MakeUseOf Directory » for Businesses

HappyFox: A Web Based Help Desk Tool For Small Businesses

TehseenBaweja — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:01:44 +0000

Nothing is important for a business than timely resolving customer issues. HappyFox provides you with a great medium for doing exactly that. It is a help desk and ticket management solution that let’s you professionally deal with your customer issues. To start with, it provides you with a web interface that your customers can use to submit tickets or queries.

Once the tickets come in, you can view them in any custom order, search them, sort them, assign them a status and a priority, and rearrange them in the queue according to your business needs.

You can also mass reply to tickets or perform any another action on multiple tickets at once. You can also add business rules so HappyFox can automatically perform actions on new tickets based on these rules.

Many features are included in the free account but you can only have up to two users.

Features:

A help-desk management system.
Organize, sort, search and manage tickets.
Set business rules and perform mass updates.

Visit HappyFox @ http://www.happyfox.com

When I Work: Easily Schedule Employee Shifts Online

Umar — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:01:23 +0000

Calling your employees or having them call you for shift notifications can be inconvenient. Businesses where employees work in various shifts need an automated solution that notifies employees of their shifts and makes it easier for the employer to manage the shifts. This is precisely what a web service called When I Work offers.

When I Work is a web service that helps employers manage the shifts of their employees. You start by creating an account on the site and then adding the employee positions. Next you add employee names along with their email addresses and phone numbers. You can assign a position to each employee and specify shift timings on the online schedule.

Employees can find out about their shifts in numerous ways; they can check the schedules online on their computers, use the iOS and Android apps to check shifts, or get notified through Facebook and Twitter. Employees with regular phones can find out about their shifts via SMS.

When I Work offers a free account if you are going to manage up to 5 employees; for more employees, When I Work offers premium packages that come with 30-day trials.

Features:

A user-friendly web service.
Helps manage employee schedules.
Offers Android and iOS applications.
Notifies via text messaging and social networks.

Check out “When I Work” @ http://wheniwork.com (By Umar from AllthatIsApple)

Conversocial: Makes Managing Social Networks Easier For Businesses

Dave LeClair — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:01:24 +0000

If you own a business that relies on social media to communicate with its customers, than you will know how hard it can be to keep up with the flow of questions, comments and complaints that come in. That is where Conversocial helps. They give you a place to manage your networks and interact with your customers more easily.

Conversocial gives you a slew of options such as keyword flagging, an easy way to see all your @mentions, direct messages and Facebook messages and some handy analytical data that shows you how you are interacting with your customers. Auto flagging keywords is great for finding customers who are speaking about your brand, but are not actually mentioning you in a tweet. These keywords will appear in your list, just like they had mentioned you.

One of the major selling points of Conversocial is in their premium option. This allows you, as the business owner, to set up and control multiple users on one account. For larger businesses with a customer service staff, this makes it easy to have your team manage your social presence in a way that you can control.

Features:

Manage your businesses Facebook and Twitter in one place.
Helps improve customer service on social media by having everything in one place.
Keyword flagging helps find when people are talking about your brand.
Premium version allows a whole team to manage social networks.
Free version allows one person to manage and control the network.
Analytically data allows you to see how you are performing on social networks.

Find Conversocial @ Conversocial.com

ZoomShift: A User-Friendly Web App For Scheduling Employee Shifts (Free Licences)

Umar — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 04:01:23 +0000

Workplaces such as restaurants and many other places all have multiple people working together but at different times. In such cases an employee shifts schedule is essential. But writing up a schedule on paper and matching it with other timings can be inconvenient. Here to offer an online alternative is a web app called ZoomShift.

ZoomShift is an excellent web service that lets you create a schedule for your employees online. The main idea is to let the manager sort the schedule online and put it up on display for other employees to check on the company’s ZoomShift page. The schedule is shown just like any other calendar but with the added feature to filter employees. You can assign different shift timings for different positions or even for the same position. Shifts appear with their timings as well as their duration.

Employees who join the page can select the ways in which ZoomShift will notify them of any available shifts for the added positions. Notifications can be received via email as well as texts.

ZoomShift currently offers a 30-day free trial. The regular service can be resumed after the trial by opting for one of the paid packages that begin from $25 per month. The developers of ZoomShift have offered 10 x 6 month free (Basic plan) accounts to MakeUseOf readers. Be amongst the first 10 to comment and get your account.

Features:

A user-friendly web service
Lets you schedule employees online
Provides employee schedule online
Alerts employees of available shifts

Check out ZoomShift @ http://www.zoomshift.com/ (By Umar from AllThatIsApple)

Asana: Time Management For Teams Of People

Dave LeClair — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:01:40 +0000

Trying to organize a large of team of people and keeping them on task can take as much as time as the task itself. The folks at Asana are hoping their team based task manager will solve those problems. Their task management program works on all kinds of platforms. You can use it on mobile platforms as well as right in your web browser on your computer. It makes keeping everyone on task easier.

Asana syncs with Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook and Apple iCal, so your team can get the information no matter where they are. You can even have multiple teams stored, so you can keep your work tasks separated from your clubs and team tasks.

There are lots of keyboard shortcuts in the app, making it quick and easy to change things. Speaking of speed, everything is in real-time, so everyone will see the changes as they happen. You can also be notified when a change occurs to a project.

