A small business owner assumes many functions  marketing, sales, human resources, information technology, and research and development. Fortunately, there are some terrific online tools to help you perform most any company task. Here is a list of online tools to run a small business. There are tools to schedule customers, collaborate with a team, manage social conversations, distribute content, build and analyze websites, and more. All of these tools are relatively inexpensive, and several are free. If your favorite tool isn’t listed, be sure to include it in the comments below. Slack Slack. Slack is an internal messaging app for your team. Slack features real-time messaging, file sharing, one-to-one and group conversations, inline images and video, rich link summaries and integration with services you use every day. Price: Free account for 5 integrations and 10K message searchable archive. Paid plans start at $6.67 per user per month.  Asana Asana. Asana is a tool for team tasks and conversations. Organize your tasks into shared projects for your initiatives, meetings, and lists. Keep conversations with tasks, instead of scattered across email. Get automatic updates about tasks that matter to you. Visualize you team’s goals and milestones with calendars and dashboards. Price: Get started for free. Paid plans start at $21 per month for 5 users.  Wave Wave. Wave offers a platform of financial applications, for small businesses with nine employees or less. The tools are for invoicing, accounting, payroll, payments, and more. Price: Accounting, invoicing, receipts, and personal finance applications are free. Payroll application starts at $9 per month, payments application is 30 cents plus 2.9 percent per transaction.  Insightly Insightly. Insightly is a customer-relationship-management system for small businesses. It helps you manage contacts, organizations, partners, vendors, and suppliers. See everything about your contacts  background, email history, important dates, and projects in which they’ve participated. Insightly also incorporates project management features, such as creating tasks and milestones, automated reminders, projects views, and event reports. Price: Free up to three users. Standard plan is $7 per user per month.  Trello Trello. Trello is a collaboration tool to organize projects. Trello uses boards, lists, and cards to create projects and develop your workflow. Create lists filled with cards, used with a team or by you. Drag and drop cards, and reorder as needed. Follow your project as the board updates in real time. Price: Free. Premium plan is $5 per user per month.  Hootsuite Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a tool to manage your social media conversations. Manage social networks, schedule messages, engage your audiences, and measure return on investment right from the dashboard. Monitor and engage followers in over 35 popular social networks. Hootsuite’s social media analytics give you an in-depth view of how well your social media efforts are being received, so you can run with what’s working or change directions. Price: Individual plan is free. Pro plan is $9.99 per month.  dlvr.it dlvr.it. Dlvr.it is a tool to manage content distribution. Dlvr.it continuously monitors your news feeds and RSS-enabled websites and automatically shares new content to your social networks. Queue up content and distribute it at optimal times when your audience is active and engaged. Dlvr.it also offers promoted stories for expanded distribution. Price: Free plan available for five feeds. Enhanced plans start at $9.99 per month. Promoted stories start at $9.95 per story.  MailChimp MailChimp. MailChimp helps you design email newsletters, share them on social networks, and track your results. Get insight about your subscribers and keep your contacts in one place. MailChimp features automated emails, send-time optimization, advanced analytics, flexible design options, and more. Price: Free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month. Paid plans start at $10 per month.  Desk.com Desk.com. Desk.com is an out-of-the-box customer support app for small businesses. Get the tools you need to manage cases so you can quickly help customers. Make it easy for customers to troubleshoot issues and close their own cases. Automate repetitive tasks to reduce the times agents spend on simple cases. When you need more customization, upgrade with just a few clicks. Price: Plans start at $30 per month.  Invoiceberry Invoiceberry. Invoiceberry is an online tool that helps your business send quotes and invoices to clients within a few clicks. Create, send, and manage your invoices and keep track of expenses and payments. Send invoice reminders within seconds and get paid faster. All invoices are stored online and easily accessible. Price: Free for up to three clients. Paid plans start at $15 per month.  Do Do. Do is an app to run productive meetings. Utilize a visual timeline to see what’s going on with meetings and participants. Set an agenda, track follow-ups, and define outcomes. Share a canvas for all the notes, presentations, and docs. With automatic meeting summaries, Do emails the notes to all participants. Run a meeting from your desktop or mobile device. Price: Free.  