We are planning to complete some maintenance work on all clearvale.com networks later this week. Clearvale networks will be unavailable on Friday, February 3, 5:00-5:30 PM, PST (Saturday, February 4, 0100-0130 UTC).

We apologize for any inconvenience. 

The following issues will be addressed in a patch to Clearvale on January 20, 2012

Awhile back we had a contest, asking our customers: how has Clearvale helped you and your company? The purpose of the contest was to better understand how our customers are using Clearvale and what we can do to improve it. We picked our favorites from the first round of written responses and asked them to send us a video based on their submission. Entertaining, thoughtful and educational, the videos were fun to watch and really helped us understand all of the different ways Clearvale is helping people and organizations get work done.

We're grateful for all of the hard work the entrants put into this contest and are very happy to announce the winners of the Clearvale Success Awards (in alphabetical order):

Gemeente Tilburg
A municipality in the Netherlands that manages the City of Tilburg as well as providing support for the surrounding towns and villages within the wider region of Brabant. Using Clearvale, Gemeente Tilburg has seen increased collaboration among businesses, the public and government organizations. It has also proven useful in their "Twinning" work with the Same District in Tanzania, in which the two municipalities share knowledge and collaborate on projects.
 
Gruppo Reti
An Italian IT consulting agency with more than 160 certified IT professionals, Gruppo Reti covers four main areas: business solutions, infrastructure and networking, business analysis and project management, and home and building automation. Using Clearvale, they have seen an increase in company performance and better collaboration and knowledge sharing among departments and employees.
 
People Tree Education Society
People Tree Education Society in India helps create new entrepreneurs. Relying on an active, participatory approach to education, PTeS connects students with industry professionals. With Clearvale, they have created Virtual Campus, a user-friendly site that is attractive and easy to navigate. Student and faculty are able to share notes, upload exam papers, and stay up to date with news and events.
 
TechTree IT Systems
Specializing in building high-performance business applications for mid-market companies in the Asia-Pacific region, TechTree IT Systems is a growing company that is adding customers, partners and employees at a rapid pace. Clearvale has helped their large, mobile, geographically dispersed workforce to coordinate their efforts working towards new leads who are often on the move themselves.
 
QuickLogic
Based in Sunnyvale, CA, QuickLogic provides semiconductor solutions to handheld consumer device manufacturers. Using a Clearvale network for internal collaboration, QuickLogic now has a centralized location for marketing materials, meetings minutes, design files and more. Employees in the field can easily share and retrieve information, helping them quickly respond to customer issues.

For more customer stories and case studies, please visit: http://www.clearvale.com/mkt/en/customers.php

We are planning to complete some maintenance work on all Clearvale networks later this week. Clearvale networks will be unavailable on Friday January 6th, 5:30-6:30 PM, PST (Saturday January 7th, 0130-0230 UTC).

We apologize for any inconvenience. 

The following issues will be addressed in a patch to Clearvale on December 21, 2011:

The following issues will be addressed in a patch to Clearvale on December 14, 2011:

We are planning to complete some required maintenance work on all Clearvale networks late tomorrow afternoon, December 9th. Your network will be unavailable from approximately 5:30-6:30 PM, PST.

We apologize for any inconvenience. 

We are making a slight change to Clearvale today that makes it easier to accrue more activity points in Clearvale. As a result of this change, you will earn 3 activity points each time you add new content to your network. For example, if you upload a file or write a blog, you will earn 3 activity points for each activity.

You continue to earn 1 activity point when you edit content, rate content, and so on.

Your activity points appear on your personal page:

For complete information on how activity points work, see Earning Activity Points in the online help.

The following issues will be addressed in a patch to Clearvale on December 2, 2011:

Activity Point Enhancement

This patch includes a slight change to activity point accrual. You will now earn 3 activity points when you add new content to your network instead of earning 1 point. Other activities, such as editing content or rating content, still gives you a single point. For complete information about how activity points work, see Earning Activity Points in the online help.

We have some exciting updates coming to our iPhone App in version 1.07. We will be submitting the app for approval later today, and expect the app to be available within the next two weeks. In the meantime, here is a list of the improvements that will be available in the new version:

• A Network page is now available from the main menu.
• File and folder browsing are now available in the network, community, and profile spaces.
• The “Saved Files” feature (accessible from the main menu) allows you to download and store files locally for offline access.
• The “Open in clearvale” feature (accessible from the top right corner when viewing a file on iOS) allows you to upload a file into your Clearvale network. This option automatically appears after installing the latest Clearvale app.
• The custom streams (configured from your desktop) are now available in the iPhone App. Go to MyStreams and click the button in the upper right corner to access your custom streams.
• Action Items and Tasks are now available as a sub-tab in the MyStreams area.
• A new version reminder will appear when your app is out of date.  The reminder will prompt you to go to the App Store to download the latest version of the app.
• Preference settings are now available. These can be accessed from the Settings menu on your device. Configurable settings include the font size, file synching for Saved Files, and the amount of text to display in activity streams.
• Text from streams, content, and comments are now selectable and can be copied.
• A “Show on Web” button is now available on several pages. Pushing this button allows you to view the desktop version of these pages on your Safari browser.
• Hyperlinks within text are now clickable.
• iPad users will see a high-resolution version of the native app, rather than choosing between a 1x and 2x version.
• Multiple UI improvements to streams, links, and the community list page.
• The app has been compiled and tested against iOS 5. In addition all features are available on iOS 4.x.  Most features are supported for users running iOS 3.x.
• A Logout button is available in the upper-right corner of the menu page.

