MyOffice - Keep in touch with your office 

Installing MyOffice

Installing on other PCs

You can install MyOffice on as many PCs as you like.

The whole idea of MyOffice is that you log on from different locations and access one central source of data, that is always up to date ... so install MyOffice on all the PCs you regularly use. e.g. Home, Office, etc.

If you don't want to install MyOffice you can always log on via the Web Browser version, but this version isn't as quick or as easy to use as the Windows Desktop version.

How to install MyOffice

On the PC where you want to install MyOffice go to www.myoffice.net and click on the 'Downloads' link at the top of the page. 

Then click on the link for the Windows Desktop Application and press the RUN button. Follow the instructions. We suggest that you choose all the default options.

Logging on

Starting MyOffice

When installation is complete you'll see the MyOffice icon on your desktop. Double-click it to start MyOffice

Logging On

After you've double-clicked the MyOffice icon you'll see the Account, Username and Password logon window.

If you were the person who signed up for the 30 day free trial you would have specified these logon details and they would have been emailed to you in a confirmation email.

If you're a user in the account you'll need to find out your logon details from the person who set up the trial.

Admin

Admin Users

The person who initially set up the 30 day free trial is automatically given full admin capability.

This means that they can add users, create diaries, and carry out other admin functions.

They can also give admin capability to other users.

Users

Setting up additional users

To add new users click on Tools > User Admin and click the 'New' button.

The other users would log on to your Account using whatever Usernames and Passwords you set up for them.

Navigation

Moving around the system

Click on the icons at the top of each main window to move between the system modules.

There are icons for the following modules:

The Help Manual icon and Tips icon are in the top right hand corner of all main windows.

Configuring

The 'Tools' menu

Everything you can configure in MyOffice is under the Tools menu.

This is where you add users with Tools > User Admin and where you add diaries with Tools > Diary Admin. If you can't see these menu options it means that you haven't been given this capability by the account administrator.

An important menu option is Tools > Options. This is where you configure things like your personal view of diaries (start & finish times for day) and the Launch window (the first window you see when MyOffice starts).

It's also where you Import and Export data and run Outlook sync. 

General

Stay logged on

If you have a broadband connection you should stay logged on all day.

You can stay logged on for several days but its best to exit the application each day when you are finished with it. Never stay logged on for more than a week. If you find that it takes a long time to start you could consider starting it immediately after you've closed it down each night ... then it will be ready for use the following morning.

Staying logged on will save starting the application each time you need it. Just minimise the windows and leave them running. If your internet connection 'drops' the application will automatically re-connect.

Use right-click

Use right-click as much as you can to display the menus.

The right-click menus are context sensitive and display the menu options appropriate to where you clicked.

Launch Window

You can configure the system to open a particular module at startup.

For example, if you always want to check your emails when you log on you can configure emails to start first.

Go to the Tools menu, select Options and click the 'Launch Window' tab. The default is the Diary module.

Help Manual

How to find Help

The Help Manual can be accessed from within the Windows Desktop application and also from the web site.

To access Help from within the application click on the green ? icon in the top right hand corner of any main window.

To access Help from the web site go to www.myoffice.net and click on Support > Help.

Diaries

Double-click on an empty cell to add an appointment

If you double-click in the cell where you want the appointment to start the Appointment window opens with the date and start time set to the value of the cell.

Double-click on an appointment

You can double-click on an appointment to open it and view or edit the details.

Right-click on an appointment

Use right-click to display the appointment menu options. e.g. new/edit/delete, cut/copy/paste, print and help.

Adding more diaries

Only users with Diary Admin capability can add new diaries.

To add a diary, click on Tools > Diary Admin and click the 'New' button.

There's no charge for diaries ... you can have as many as you like. So set them up for people, rooms, projects, equipment etc.

Organise diaries into groups

Instead of having a long list of diaries in the Diary tree view you can organise your diaries into Group folders.

Use Groups to group together similar diaries. e.g. office location or room type

Apart from organising your diaries into a more logical structure, this has the added advantage that you can use one click to select and display all the diaries in a group. With the 'Show Multiple Diaries' box selected you can click the Group checkbox in the tree list to show all the diaries in the group. For example, you could overlay all the Conference Rooms to find free space for a booking.

Only a user with Diary Admin capability can set up diary groups. Click on the Tools > Diary Admin menu to set up the groups.

Viewing several diaries at the same time

You can view diaries in 'overlaid' format or in columns.