Appointlet Appointlet. Appointlet is an online appointment-scheduling app for Google Calendar, for customers that need to book your services. Connect your existing Google Calendar and Appointlet will immediately identify when you’re busy. Appointlet sends automatic and customizable reminders to your clients. Collect payments when clients books appointments. Appointlet can be added to your website, emails, or social media profiles. Price: Plans start at $10 per month.  OneDrive OneDrive. OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage and collaborative workspace solution. Securely store all your files and share them with co-workers. Each OneDrive for Business user gets 1 TB of storage. OneDrive for Business is fully integrated with Microsoft Office, so it’s easy to create, edit, and review documents with others in real time and even discuss them on Yammer, the private social network. Ensure that everyone is working on the most recent document and can view or revert to previous versions as needed. And when it’s time, you can set up a seamless review and approval process. Price: Business plan is $5 per user per month; Office Online included.  Wunderlist Wunderlist. Wunderlist is a collaborative to-do list platform to help your team get things done. Delegate to-dos in your shared lists and accomplish more together. Use the comments feature to have team discussions about tasks. Add a reminder to make sure no to-do is missed. Set due dates, and get updates via push, email, and in-app notifications. Wunderlist is available on desktop, mobile, and the web. Real-time sync keeps all your lists current.Price: Free. Business account is $4.99 per user per month.  Evernote Evernote. Evernote is a workspace app to move ideas from inspiration to completion. Write, collect information, find what you need, and present your ideas to the world. Clip web articles, capture handwritten notes, and snap photos. Utilize Evernote’s search to find what you need when you need it. Present your work as it evolves with just one click, transforming notes into screen-friendly images. Price: Free. Premium plan is $5 per month. Business is $10 per user per month.  GoToMeeting GoToMeeting. GoToMeeting is an easy-to-use audio, video, and screen-sharing platform for online meetings. Launch a meeting, and invite people via phone, email, or instant message. Present and collaborate from your tablet or computer. Features speaker identification, application sharing, group and private chat, one-click recording, on-screen drawing tools, free mobile apps, and up to 100 attendees. Price: Free for up to three users. Paid plan $39 per month for up to 25 users.  UserVoice UserVoice. UserVoice is a customer support application that’s a scalable and affordable solution for small business. UserVoice features three core products to keep customers happy: feedback forums, support ticket systems, and a knowledge base. Understand the feature requests that matter most to users. Make information easy to access, so you can help users instantly, and reduce requests and tickets. And with the UserVoice helpdesk, fielding support tickets is as easy as answering email. Price: Plans start at $15 per agent per month.  WordPress WordPress.org. WordPress is an open-source content management system. WordPress started as just a blogging platform, but now can be used to create dynamic websites of all types, including ecommerce stores, through the thousands of plugins and widgets and themes  there are over 35,000 plugins and 3,000 themes available. Price: Free.  Google Analytics Google Analytics. Google Analytics gives you the full traffic picture across ads and videos, websites and social tools, and tablets and smartphones. Measure advertising and campaign performance. Analyze and test segments of your traffic. Get insights on your audience, such as where it comes from and how loyal and engaged your visitors are. Price: Free. Contact for premium pricing.  Google Apps Google Apps. Google Apps is a suite of many essential tools to run your business. Use Gmail for email, as well as search and integrated calendars for scheduling. Draft work collaboratively withDocs, then save your work in Drive. Use Hangouts to give video presentations or host video conference calls. Price: $5 per user per month.  SIG UELAND Source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/80188-20-Tools-to-Run-a-Small-Business