The following issues will be addressed in a patch to Clearvale on November 18, 2011:

We are happy to announce two new products that you can use in conjunction with Clearvale Enterprise:

• Clearvale It, a Microsoft Outlook add-in that lets you instantly publish email threads and attachments to your Clearvale network.
• Salesforce Integration, a collection of widgets that your network administrator can install on your Clearvale network. Individuals can then place these widgets on their personal page to integrate the Salesforce dashboard, charts, or data right within Clearvale.

For information on installing and using these new products, see the Outlook Clearvale It and Salesforce Integration communities. In these communities, you will find installation instructions, user documentation, and forums for asking questions.
 
Note that if you are using Clearvale Express, you need to upgrade to Clearvale Enterprise to use these new products.

Il mese di Ottobre 2011 ha visto il rilascio della nuova versione di Clearvale. Vediamo quali sono le novità ...

Task Sequenziali. E' ora possibile creare task composti da più fasi. Ogni fase può essere completato da una o più persone.

Clearvale tiene traccia di chi deve completare la fase attuale, ed avvisa le persone alla quale è stata assegnata la prossima fase quando tocca a loro completarla.

Amministrazione delle Comunità. Tramite la pagina Gestione Utenti, il proprietario e gli amminsitratori della comunità possono ora assegnare più facilmente i ruoli scegliendo un'opzione dal menu a tendina.

Potrai inoltre assegnare il tuo stesso ruolo ad un altro utente della comunità oppure potrai anche assegnargli un ruolo inferiore facendolo passare da 'Utente' ad 'Amministratore'. Quando viene cambiato il ruolo di un utente della comunità, questa persona riceverà un avviso nel suo Stream delle Attività e nella posta elettronica (se le notifiche email sono state correttamente configurate)

Pagine di dettagli dedicate per aggiornamenti di stato e note. Aggiornamenti di stato che condividi con chi ti segue e note che scrivi sulle pagine di altri utenti ora hanno una propria pagina di dettaglio nel caso in cui l'aggiornamento di stato o la nota genera una serie di commenti.

Clicca l'etichetta stato o nota nello Stream delle Attività per accedere alla pagina di dettaglio.

Miglioramenti nella gestione di inviti al network. Il proprietario del Network e gli amministratori possono ora cancellare inviti che attendono una validazione da parte dell'invitato. Per esempio, tra i potenziali utenti del network, ce ne potrebbero essere alcuni non interessati a partecipare. Ora puoi accedere alla pagina Admin>Gestione Utenti>Validazioni in Sospeso e cancellare gli inviti in sospeso.

E' anche possibile cancellare le persone elencate nella pagina Approvazioni in Sospeso. Queste sono persone che hanno richiesto di partecipare al Network ma che  non hanno validato la richiesta tramite il link inviato al loro indirizzo di posta elettronica. Se utilizzi un Ecosistema Clearvale, ora hai la facoltà  di rimandare gli inviti agli utenti che non si sono collegati e che non hanno terminato l'impostazione del loro profilo.

Migliorie alla conversione dei video.  Attualmente, tutti i video sono convertiti al formato MP4 360p e WMV 360 p quando li carichi in Clearvale. Con questa versione di Clearvale il proprietario del network o uno degli amministratori può scegliere un'ulteriore  formato di conversione MP4 720p. Questo formato ha una risoluzione superiore agli altri. In aggiunta è possibile controllare quali formati vengono utilizzati nel network. Le opzioni sono:

• MP4 720p, per un'elevata risoluzione.
• MP4 360p, per una risoluzione inferiore.
• WMV 360p, per una risoluzione inferiore e per visualizzazione sui dispositivi Windows.

Per impostare questa preferenza il proprietario del network o gli amministratori accedono alla pagina Admin>Amministrazione del Network e poi viene selezionato il formato desiderato per il network in questione.

Inoltre, per i desktop browser, le conversioni video per H264 e FLV sono pronti per essere visualizzati immediatamente. Non c'è un'attesa per la conversione

Widget Esterni. Widget esterni sono piccoli applicativi installati come widget all'interno di un network. Danno la possibilità di fornire al network contenuti dinamici provenienti da un'applicazione esterna. In aggiunta alla possibilità di creare widget esterni per il tuo network, puoi anche pubblicarli per essere utilizzati in altri network:

• Se pubblichi il widget esterno al tuo Account Library, qualsiasi network che fa parte del tuo account Clearvale può utlizzare il widget esterno.
• Se pubblichi il widget al Global Library, una volta che BroadVision lo ha approvato, il widget è a disposizione di qualsiasi network nell'installazione Clearvale (per esempio, tutti i network clearvale.com oppure mingxigu.com).

Varie.  In aggiunta alle novita elencate sopra, sono state fatte delle migliorie a livello di interfaccia utente:

• E' stato migliorato il messaggio inviato al stream delle attività ed alle notifiche quando contenuto è condiviso con persone o aree di Clearvale
• E' stato introdotta una finestra per potere selezione un utente nel campo A quando si scrive un messaggio.
• E' stato ridotto il numero di finestre verdi di conferma.
• Quando un titolo o un nome non è visible per intero, passando sopra il cursore il nome viene messo in evidenza.
• E' stato migliorato il processo di caricamento delle immagini nell'editor di testi.

A new feature is being added to Clearvale today--the ability to track the total activity points added to the network for the current week and the lifetime of the network. To see these tallies, the network admin needs to place the Most Active Members widget on the Network page of the network. The tallies appear at the bottom of this widget:

Additionally, if the network admin wants to display the total activity points for each member on the Members listing page, they can check the Show CAP in Member List Display Page setting on the Admin>Network Administration page.

After checking this option, when any network member displays the Members page, the lifetime cap for each member appears on this page.

