list on a regular basis, you’ll find that bumping overdue tasks can become a task in itself. That’s why we’ve added the ability to automatically roll over overdue tasks at the end of each day. If you didn’t finish a task today, it will simply get pushed to the next day’s to-do list. Personally, this feature is one of my favorites in all of DejaOffice!

Finally, we’ve added the ability to add a number to DejaContacts after an incoming or outgoing call. At face value, this is a fairly simple feature. In practice, we think you’ll find it quite invaluable. For those of us who are regularly adding new contacts to our database, anything that helps to speed up the process is a welcome feature!

These are just three of a number of great new features in DejaOffice for Android 1.11.6. Head over to www.dejaoffice.com/androidapp to download the beta today, and look for it in the Android Market soon!

How To Keep Your Personal Data Separated From Your Work Life

Posted on April 25, 2011 by David Z

The short answer is this: Categories.

Creating a category called “Personal” allows you to keep your home life organized in its own section of your database. Your complete database is on your device, but it’s easily sorted so that you only see the data that is relevant to your current situation.

Unfortunately, not all devices have category functionality, and those that do are often limited. To remedy this, DejaOffice allows you to create and manage categories, as well as assign colors to them to further differentiate your data. This exponentially boosts productivity, especially once you begin to use colors to cue yourself for the urgency or types of tasks. Red means must-do and urgent. Yellow means phone calls. Orange means it’s not the end of the world if you miss this appointment or meeting. And so on. At a glance, you will be able to know how many urgent meetings, calls, etc., you have on any given day.

Taking this a step further, you can then use CompanionLink’s sync software to sync your phone to your PC. CompanionLink gives you the option to ignore your personal contacts during sync. This allows you to keep your work data up to date in programs like Outlook, ACT, and more without mixing in personal data on a work computer.

So, with a little help from DejaOffice and CompanionLink, you’ll be down to just one phone all while keeping your work data synced and personal data separated!

DejaOffice Now Available In The Amazon Appstore

Posted on April 15, 2011 by David Z

Amazon has worked hard to help widen and curate the distribution of Android apps. Amazon has their own app acceptance process, which they say will guarantee that only meaningful and legit apps will be distributed on their Appstore.

We want to make it easy to download DejaOffice, no matter which app store you prefer using. Therefore, we’re pleased to report that DejaOffice is now available in the Amazon Appstore!

DejaOffice in the Amazon Appstore is, of course, free and can be downloaded by clicking here. We do want to make you aware of one thing: if you download and install DejaOffice via the Amazon Appstore, you need to continue to use the Amazon Appstore in the future to update DejaOffice to the latest versions. You will not be able to update the app from the Android Market (it will fail to install – you can get around this by deleting DejaOffice and reinstalling from the Android Market if you need). This is due to the way that Amazon handles app installs and is not unique to DejaOffice, so take note for your other apps as well!

We hope you’ll find the increased availability of DejaOffice useful, and we want to hear your feedback. We’d love for you to leave us a review in the Amazon Appstore! It helps us to constantly improve our app, as well as where we distribute it.

Palm OS Lives On Android

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Rushang

What do you miss the most about Palm OS?

The date picker?
Password protection for Memos, Tasks and Contacts?
Categories that worked across all your data?
Memos that you can attach to Contacts, Calendar and Tasks?
Custom fields for your Contacts?
Handwriting recognition?
Simple, monochrome display? (We need to have a chat if you pick this!)

The first five on the list were things that we at CompanionLink absolutely could not do without. Chances are, as a business user those five factor somewhere into your list too.

The first Android G1 device that landed in 2009 was an experiment to whet the appetites of the Internet-connected masses. That phone, and the flurry to follow it, were social devices aimed at the consumer – a volley from Google to Apple in response to the revolutionary iPhone. But what about business professionals accustomed to the productivity of Palm OS? Business users were making do with these new, non-business toys. They were great at handling games, music, video, pictures, and social media. What they didn’t care too much about was productivity akin to Palm OS.