Features:

View the people in a task and assign tasks.
Syncs with Outlook, Google Calendar and iCal.
Works on computers and mobile devices.
Keyboard shortcuts.
Real time changes.
Follow and be notified of changes to a project.
Integrates with email for easy task creation.
Similar tools: DeskTime, TimePanther, CronSync, CronSync and Yast.com.
Also read related articles:

Find Asana @ www.asana.com

AndBang: A New User Friendly Collaboration Tool For Teams

Umar — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:01:51 +0000

There are numerous websites available online that let people collaborate in teams. While most of these tools offer effective solutions, they often come with distracting side-features that disturb a team member’s work; for instance someone may keep getting chat notifications for the group even if they are not being referred to. These problems are solved by the excellent collaboration web app AndBang.

AndBang is free to use for two-member teams and costs $10 per month for additional members with a 14 day trial. With AndBang you can quickly setup tasks and invite team members to your team’s online dashboard. Here you will find all the listed tasks. Team members can click on the lightning icon next to a task to indicate that they are working on it. By viewing the task a team member is working on, you will not need to ask them if they are available or busy. Group chatting is also supported by the site but it notifies you of messages only if conversations in the group are referring to you.

Altogether, these features work to provide you with a distraction-free workspace.

Features:

A user-friendly web service.
Lets you collaborate in teams.
Is free for 2-member teams.
Lets team members indicate which task they are working on.
Chat notifies you when group conversations refers to you.
Similar tools: Conceptboard, CoSketch, Twiddla, Squareleaf, Pindax, and Workhack.

Check out AndBang @ www.andbang.com (By Umar from AllThatIsApple)

Impact Signs Bronze Plaques: Order Bronze Plaques & Signs By Sending Photos

Umar — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:01:06 +0000

Plaques can serve as excellent decoration pieces , signs, as well as memorial items at important places. Normally at places that create bronze plaques you are not able to provide a digital image and have them convert it to a bronze plaque. But “Impact Signs Bronze Plaques” makes this task much easier.

Impact Signs Bronze Plaques is a pay-for service that creates bronze plaques for its customers. The service can work online and provide you quotations based on the digital images that you send it. All you have to do is send in your high resolution digital images in the JPG format. To specify the plaque layout or to have any logos embedded on the plaque you will need to send AI or EPS files. Plaques sizes and prizes are as follows:

12″ x18″ - $652
8″ x 10″ - $321
18″x24″ - $1252
24″x36″ - $2272

Amongst other things, these sizes can apply to office signs.

Big letters that are used to label places and spots are also made by the service.

Your final design can be customized in numerous ways including materials, edges, as well as finishing.

Payments to the service can be made through your credit card or checks and the plaques can be shipped nationwide or, in some cases, internationally.

Features:

A user-friendly service
Creates bronze plaques for customers
You can create bronze plaque of high resolution JPG images
Logos and layouts can be embedded via AI or EPS files
Ships nationally and internationally
Accepts credit cards and checks

Check out Impact Signs Bronze Plaques @ www.impactsigns.com/bronze-plaque (By Umar from AllThatIsApple)

AppGreen: Easily Create A Mobile Device Optimized Product Catalog

abhijeet — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 01:01:35 +0000

Considering the way smartphones and iPads are penetrating the world, a day will soon come when you’ll be showing your product catalogs to prospective clients on those devices instead of carrying a paper catalog. Therefore creating a great looking catalog on these devices is essential and AppGreen helps you do that. It offers a free and beautiful solution to building mobile catalogs with customizable templates, an easy to use catalog builder, unlimited products and images and much more.

The site is beautifully designed too, and the service is being offered completely for free while in beta. There are likely to be charges when the beta period ends so you should hop onto the site and create a nice mobile product catalog for free while you can.

Features

Create beautiful mobile product catalogs.
Huge number of templates available to choose from.
Unlimited products and images supported.
Free while in beta.

Check out AppGreen @ www.appgreen.com (By Abhijeet from GT Mobiles)

Favo.rs: Social Network For Founders & Professionals

abhijeet — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:01:45 +0000

Favo.rs is a site about asking and receiving favors, albeit limited to founders of companies and professionals. It’s a niche network which wants to help founders find help easily and let professionals connect with important people and get more work. You can follow people and ask questions. Everything else is pretty much the same as most of the other social sites and how they operate.

Sites like Twitter and Facebook, although they offer a great medium to connect with people, are huge and therefore can be distracting. Favo.rs offers a more targeted medium to connect with people that matter and quickly assign tasks.

Features

Social network for founders and professionals to connect and ask favors.
Sign up with your Facebook or Twitter ID.
Find people that matter easily.

Check out Favo.rs @ www.favo.rs (via Read Write Web By Abhijeet from GT Mobiles)

Logotype Maker: Create Professional Logos Online

Hammad — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:01:22 +0000

Do you want to create a free, yet professional and stylish looking logo? If you do, then you should give LogoType Maker a try.

LogoType Maker allows you to create logos from a text. It then assigns some random logos to that given text which you can then further edit to give you a stylish looking logo in no time.

Using the service is easy and simple. Just enter the text for which the logo is being made, for example, “ABC Photography” or whatever your company name is. Once done, click the “Generate Logo” button to generate a logo.

You will then see random logos created with that text. You may wish to refresh to generate a set of new logos. However, if you like any logo, you may further go on editing it, such as changing the image of the logo, the gradient, adding reflections and shadows and much more.

Features

Create stylish looking logos for free.
Get logo in zip, png or even PDF format (high quality).
No need to use photo-editing software to create one.
Quick and easy.
Similar sites: Logo Maker, FreeLogoCreator, 3D-Text-Maker, CoolRGB, Creatr, LogoEase and Cool Text.

Check out LogoType Maker @ www.logotypemaker.com