Clearvale networks will be unavailable Friday, October 14th, from 6:00 PM, PDT until 7:00 PM. You will not be able to log into your network during this period.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

We're in the process of making a few changes to Clearvale Connect. As the amount of content in the network has grown, the home page has become a little cluttered, so we're tidying this up a little. We hope it makes it easier for you to find the last information about Clearvale, but if you can't find what you're looking for, please don't hesitate to ask.

The October release is just around the corner. We plan to deploy the new software Friday, October 7th, starting at 5:00 PM, PDT. We have lots of features planned, so let’s take a quick look….
 
Sequential tasks. You can now create tasks that define multiple steps. You can assign each step to one or more people.

Clearvale keeps track of who needs to do the current step, and notifies the next person when it is their turn to complete a step within the task.

Community administration. As a community owner or administrator, the Manage Members page now makes it easy to change roles for community members by providing a drop-down list for assigning community roles.

You can promote another community member up to your role level in the community. Additionally, you can demote their role down to community member. Community members are notified of any role change via their activity stream, or email (if they have configured email notifications).

Dedicated detail pages for status updates and notes. Status updates that you share with your followers and notes that you write on members’ pages now have their own detail page in cases where the status update or note generate a thread of comments.

Click the status or note label in your activity stream to link to the detail page.

Ability to better manage network invitations. Network owners and administrators can now delete pending network invitations. For example, if you invited several potential customers to your network, maybe a few were not interested in joining. You can now go to the Admin>Manage Members>Pending Invitations page and delete the pending invitations.

You can also delete the people listed on the Pending Validation tab. (These are people who requested to join the network, but did not follow through with clicking the validation link that was sent to their email.) If you are using a Clearvale ecosystem, you can now resend invitations to members who have not logged in and finished setting up their account.
 
Video conversion enhancements. Currently, all video files are automatically converted to the MP4 360p and WMV 360 p formats when you upload them to Clearvale. In the October release, the network owner or administrator can select an additional conversion format, MP4 720p, for higher resolution. Additionally, they can control which format conversions are used on their network. Options are:

• MP4 720p, for higher resolution.
• MP4 360p, for lower resolution.
• WMV 360p, for lower resolution and viewing on Windows devices.

To set this preference, the network administrator selects Admin>Network Administration and then selects the desired video conversions for the network.

Also, on desktop browsers, video conversions for H264 and FLV are ready to play immediately. There is no waiting for conversion.

External widgets. External widgets are small applications that are installed as widgets within a network. They provide a way to include dynamic content from an external application in your network. In addition to creating external widgets for your own network, you can publish external widgets for use in other networks:

• If you publish your external widget to your Account Library, any networks that are part of your Clearvale account can use the external widget.
• If you publish your external widget to the Global Library, once BroadVision approves it, the widget is available for use by any other network in the Clearvale installation (for example, all clearvale.com networks or all mingxigu.com networks).

Odds and Ends.  In addition to the above-mentioned enhancements, there are some user interface enhancements:

• Improved the activity stream and notification message related to content that is shared with multiple people or spaces.
• Enabled a member picker in the To field when writing a message.
• Reduced the number of green feedback popup messages.
• Provided consistent hover text for truncated titles and names.
• Improved the image upload process in the text editor.

The following issues were addressed in a patch to Clearvale on September 16, 2011:

We added a video that quickly highlights the features in the July release. You can see it here.

We also added a feature spotlight on using Clearvale groups--one of the new features in the July release.

The Clearvale maintenance work is complete and daily email notification digests are available again.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

We want to know how Clearvale has helped you and your company -- has it transformed the way you work? Has it saved you time by simplifying collaboration with your colleagues? Send us your story for your chance to win an iPad 2!
 
How the Contest Works

• Tell us your story. In an email to CSA@BroadVision.com tell us how Clearvale has made your job easier, better, more enjoyable. Aim for 200-500 words. Written entries can be submitted in English, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Dutch or French. Deadline: September 9, 2011
• The judging panel will select the most compelling stories. Finalists announced: September 14, 2011
• We will work with the finalists to create a video version of their entry. Don’t worry: we’ll do the work. Video submission deadline: September 28, 2011
• BroadVision’s Clearvale experts, other customers and partners will select the five best stories. All winners will receive an iPad 2. Winners announced: October 3, 2011

Why Submit?
 
In addition to the chance to win an iPad 2, the information we learn from reading your real-life stories will help us improve the Clearvale product and better serve you and other customers in the future.

Questions?

Email us at CSA@BroadVision.com 

We're looking forward to your submissions!

If you are using the Clearvale iPhone App, please take the time to ensure that you have updated to the most recent version, v1.05.  We are planning to implement an upgrade to the Clearvale platform in a mid-September patch.   August 19, 2011 patch (approximately one month from now).  However, the patch is incompatible with earlier versions of the iPhone App.  As a result, if you choose not to upgrade your app to v1.05, you will be unable to utilize the Clearvale iPhone App after the patch has taken effect.

Please take the time over the next few weeks to update your Clearvale iPhone App.  This will ensure continuity of service on your device after the August 19 mid-September patch.

(Note: The original post stated that the patch would be applied August 19.  However, due to popular request we are holding off on this patch until mid-September, to provide users with more time to update their apps.)

Look for the July release of Clearvale on Friday, July 29. The release will start rolling out after 5:00 PM, PDT.