We created DejaOffice for this very reason. We wanted to harness the power of these new, non-business devices and channel it into real mobile productivity. Palm OS productivity, more specifically. We’ve done just that. Look at the list at the beginning of this post again. The first five items were integral parts of many Palm OS users’ workflows. DejaOffice brings these items back to life on Android devices. By doing this, we are extending productivity tools you need to get work done on the go!

DejaOffice for Android v1.11 Adds Powerful New Grouping Feature

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Andy Sheragy

DejaOffice for Android v1.11 is now in beta, and available for direct download at dejaoffice.com/androidapp. The newest DejaOffice update includes a powerful new grouping feature that allows you to group your data by a variety of fields. For example, you can now group your contacts by category, company name, or city.

This is an incredibly robust feature that is sure to save time and help you organize better. I’ve spoken to sales guys who travel around the country, and they’ve often said that it would be helpful to be able to fly into a city (say Denver) and pull up a list of contacts from that city. Easy. Or imagine that you want to quickly view all your contacts that work at Intel. Done.

We’re pretty excited about the new grouping feature. To download the latest beta of DejaOffice, point your Android browser at dejaoffice.com/androidapp. Let us know what you think in the comments below!

AES-256 Security: Now Standard in CompanionLink & DejaOffice

Posted on March 11, 2011 by David Z

Whether it’s a company requirement, an industry standard practice, or a personal preference, many users find their wireless sync options limited by the lack of secure solutions available to them. Most cloud-based systems are not an option as user data is stored on an outside server. Even local Wi-Fi can be an issue if the data is not securely transferred.

At CompanionLink, we take data security very seriously. Keeping your data in sync is our end goal, but keeping it safe in the process is extremely important as well. That’s why we’re now using AES-256 Security in the latest versions of CompanionLink and DejaOffice for Android (and iOS soon). So just how secure is AES-256 Security? Let’s take a look.

AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard, and the number 256 refers to the number of bits in the key size. Bits? Keys? I know, it sounds technical – and it is! If you’d like to read up on all the specifics of AES-256 Security, I’ll refer you to other online sources. With that said, let’s get back to explaining just how safe your data is under this security protocol. I’d like to refer to a quote from the Computer Security Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology stating:

“The design and strength of all key lengths of the AES algorithm (i.e., 128, 192 and 256) are sufficient to protect classified information up to the SECRET level. TOP SECRET information will require use of either the 192 or 256 key lengths.”

In a nutshell, the NSA considers AES-256 secure enough to protect TOP SECRET classified information. Data doesn’t get much more secure than that. With AES-256 Security built in, you can rest assured knowing that your data is secure with CompanionLink and DejaOffice!

DejaTasks Now Supports Recurring Tasks (DejaOffice 1.10, part 4)

Posted on March 3, 2011 by David Z

Welcome to the final installment in our series of posts explaining in greater detail some of the new features in DejaOffice 1.10.6 for Android. Find the other parts of this series here: part 1 (widgets), part 2 (global search), part 3 (DejaCal).

We are pleased to announce support for recurring tasks in DejaOffice! I’m sure this is a very welcome feature among many of our users. Whether you need a reminder to send out a weekly report, to schedule a monthly meeting, or to ensure you send out a birthday card to an important client every year, the new recurring tasks feature is sure to save you time.

To schedule a recurring task, simply open DejaTasks and create a new task. You’ll notice a new “Recurrence” option, which allows you to set the task to recur daily, weekly, monthly by day or date, and yearly by day or date. You can then choose if (and when) you’d like the recurrence to end. Finish adding the details to your task, tap save, and you’re done! Should you need to edit a recurring task, tap the edit button on a task as you normally would and change the “Recurrence” field. It’s that simple!

DejaOffice 1.10.6 was a major release for our Android app. This recent series of blog posts has highlighted some of the main features we’ve added, and has hopefully given you a better understanding of how to use the new features. If you have any further questions on how the new features work, let us know!

Of course, we’re hard at work to add even more. Do you have a feature you’d like to see? Let us know in the comments or head over to our DejaOffice forums!