What is cloud computing? Everyone is talking about “the cloud.†But what does it mean? Business applications are moving to the cloud. It’s not just a fadâ€â€the shift from traditional software models to the Internet has steadily gained momentum over the last 10 years. Looking ahead, the next decade of cloud computing promises new ways to collaborate everywhere, through mobile devices. Life before cloud computing Traditional business applications have always been very complicated and expensive. The amount and variety of hardware and software required to run them are daunting. You need a whole team of experts to install, configure, test, run, secure, and update them. When you multiply this effort across dozens or hundreds of apps, it’s easy to see why the biggest companies with the best IT departments aren’t getting the apps they need. Small and mid-sized businesses don’t stand a chance. Cloud computing: a better way With cloud computing, you eliminate those headaches because you’re not managing hardware and softwareâ€â€that’s the responsibility of an experienced vendor like salesforce.com. The shared infrastructure means it works like a utility: You only pay for what you need, upgrades are automatic, and scaling up or down is easy. Cloud-based apps can be up and running in days or weeks, and they cost less. With a cloud app, you just open a browser, log in, customize the app, and start using it. Businesses are running all kinds of apps in the cloud, like customer relationship management (CRM), HR, accounting, and much more. Some of the world’s largest companies moved their applications to the cloud with salesforce.com after rigorously testing the security and reliability of our infrastructure. As cloud computing grows in popularity, thousands of companies are simply rebranding their non-cloud products and services as “cloud computing.†Always dig deeper when evaluating cloud offerings and keep in mind that if you have to buy and manage hardware and software, what you’re looking at isn’t really cloud computing but a false cloud.
The 15 ESSENTIAL Windows 10 tips and tricks you need to know before install Upgraded to Microsoft's latest OS and need some pointers? These are the tips you can’t be without Having finally struck gold with Windows 10, Microsoft is really pushing its latest operating system by giving it away to upgrading users for absolutely nothing. With Windows 10, Microsoft has brought in a raft of new features and tweaks, meaning that, whether you’re completely new to Windows or you've upgraded from Windows 7 or 8.1, there are plenty of new features to learn. That’s why we’ve put together this list of the 15 Windows 10 tips and tricks that you really – and we mean really – need to know. 1. Make Cortana recognise your voice © Provided by Dennis Publishing Limited Don’t fancy clicking on Cortana’s search and typing in your query? You can simply ask Cortana a question. To do so, you first have to enable it to respond to the sound of your voice by saying “Hey Cortanaâ€Â. Bear in mind that you may be asked to set up your microphone to use this feature if Windows doesn’t think it’s compatible. Here’s how to set up Hey Cortana: Open Cortana Click into Notebook (the icon underneath the Home button in Cortana’s side menu) Click Settings Scroll to find the “Hey Cortana†toggle switch and turn it on 2. Turn off Windows Explorer’s “Quick Access†view While Quick Access is great for finding a recently or commonly used file or folder, those who just want to find something quickly on their computer might prefer the “This PC†view from Windows 7 and Windows 8. Thankfully, you can switch Explorer to this arrangement in just a couple of simple steps. Open File Explorer Click View then Options on the far right. The “Folder Options†menu will appear Next to the “Open File Explorer to†option, select “This PC†from the dropdown menu Click Apply then OK to confirm the change 3. Take control of Windows 10 updates © Provided by Dennis Publishing Limited While Windows 10 may remove much of the effort when it comes to updates, it also has a terrible habit of resetting your computer at the worst times. While you can delay some updates if you’re running Windows 10 Pro, Home users have no choice but to succumb to Microsoft’s update will. Fortunately, there’s a way to make this process a little more palatable, saving your internet bandwidth as well as your open documents. You'll still get Windows 10 updates Microsoft deems “essentialâ€Â, but you’ll stop seeing app updates and updates to Start screen tiles. Here’s how to set Windows 10 to reduce update downloads over Wi-Fi and warn on resets: Open Settings and go to “Network and Internet†In WiFi, click “Advanced Options†Under “Metered Connectionâ€Â, toggle the “Set as metered connection†switch on. Go back to Settings and select “Update & Security†Choose “Advanced Optionsâ€Â, then use the dropdown menu to select “Notify to schedule restart†instead of Automatic. Now, you’ll be notified when Windows 10 is about to restart so you can stop it. 4. Stop Microsoft Edge Browser opening everything by default Microsoft’s replacement for its creaking Internet Explorer browser is a welcome change, but it’s eagerness to open everything as the default app is not. However, you can stop Windows 10 using it as default – and set defaults for all your other applications. Open Settings and go to System Towards the bottom of the options, you’ll find “Default Apps†Here, you can reassign defaults for a whole array of services and applications and even assign them by the type of file they open 5. Ditch Bing and start searching with Google © Provided by Dennis Publishing Limited