Highlights of the release are:

• Daily email digest. Clearvale now provides a daily email digest of network activity. The digest is specific to each member, based on what they are following in the network. Network administrators determine at what time each day that members receive the digest. Network members can choose to opt in or out of the digest.
• Private access mode. Network owners, administrators, and moderators  will no longer see members’ private information (such as blogs and files that are not shared with others) without first switching to private access mode. When done viewing private information, they should exit out of the mode.
•  Personal Groups.  Any network member can create a personal group of users to which they want to share files, assign tasks, send messages, and so on.  You see only groups that you created.
• Tasks. When defining a task, you can indicate whether all assignees or just one need to complete the task for it to be considered complete. Also, the page where you manage your tasks has been improved for easier task management. Also note, if you use calendars, you can no longer define your event as a task.
• Additional notification preferences. You can choose to receive notification when new content is added or updated in communities that you are following.
• New APIs. For Clearvale developers, many new APIs are available, including APIs for working with activity streams, blogs, tasks, polls, wiki pages, and bookmarks.

We are planning to release a Clearvale patch on Friday, July 1, that will slightly change a couple of Clearvale APIs. If your network is has the CV-API enabled, note the following changes:

1. The new signature for membership.add_member is as follows:

membership.add_member
email (required). The email address to use as the login for the new member.
pwd (required). The password for the new member.
firstname (required). The new member's first name.
lastname (required). The new member's last name.
role (required). One of the following roles: administrator, moderator, writer, reader, disabled
communities (required). Community IDs, separated with commas.

The add_member method now supports the case where the user is already registered in Clearvale.

2. The membership.remove_member method behaves slightly differently. The member is no longer removed from Clearvale; instead, the member is disabled.

3. The methods for adding and removing members in networks and communities now also work within an ecosystem. (The methods for adding and removing members in communities are communities.add_user_to_community and communities.remove_user_from_community.)

We plan to roll out the July Release of Clearvale in the later half of July.  Here is a quick peek at the new features.

Groups. Anyone in the network can create groups of users. Groups of users are simply a collection of network members that you can treat like a single member. For example, you can invite a group to a community, assign a group a task, or share a file with a group. Groups are personal to you. You cannot use a group created by another network member.

To create a group, click the Members tab and then click Add in the Groups area:

Once you create a group, the group name appears along with the names of individual network members in places like the Choose Members popup window:

Note that while the group name appears in the Choose Members window, it does not appear in other places in Clearvale. For example, if you share a file with the Sales group, and then look at the share settings for the file, you will see the individuals that comprise the group, not the group name.

Tasks

While tasks are not new in this release, you will notice that the UI has been improved and some enhancements have been made.

When creating a task, you can specify whether the task needs to be completed by all assignees or just one assignee:

When viewing the list the tasks assigned to you or the tasks that you have assigned to others, the UI has changed a bit. For example, if you hover over the Assigned To field, you will see a list of the specific people assigned a task.

The filters on these pages have also changed. The old filter New is renamed as Assigned.  And a new filter is provided for viewing declined tasks.

When viewing the detail page for a task, you will see more information about the task. For example, you can now see the status of the task for each assignee, and when it was last updated.

Private Access Mode.  In the past, network owners, administrators, and moderators saw all content in a network, even content where the owner set the privacy to Me.  In the July release, the default behavior for these administrative members is for this content not to be visible. If they need to see private content, they can choose to show it by selecting Enter Private Access Mode from the drop-down menu under their name at the top of the screen. (Hover the mouse over your name to see the menu.) 

When you are in Private Access Mode, your name appears in red:

When done viewing the network in this mode, select Exit Private Access Mode from the menu.  

Notifications. The July release offers additional notification settings on the Edit Settings page. These new settings include:

• The ability to receive a daily email digest of notification messages. The network administrator determines at what time of day you receive the email digest.
• The ability to receive email notifications regarding the communities that you are following. In particular, you can now choose to receive email notifications when new content is added to these communities or when content is updated in these communities.

APIs. Lots of changes planned for the APIs for this release. In particular, we are adding APIs for:

• Tasks
• Wikis
• Polls
• Bookmarks

And the APIs for Blogs, User Profiles, and Analytics are being expanded. We are also modifying several other APIs to fix inconsistency issues. Stay tuned to Clearvale Connect for more information about the API changes as the release gets closer.

On Friday evening, June 3^rd, after 5:00 PM PDT, we will release a new version of Clearvale. The process of upgrading all networks takes a couple of hours; however, your network should be unavailable for only a few minutes while your particular network is upgraded.

For details on the new features, read the All About the June Release blog.

The Clearvale June Release will be available soon!  Here is a quick preview of the new features:

Custom activity streams. You will be able to define custom stream filters based on the people, spaces, and content that you are following. For example, if you are in sales, you might want to show just updates from sales representatives and the sales community:

You can only include content in a custom stream that you are already following in the network. You may find that you need to follow some additional people or content to create the exact custom stream that you want.

Like other stream filters, you can switch the filter in your stream at any time. For example, you might want to toggle between seeing everything and just seeing sales-related updates.

To create a new stream, click the Plus icon next to the Streams drop-down list.

New editor. When creating or editing content, you will see a new, streamlined editor. The interface is simplified and additionally makes uploading images easier.

Your current content will transition seamlessly to the new editor.

When adding images in the editor, you can navigate to an image on your computer to upload, or you can simply refer to an image URL.

Video improvements. Clearvale will automatically convert uploaded videos to the MPEG-4 and WMV format so that the videos are suitable for streaming on most platforms. You can also select a preview image for the video. These changes do not impact embedded videos, which are stored on other sites, such as YouTube. 

More activity points. Previously, only a small subset of network activities earned you activity points in Clearvale. In the June release, you will accumulate activity points by not only adding content to your network but by rating and following content. Each of these activities will earn you one activity point.

Invitation improvements. Assuming that your network allows all members to invite other network members, the interface for inviting members is simplified and easier to find—simply click Invite Members on the Members tab.

Customize network features. With Clearvale Enterprise, network administrators can customize the features that are available in the network. For example, administrators can choose to not allow polls or wikis in their network. You can change your mind at any time and re-enable the features. For example, if you disable polls, all existing polls in the network are hidden. If you later choose to enable polls, the previous polls will reappear in the network.