In overlaid format the diaries are overlaid on whatever display view you are using. For example, in the weekly view the appointments would be displayed with the Diary name at the beginning of the appointment ... so you can tell which diary the appointment came from.

To view diaries in 'overlaid' format, click the 'Show Multiple Diaries' checkbox and then tick the checkboxes for the diaries you want to overlay.

To view diaries in columns, click the 'Columns' icon in conjunction with the 'Show Multiple Diaries' checkbox. Each diary will appear as a column.

Diary Access Permissions

The default setup is that all users can see all diaries.

If you want to control which users can see a particular diary you need to set the access permissions for that diary. Do the following:

Finally, it's a good idea to log on as each user to check your permission settings and ensure that they only see the diaries you want them to see.

Default diary

When you go into the Diary module you can configure which diary opens first. This is called the 'Default Diary'.

There are several ways to set the default diary. The easiest is to right-click on the appropriate diary and select 'Make Default'. Alternatively, click the Tools > Options menu and select the 'Default Diary' tab.

Configuring Start and Finish Times

Each user can configure their own 'start & finish' view of diaries. This is effectively a 'mask' which limits what you see in the diary. Typically, you might only want to see appointments between 09:00 and 17:00 hrs.

N.B. This does not prevent appointments being entered outside the displayed hours.

To configure the start and finish times, click the Tools > Options menu in the Diary window and select the 'Diary Display' tab. Select appropriate values for the Start & Finish times.

Appointment Colours

You can manually change the colour for an appointment by using the 'Colour' tab in the appointment window

or

You can configure all appointments in a diary to be in a specific colour (Edit the diary with Tools > Diary Admin and choose a colour for the diary)

or

Users can set their own colours so that appointments that they enter are always in the same colour e.g. Appointments entered by Chris are in blue, appointments entered by Janet are in green (Click Tools > Options and choose the 'Appointment Colour' tab)

Searching for appointments

The easiest way to find an appointment is to enter any text you know to be present in the appointment in the Search box.

Perhaps you can only remember the name of the person you are meeting, or part of the address, or the subject. The search will find all appointments that contain the characters you've entered.

The matching appointments are returned in a list and you can double-click entries in the list to open them.

Contacts

Setting up Contact Groups

Contacts are organised within Contact Groups.

MyOffice comes with one contact group pre-defined (My Private Contacts) and you add other contact groups and share them with other users. You may, for example, want to have a group for clients and another for staff.

'My Private Contacts' is where you store all your own personal contacts. Contacts in this group cannot be seen by any other user. Other users have their own 'My Private Contacts'.

To set up a contact group click Contact > New Contact Group.

The default setting is that all users in your account will have access to the contact group.

If you want to restrict access, click the 'Permissions' tab and specify which users are to have access.

Importing contacts

You can import contacts directly from Outlook. If your contacts are in Outlook Express or another system such as ACT you need to import them into Outlook first.

To import contacts click on Tools > Import Contacts and follow the instructions.

Searching for contacts

The easiest way to find a contact is to enter part of the contact name in the Search box.

You don't have to enter the full name, just a few characters will do. The search will find all contacts that contain the characters you've entered.

Because the search matches against every field in the contact record (including any user defined fields you have set up) you can use the search to find any data stored such as Town or Tel No.

Sorting contacts

You can re-organise the Contact list by sorting on the columns.

To sort on a column, click the column heading. The column will toggle between ascending and descending sequence as you click it.

Configuring the Contact List

The list of contacts is displayed in columns (e.g. First & Last Name, Address) and you can configure which columns you want to see in the list and the sequence of the columns. This includes any 'user defined fields' you have added to the Contact.

To configure the columns, click Tools > Configure List Columns in the main Contact window.

You can adjust the column widths by grabbing the vertical separator in the column heading and moving it left or right.

Email

Setting up email accounts

You set up your existing email accounts in MyOffice and then use MyOffice to connect directly to your email provider to send and receive emails.

MyOffice email works by storing all your sent and received emails on the MyOffice web server in addition to storing them on your local PC. This allows you to access all your sent and received emails from any PC connected to the internet.

To set up an email account click Tools > Email Accounts.

How to try MyOffice email

You can try MyOffice email without affecting your existing email system.

In other words, you can receive emails to both your existing email system (e.g. Outlook) and MyOffice. The same 'received' emails will be displayed in both systems. This is a useful way of trying MyOffice using live emails and it doesn't affect your existing email set up.