DejaCal Receives a New UI and Date Picker (DejaOffice 1.10, part 3)

Posted on March 2, 2011 by David Z

Welcome to part 3 of 4 in our mini-series that explains in greater detail some of the new features in DejaOffice 1.10.6 for Android. Be sure to read part 1 (widgets) and part 2 (global search) as well!

If you’ve been a longtime user of DejaOffice, you’re bound to appreciate the improvements we’ve made on the look and feel of DejaCal. With a refreshed UI, we feel the calendar is more efficient and better looking than ever! The look and feel is not the only change we’ve brought to DejaCal, however. We have also introduced a PalmOS style date picker.

The new PalmOS style date picker is sure to be a hit. While Android has many great features, allowing you to quickly pick the date and time for an event is not its strongest one. That’s why we rebuilt the date picker for DejaOffice. If you’ve used a PalmOS device in the past, you’ll find this looks familiar. With this new format, you’re able to quickly select a date and time and move on. When it comes to mobile productivity, accomplishing something in the fewest possible steps is important. We think the newly designed date picker goes a long way in doing just that!

Tomorrow, I’ll wrap up this series of updates with a post on how we’ve implemented recurring tasks, and how you can best use them!

DejaOffice Gains Global Search on Android (DejaOffice 1.10, part 2)

Posted on March 1, 2011 by David Z

Today’s post is part 2 of a 4 part series that explains in greater detail some of the new features in DejaOffice 1.10.6 for Android. To read part 1, which discusses the new widgets, click here.

Global search is a very useful feature in Android. It allows you to search through items on your phone, as well as online. Many applications support global search, allowing you to easily search through their data from the main search bar. This is an extremely convenient feature to have, especially when you have a lot of data that you’d like to access quickly. As such, we’ve added support for global search to DejaOffice!

To get started, you’ll need to make sure DejaOffice data is included in search results. To do so, simply tap the search key on your phone. Next, click the Google icon in the top left corner. This will display what types of information you are currently searching for when you use global search. To add DejaOffice to this list, tap the settings icon on the right side of this screen. Scroll to DejaOffice in the resulting list and tap the checkbox to enable it. Now, a simple tap on the search key is all it takes to quickly jump to a contact, task, or calendar event! To have the search single out DejaOffice data, simply tap the Google icon in the top left, then select the DejaOffice icon.

Be sure to check back in tomorrow to learn about the major UI improvements we’ve made to DejaCal. I have a feeling you’re going to love our new date picker!

Introducing DejaToday Widgets for Android (DejaOffice 1.10, part 1)

Posted on February 28, 2011 by David Z

DejaOffice 1.10 for Android is a significant update. We’ve added a number of major new features and, as such, wanted to take the time to go through a few of them in greater detail. Over the next few days, I’ll be highlighting the following new features: Widgets, Global Search, Calendar Improvements, and Recurring Tasks.

Today, I want to focus on widgets. Widgets are a great way to add “at-a-glance” information to your Android’s home screens. They come in many varieties, from clocks to weather to e-mail and much more. So what do our widgets do? They display your DejaToday information. Today’s calendar events and tasks, as well as any contacts related to these activities, are displayed on either a 4×1 “marquee” style widget or a large, 4×4 overview widget. We designed these widgets to help you be even more productive on the go. A quick glance at your home screen is all it takes for you to keep tabs on your schedule! Additional details regarding any of the activities displayed in the widget are only a touch away.

To add a DejaOffice widget, simply tap and hold on any empty spot on your home screen, select “widgets” from the popup, and choose either the “DejaToday 4×1” or “DejaToday 4×4” widget. Then, sit back and enjoy have easy access to all your important information!

We hope you find these new widgets as useful as we do! If you have any questions on how they work, or have feature suggestions for future updates, please let us know! And be sure to check back tomorrow to learn about the new Global Search feature in DejaOffice 1.10!

Small Business Productivity, Tools and Tips – Android and iPhone Sync

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