Mobile viewing enhancements. Google Apps Authentication is now provided for mobile viewing. Also, the Tasks - Action Items and Task Detail pages appear when viewing a Clearvale network on a mobile device.

Additional email notification preferences. You can specify additional email notification preferences. For example, you can indicate to send email notifications when someone assigns a task to you are sends you a message to your Clearvale inbox. To set preferences, click Edit Settings on your personal page and then click the Follow & Activity Settings. Scroll down the page to set your email notification preferences.

Other enhancements:

• Default forums are created automatically in all new spaces.
• New APIs are provided for calendars and search. Some new restrictions are also included. In addition, see the note shared earlier here.
• If you enabled the Clearvale API service for your network, and you have integrated Clearvale into another application, you can configure Clearvale to use the login page for your application. To do this, you need to customize your login page so that it authenticates against Clearvale as well.
• You will receive a notification when file ownership is transferred to you.
• You can go to www.clearvale.com to recover a lost Clearvale password.

If you have enabled the Clearvale API for your network, and your external systems use Clearvale APIs to access network data, note that for security reasons, we are disabling HTTP access to the following APIs in the June release of Clearvale:

• cvauth.authenticate
• membership.create_user
• membership.update_member

If you are calling these APIs using HTTP, as of the June release, they will require the HTTPS protocol. You can go ahead and make this change now as the APIs currently support both protocols.

Stay tuned to Clearvale Connect for more information about the June release (planned for early June).

The delivery of email messages from Clearvale for alerts, invitations, and so on, will be disrupted this Saturday, April 30th, from 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM, PDT. All messages will be delivered after the maintenance work is complete.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

When switching to the Contemporary or Stellar theme, some customers may see their tabs disappear because they have their own settings for Tabs in the "admin/appearance/basic" page.  Any color settings they may have, for Tabs on this page, will override those set by the "Contemporary" or " Stellar" themes.   Classic theme is not an issue.  Just remove any settings you have for "tabs" on this page.

Bloor Research and BroadVision are teaming up to gather critical research about the current state of social networking in the enterprise from a select group of IT and business professionals.

This survey aims to discover how user organisations view the use of enterprise social networking (ESN) delivered via software as a service (SaaS). It is targeted at IT managers and decision makers responsible for your organisation’s social network.

We would like to invite you to participate! The survey is available online and takes less than ten minutes to complete. All responses will be treated anonymously.

As a thank you, everyone who fully completes this survey will be entered into a free prize draw and could win $200 worth of Amazon vouchers*. The runner up will receive Amazon vouchers worth $100. For every entry received in the survey, Bloor will also make a donation to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.

*Amazon vouchers can be paid in other currency equivalents

To start the survey, simply click here: http://svy.mk/hGMbgP

It should take under ten minutes. If you'd like to leave the survey at any time, just click 'Exit survey'. Your answers will be saved.

Thank you for your time.

Partecipa gratuitamente al webinar che si terrà Martedi 29 Marzo 2011 alle ore 15:30.

Per iscriversi vai al link:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/374027830

...

Social CRM is much more than just talking to your customers on Facebook and Twitter.
It's about building collaborative relationships with your customers.

Join our complimentary Webinar 'Social CRM: dispelling the myths' on Tuesday March 29th at 2.30pm to understand more about what Social CRM is all about.

We will show you how you can define your Social CRM strategy and build a collaborative business both internally and externally.
Presented by Richard Hughes, BroadVision's Director of Product Strategy, we aim to clarify what Social CRM really means and explain how to engage your customers more effectively.

Who Should Attend:
* CMOs, Heads of Marketing, Sales Directors, Sales Managers, IT, and anyone looking to enhance their external communication.

What You Will Learn:
*How to enable your employees to engage with your customers
*How to allow your customers to engage with each other
*What you can do to make sure your company keeps pace with the competition

We introduced tasks as a new feature in Clearvale Enterprise networks a couple weeks back. Here is a quick overview of how to use the feature.

What Are Tasks?

Tasks may be assigned from one member to another (or to multiple members). Tasks may or may not include attachments (files). If you are assigned a task, you can either Decline it, Re-assign it to another member, or Complete it. When you assign a task, the task is only considered "complete" if all of the assignees complete it. The task creator can, at any time, change/remove the assignees or delete the task.

How Can I Access Tasks?

There are two ways to see tasks:

• Click the My Page tab to display your personal page and then make sure that the Profile Directory widget is visible.  You'll see Tasks listed on there along with all other content types.

• You can also see tasks that are assigned to in your Action Items inbox on your personal page.

The Tasks Page

When you click the Tasks link in the Profile Directory widget, the Tasks page appears, where you can view both tasks that you have assigned and tasks that have been assigned to you. You can also create a new task and assign it to others.

Adding a Task

When you add a task, you provide a name, an optional due-date, a description, assign at least one member to the task, and optionally include an attachment.

Completing a Task

After you have completed a task, mark it Complete in either your Action Items inbox or on the Tasks page. By default, the Tasks page shows all new and completed tasks. To see just new or just completed tasks, change the Filter setting from All Tasks to New or Completed tasks. 

Email Notifications

You will also be notified by email when you get a new task, or when someone comments on a task that you're working on.

Want More Information on Creating Tasks?

For a short video on how to create Clearvale tasks, click here.

We are planning a small release later today (around 6:00 PM, PDT) that provides a new feature--the ability to limit access to your network to one or more IP addresses. This is a premium feature that is available for Clearvale networks. If you are interested in this feature, contact BroadVision at sales@broadvision.com for more information.