To do this, just configure the email account in MyOffice to 'leave a copy of mails on server'. Then receive your emails in MyOffice first before using your normal email system.

However, any emails 'sent' from one system cannot be displayed in the other system ... so if you want to send emails in MyOffice make sure they are 'test' ones.

Shared Email Folders

In addition to the standard folders (Inbox, Sent Mail, Outbox, Quarantine, Draft & Deleted) you can create your own email folders.

What makes MyOffice different is that you can also create shared email folders that can be accessed by other users in your account ... and you can control which users have access to these shared folders.

This is particularly useful if you need to share a common group of emails. e.g. emails relating to a project, enquiry emails.

Any emails stored in a 'Shared' folder can be read and dealt with by any user with access to that folder.

In addition, you can use the 'Inbox Rules' feature in MyOffice to automatically direct incoming emails to specific folders. For example, you could use this to 'drive' enquiries@yourcompany.com to a shared folder where several users could deal with the emails.

To set up a Shared Email folder click Edit > Shared Email Folders Admin in the main email window.

Searching for emails

The easiest way to find an email is to use the Search box.

You can search for any string of characters anywhere in the email. So, for example you can search for a key word that appears in all the emails you are looking for or you could simply search for the recipient or sender.

Tasks

Task Lists and Tasks

The principle of Task Lists is very straightforward. You set up lists (called task Lists) and within a list you enter tasks.

To set up a task list click Tasks > New > Task List

The default setting is that all users in your account will have access to the task list. If you want to restrict access, click the 'permissions' tab and specify which users are to have access.

To add a Task, highlight the task list you want to add the task to and click Tasks > New > Task. Alternatively, right-click on the task list and choose 'New Task'.

You can drag and drop tasks between task lists.

Configuring User Defined Fields

You can add your own 'user defined fields' to tasks. The fields will appear in a tab (that you name) in the Task window ... so the process involves adding a tab and then adding the fields that will appear in that tab.

To add 'user defined fields' click Tools > User Defined Fields.

You can use the fields to store your own information about a task. Foe example, you may want to add cost or technical specification fields. You can specify text, numeric, check box, yes/no and drop down fields.

To display 'user defined fields' in the task list columns click Tools > Configure Columns.

Searching for Tasks

The easiest way to find a task is to enter some known text from the task in the Search box.

The search will find all tasks that contain the characters that you've entered. You can limit the search to just one task list or you can search across all task lists by clicking the 'Search all task lists' checkbox.

The search matches against every field in the task record, including any user defined fields you have set up.

Sorting Tasks

You can re-organise a Task List by sorting on the columns.

To sort a column, click the column heading. The column will toggle between ascending and descending order as you click it.

Configuring the Task Lists

Tasks are displayed in columns (e.g. Priority, Description) and you can configure which columns you want to see in the list and also the sequence of the columns. This includes any 'user defined fields' you have added.

To configure the columns, click Tools > Configure Columns in the main Tasks window.

You can adjust the column widths by grabbing the vertical separator in the column heading and moving it left or right.

Today

Overview

The Today window displays activities, appointments and tasks that are either due today or in the future. The default setting is that it displays data for the current day, but you can scroll backwards and forwards to display other days.

The window is divided into 3 sections (Appointments, Contact Activities and Tasks). You can move the horizontal separators between the sections to re-size each section.

Show on Start-up

You can configure the window to never display, only display when it contains data for today, or always display.

To configure the startup settings click Tools > Show on Start-up.

Configuring which diaries to display in the Appointments section

You can configure one or more diaries to display in the Appointments section.

Your 'default' diary is automatically displayed.

If you want to display more diaries click Tools > Select diaries to display and choose the diaries that you want to see displayed.

Including contact activities in the Today window

When you create a contact activity you can choose to have it displayed in your Today window on a particular date.

You can also choose to make the activity appear in another users's Today window.

To include Contact Activities in the Today window, go to the section of the Contact window called 'Include in Today window' and choose the username and date to display.

You can mark activities as completed by right-clicking on them and choosing 'Mark as Complete'.

Including tasks in the Today window

Including Tasks is similar to including Contact Activities.

To include Tasks, go to the section of the Task window called 'Include in Today window' and choose the username and date to display.

You can mark tasks as completed by right-clicking on them and choosing 'Mark as Complete'.