We also are simplifying the sharing of community folders. Like file and blog folders, community folders will no longer have a privacy setting. All folders will be basically set as public. To control who can see folders, use space privacy settings or individual privacy settings for files, blogs, or communities.

We will be releasing a new version of Clearvale this evening, March 9th, starting at 6:00 PM, PST. Your network will be unavailable for a short period of time while it is upgraded.

For details about the new features, see this blog.

The March 9th release includes several enhancements that we are excited to share with you:

• Filter your Activity stream. The current behavior is to show all activities for followed members, spaces, and content as well as your activities in your Activity stream. In the March release, this is still the default behavior; however, you can choose to limit the Activity stream to specific types of updates, such as just status updates or just activities pertaining to your content. Select a filter option from the Streams drop-down list, and the Activity stream is refreshed with the type of activities you selected.

• Create tasks. You can now create tasks and assign them to network members. For each task, you can set a due date and attach documents. Any tasks assigned to you appear in the Action Items tab of your Activity stream. Creating tasks is specific to Clearvale Enterprise.

• Sort videos by popularity. You will be able to sort the display of videos in a widget by the highest rated video or by the most viewed video.
• Conduct more specific searches. When conducting a search, will be able to choose an Advanced Search link where you can specify more details about your search—what type of content to include or exclude, when the content was published, and so on.

• Share polls and forums topics. Share forum topics across forums, spaces, and networks in your ecosystem. Share polls across spaces and networks in your ecosystem. This feature is available on a trial basis for select customers who have purchased the right to use the Ecosystem premium service. The feature will be available in a future release for all Clearvale Enterprise customers.
• Prevent data loss when clicking away. In rich-text fields, Clearvale will prompt you before letting you click away from a window in which you have typed some text.
• Support more smart phones. We are providing support for mobile viewing on more smart phones. Simply point your mobile browser to your network URL and see a streamlined interface to your network. This is currently optimized for Windows Mobile 6.5. Will be optimizing for other platforms in the future. Note that this is in addition to the Clearvale iPhone app that we introduced last year.
• Performance and security improvements and several bug fixes.

BroadVision announced a new version of Clearvale last week. The new version, called Clearvale Express, is a scaled down version of Clearvale that folks can use when they don’t need all the bells and whistles provided with Clearvale. Clearvale Express is free to use with some limitations (maximum of 20 communities and 1 Gigabyte of space). It provides enough to give you a taste of using Clearvale. If you run out of space, you can purchase additional space, or consider upgrading to the full version of Clearvale.

Clearvale Express looks like Clearvale, but there are some limitations. The following table identifies what you will/won’t find in Clearvale Express.

To try Clearvale Express, go to www.clearvale.com and follow the instructions for setting up a Clearvale Express network.

YouTube has changed the default format of the video embed code. The new format uses <iframe>, but we don't allow <iframe> in Clearvale because it's a security risk. If you paste in an embed code containing <iframe>, we'll display the literal text instead of executing the code. 
YouTube still provides the old embed code format.  Click Use old embed code in YouTube to switch to the old format before you copy/paste the embed code from YouTube.

Note that some other websites that allow you to share videos, such as Vimeo, are also using the <iframe> embed code format. Regardless of where your videos are located, the you cannot use the <iframe> embed code format in Clearvale.

In the future, we'll look at supporting the <iframe> embed code format while still maintaining security against malicious scripts.

BroadVision is planning to upgrade the Clearvale networks this Friday, January 28th. We will start refreshing the networks at  6:00 PM, PST. All networks should be refreshed by midnight.

New Features:

• Network admins can set the initial page that appears for network members. Options are to display either the network-level home page (this is the current behavior), or the member’s profile page.
• Network admins can integrate Google Apps into a network. Set this option at the network level, then network members can decide whether or not to include a Google widget on their personal profile page. The Google apps that are supported are Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs.
• Network admins can choose to use a new network theme that is named “Stellar.” Stellar is the default theme for new networks. It is similar to the Contemporary theme, with the main difference being the background image used at the top of the page (a blue stellar image instead of the blue office building). The fonts are also slightly different.
• Two new widgets are provided on the profile page:
  • The Get Started widget provides a checklist of first steps new network members should take.
  • The Suggested Items widget provides links to suggested content, communities, and members for new network members.

Changed Behavior:

• New passwords must be at least 8 characters and must contain at least 1 letter and 1 number or symbol. If your current password doesn’t meet these minimum requirements, it is still supported. But when you change your password, you will be required to meet the new minimum requirements.
• You no longer need to set a privacy setting for file or blog folders. Instead, these take the privacy setting of the network (for network-level files and blogs) or the community (for community-level files and blogs). Profile-level folders for files and blogs will have privacy "Me". The upgrade will automatically set the privacy of existing network level folders to match the privacy of the network, and the privacy of existing community-level folders to match the privacy of the community. The privacy settings of existing profile-level folders are left unchanged by the upgrade, and you cannot change the profile-level folder privacy settings after the upgrade.
• A couple of tabs are renamed: 
  • The Home tab is now labeled Network.
  • The My Profile tab is now labeled My Page, and is moved to be the second tab, after Network.
• Improved search results. Clearvale now weights the name of the content higher than a single occurrence of the term in the content. The search results are ordered exclusively by relevance, with the ability to filter the results by type.
• New networks default to not having a network-level home page (Network tab).

Note also that a new version of Clearvale is now available. Clearvale Express lets you create a network, invite members, create communities, and share files. But the network offers fewer bells and whistles than traditional Clearvale. For example, you can't create blogs and forums, and you can't change the look of the network. If you want something a little more lightweight, it might be the right product for you. Clearvale Express is free for up to 10G of storage and 20 communities.

We are happy to announce the December release of Clearvale, a great way to wrap up 2010 and kick off 2011! Note the following new and enhanced features:

• You can now watch more videos directly in Clearvale without having to download the video file first. Both Flash (.flv) and MP4/H.264  (.mp4) video files are supported.
• The activity and stream widgets have a simplified approach to better handle comments by other network members.  Previously, each comment was considered a separate entry in the stream.  Now, each content item is bumped up to the top of the stream when someone comments on it. However, the comments are collapsed, showing the original content item, and the latest comment. You can expand it to see all comments.
• On member list pages, members are now listed alphabetically by last name instead of first name.
• On community member pages, the date someone joined the community appears.
• If you are using the contemporary network theme, the active tab is now more noticeable.
• Customers who resell Clearvale can use the Clearvale Management Center to manage their networks. If you have purchased Clearvale yourself, you can also use the Clearvale Management Center to create new networks and make sure that they are associated with your account.
• If you are using the Clearvale API Premium Service, we added methods to support single sign on to allow you to integrate with external applications.

Hot on the tail of last week's E2.0 Conference, here's a roundup of some of the great media coverage BroadVision has received:

14 Social Media Experts React to Facebook’s New Messages

Social Times

CMO Giovanni Rodriguez give his two cents on the new Facebook features

Broadvision Launches Clearvale 2.0

TechCrunch

Clearvale, the DIY model and MyStreams

Broadvision Relaunches Clearvale, Takes on Jive Directly...

Silicon Valley Watcher

No Jive Talkin and the new Clearvale

Borrowing a Page from Facebook and Ning, BroadVision Bets the Company on the “Social Business Cloud”

Xconomy

Coverage of Clearvale and insight into our founder and CEO Pehong Chen’s inspiration for the future of BroadVision

Broadvision Claims to Rival Jive in Social Business Software Market

CMS Wire

Covers MyStreams, PaasPort and No Jive Talkin

BroadVision Offers Platform For Social Media In The Enterprise

Network Computing

Coverage of the release of the new BroadVision Clearvale

Getting Social Networks Down to Business

IT Business Edge

Covers PaasPort and the release of the new Clearvale

Microsoft gets another competitor in SoftBank

Linux World

The possible implications that BroadVision’s partnering with SoftBank may have for Microsoft

Are you finding  that the Clearvale menu tabs are hard to read as a result of the November Clearvale release? If so, try updating the colors associated with tab names. To change the color of the tab names, do the following:

1. Select Admin>Appearance.
2. Click the Basic tab in the Appearance editor.
3. In the Tab area, remove the color associated with Font and the Mouse-over font.
4. Click Save.
5. Check the color of the tab names.

If you are happy with the look of the tab names, you are done. If you want to make some adjustments, go back to the Appearance editor and change the Font and  Mouse-over font color to a specific color that you like. You need to pick a color that looks good with both the background used for the currently selected tab as well as the non-selected tabs.

Another Clearvale release is in the works. The November 15th release includes several new features to make Clearvale easier than ever to use. Read on for a preview of the release.

Better Notifications and More Control of Them

The My Streams widget, which lets you see what activities your co-workers are up to on the network, now provides buttons for managing the activity stream.

In particular:

• Use the Refresh button  to refresh the content in the My Streams widget.
• Use the Connections button  to manage your follow connections, including people, communities, and content that you are following.
• Use the Settings button  to manage your stream settings and email notification preferences.

These same buttons appear in your activity stream on your profile page.

Easier Management of Forums and Communities

A refreshed user interface makes it easier for you to manage forums. As an administrator, you can change the order in which forums appear.

The default image for forums was updated as well as shown in the above image.

For communities, you can see who you invited to the community and whether or not they joined. For those whom you invited but they did not join, you can resend the invitation.

Communities also include a privacy indicator that indicates who can see the community and whether an invitation is required.

More Choices with Cloning

Previously when cloning a network, you had just one option—whether or not to include the network members and content. You now have an additional option when cloning a network—whether or not to include all of the network communities. If you include the network communities, the following is included for each community: community settings, community page layouts, and community folder structures. Folder structures are included for files, wikis, blogs, and forums.

New  iPhone App

Keep up with your Clearvale networks on your iPhone, iPad, or iTouch by by downloading the Clearvale app from the Apple App Store—it is free! The app will be available from the App Store in December. Use the app to keep up on the latest activity on your network and within your communities.

Trial Networks

Clearvale now lets you create a new network with a 45-day free trial period. A free-trial message appears on all networks that are considered trial networks until you purchase Clearvale. If at the end of 45-days you do not purchase Clearvale, your network is disabled. Advertisements no longer appear across the top of the page in any Clearvale networks.

We are pushing out a Clearvale refresh today. In addition to fixing several bugs, we made some user interface improvements we hope that you like. In a nutshell, here are the user interface improvements:

Uploading files is simplified. Previously uploading files required you to step through two pages to upload one or more files. We simplified this so that it is now a one-step process.

Community management is improved. When creating a community, you can choose to invite members while creating the community. Previously you had to finish creating the community, and then invite members. Additionally, when listing community members, the list is more concise so that more members appear at one time. You can easily see and change the community roles assigned to community members.

If you are using LDAP, we provide failover support. You can now list multiple LDAP servers that you want Clearvale to access. Only mirrored clusters are supported. Data from all servers must be in sync. Clearvale LDAP support is a Premium Service.

Check out the online help for details on using these new features.

Release Notes for the September 29, 2010 release are available here.

We are super excited to announce a new release of Clearvale planned for September 29th, 7:00 PDT. Read on for details about the new features.

Improved activity updates. Networks and communities now provide a “wall” area where you can see the latest activity in the network or community.  Use the Network Activities widget to keep a pulse on the network, comment on other member’s activities, share what you are working on, and so on.

A similar widget called Communities Activities is provided for keeping track of activities in a community.

Your profile page also includes a “wall” area where you can see your activity as well as the activity of the people that you work closely with.

Support for different page layouts. Clearvale includes two network themes:

• The Contemporary theme looks as follows and is used for all new networks as well as any existing networks for which BroadVision applied an early version of this theme:

• The Classic theme, used for all other networks, looks as follows:

You can switch themes at any time. In addition to network themes, you can control the page layout used for each page. The page layout controls how wide the columns are. For each page in your network, you can use the three even columns, or three columns with a wide middle column.

Additionally, you can work with BroadVision and create your own themes.

Follow relationships instead of contacts. Any contact relationships you currently have are migrated to the follow relationship. By following people, communities, or content, Clearvale displays updates regarding these people and this content in your Activities block, available on your My Profile page. (If you are using the three even column layout on your profile page, you will need to click the My Streams link to see the Activity block.) A key difference between contacts and followers is that when you make someone a contact, you became their contact as well. With followers, you can choose to follow someone, but that person isn't required to follow you.

If you use the Contacts or Contacts' Activities widgets, they will no longer appear in your network.

More roles. Clearvale currently provides three roles for network members: Admin, Member, and Disabled. In the new release, the complete set of roles will be:

• Owner (of network)
• Administrator
• Moderator
• Writer
• Reader
• Disabled

You can set the default role for all new network members to be either Reader or Writer. You can change the roles assigned to a member at any time.

When your site is upgraded to this release, the member who created the network becomes an Owner instead of an Admin. Anyone else with the Admin role remains an administrator. For all other members, they are assigned the Writer role. You can change these roles as needed.

Add Link on Widgets. Many widgets now provide an Add link, allowing you to quickly add content to a widget.

Support for OpenID. As the network administrator, you can configure your network to support OpenID for logging into Clearvale.

Streamlined User Interface. Several improvements were made to the pages that list files, communities, and members in Clearvale. Content is displayed more efficiently, giving you a broader view of your information at one time.

The Files page looks similar to this:

Here is the Communities page:

And here is the Members page:

The page for a particular community now looks as follows:

The My Profile page looks as follows:

Bits and Pieces. We have a few odds and ends that I thought you might like to know about as well:

• We added a My Communities link added at the top of the page. Like the My Networks link, this link allows you to quickly access the most recently visited communities of which you are a member. If you don’t see the community that you are looking for, click View All… link to display all of the communities of which you are a member.
• In the past, the date of the last change was reflected in the number of hours or days that have passed since the change was made. In the upcoming release, the hours or days that have passed are used for up to 4 days. After that point, the specific date the change was made is listed.
• You can now assign a forum topic to a different forum.Occasionally network members might post a forum topic in the wrong forum. Network administrators will be able to move forum topics to the appropriate forum.The one limitation is that the forums must both be in the same content space. That is, you cannot move a forum topic from a forum available on the home page to a forum in a community, and vice versa.
• You should notice improved response time on your network.

We added a couple new feature spotlights on Clearvale Connect recently:

• Clearvale roles
• Clearvale file permissions and sharing

Take a look and let us know what you think!

For example, a recent article by Brian Solis discusses the influence of each gender on Twitter. While the information on gender intrigued me, it also made me wonder in a more general sense what would happen if organizations better leveraged all of their influencers with an Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) tool. Traditional mechanisms to exchange information in the workplace, such as email, perform a specific task. However, they don’t necessarily allow room for “influence.” Using the right people to influence others—whether it is to read specific technical journals or pay more attention to customers—can contribute to an increase in knowledge capital—a valuable company asset. These “influencers” need not consist of executive staff members, either. In fact, your most influential employees may include the people in your rank and file who enjoy blogging and sharing their knowledge.

Then there are the baby boomers leaving the workforce and taking their knowledge with them; the recouping of this knowledge can cost an organization a lot in time and money. Certainly, some knowledge that these departing staff members possess is documented someplace. Unfortunately, it may reside in a series of private email threads or in some share drive to which only limited people have access. With an ESN, however, knowledge exchange takes place as part of everyday interactions. For example, a community to which you belong can contain all relevant information pertaining to a specific project. As new members join, they see a contextualized setting for all data related to a specific project.

What about the younger generation? While it might tempt some folks to dismiss workforce newcomers’ ideas and attitudes about work, doing so can alienate an extremely powerful segment of your staff. (Remember how young the founder of Facebook was when he began his successful ascent?) The millennials can offer us innovative ideas. An ESN can encourage the nurturing of these ideas by giving members an open place to brainstorm and potentially contribute to the success of a product—and your company’s bottom line.

The workforce constantly changes, and the challenges that exist today will likely continue to haunt companies for years. Looking back at how things “were done” or “should be done” can only result in lost productivity, creativity, and ultimately revenue. Using a flexible ESN to help you move through these changes, though, can make your upcoming transitions easier.

We pushed out a small patch today that let's network members be "anonymous" on the network. For network members who are uncomfortable with other members knowing their real name, they can join the network and then select Profile>Edit Profile>Account Settings. Check the box under Account Name Settings titled Make me anonymous on this network. The user is then referred to throughout the network with an anonymous name. The anonymous name is "Member random-number," such as Member 55. Network members cannot see any profile information about this anonymous member, such as their real name, their profile photo, and so on. The network administrators, however, can see the member's real name.

Network administrators can also configure their network so that when people join, they are immediately given the option of being identified by an anonymous name. To set this preference, as the admin select Admin>Network Administration and then check the text box labeled Include Anonymous Member Option when joining.

We also fixed some bugs.

Let us know what you think!