Since Bing is the default search engine for Microsoft Edge and the Windows 10 search bar, it’s hard to get away from Microsoft’s search engine. However, despite improvements and Microsoft’s best efforts to force Bing upon Windows users, Google will always reign supreme. While totally removing Bing from Windows 10 is impossible, you can kick it out of Edge and clumsily replace it in the Windows 10 search bar. How to remove Bing from Microsoft Edge: Open Edge and select the ellipsis on the right Go to Settings, then “Advanced Settings†Under “Search in the address barâ€Â, change the default option to “Add New†Here, you’ll see a list of available search engines. If the list is empty (as it tends to be), navigate to your browser of choice and repeat the process. You should now see it listed as an available provider How to remove Bing from the Windows 10 search bar: Open Chrome and download “Bing2Google†from the Chrome App Store Now, when you perform a Windows 10 search, Chrome will boot up and take you through to a Google search. Thankfully, you don’t lose any standard Cortana or device search functions by doing this, either. 6. Make your active windows more noticeable Windows 10 may look sleek and stylish, but when you’ve got multiple windows open its design is terrible, since the active window is never really highlighted. Microsoft is aware of the issue and is working on a fix, but you can make things easier on yourself in the meantime by adding a subtle border to your active window. Right click on your desktop and select Personalise Select Colours Turn off “Automatically pick an accent colour from my background†Select an accent colour you’ll recognise most against your Windows 10 background; your windows and highlighted points will all change 7. Remove the Windows 10 login screen © Provided by Dennis Publishing Limited Now that Windows 10 knows more about you than ever before, it makes sense to keep your profile behind a password or biometric lock. However, it’s endlessly annoying to boot up your desktop or laptop, walk off to do something and come back to discover it still hasn’t booted into desktop and loaded startup apps because of your lock screen. While we don’t recommend completely removing your password and security logins, it can be done with just a little brute force via the Windows tweaker’s favourite tool: the command prompt. In the Windows 10 search bar, type “CMD†and select "Command Prompt" Type “control userpasswords2†into the box and hit enter A "User Accounts" pop up will appear. Uncheck the tick box at the top that reads “users must enter a username and password to use this computer†You’ll be prompted to enter and confirm your password to change the settings. Once done, you’ll never have to log in to your computer again 8. Have Windows 10 play DVDs If you’ve upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 or 8.1, playing DVDs is a cinch – your video licence will have been carried over from the previous OS. However, if you’ve purchased a new laptop or desktop that runs Windows 10, you’ll discover you can’t play DVDs at all. Microsoft has a solution in the form of a Windows DVD Player app on the Windows Store. The app is free until 29 July 2016, but after then it’ll cost a hefty £11.59. 9. Disable Flash in Edge at the flick of a switch © Provided by Dennis Publishing Limited Adobe Flash changed the face of the web. It was often slow and cumbersome – forcing you to wait for Flash-heavy sites to load – but it opened the doors to a whole new world of website design. It was exciting and fresh, for all its technological failings. Now though, Flash is a buggy, lumbering nuisance with security holes aplenty. It has had its time in the sun. If you’d like to keep Edge browser running silky smooth and without security holes, you can turn off Flash at the flick of a switch. Open Edge and click the ellipsis in the right corner Select Settings and scroll until you can click “View Advanced Settings†Toggle “Use Adobe Flash Player†to off 10. Streamline your notifications © Alphr.com The 15 ESSENTIAL Windows 10 tips and tricks you need to know Windows 10 likes to let you know what your apps and social feeds are doing. While this can be really useful, it becomes annoying to deal with when you have a lot of active apps and programs. Luckily, Microsoft realises not everybody wants notifications from Windows Feedback or other preinstalled apps, so it lets you choose the apps you want to hear from. Open Settings and go to System In System, select “Notifications & Actions†Here you can toggle notifications from every app on your computer You can also click on an app to tailor what type of notifications it shows you when notifications are enabled Rejoice 11. Snap windows together at the press of a button (or two) Windows 7 brought us the wonder that is window snapping with Aero Snap, a feature Apple has only just rolled out with OS X El Capitan. While Windows 8 refined the feature, Windows 10 has outdone it entirely by allowing you to snap together four windows and apps. The best bit? You can do it all with just two key presses and no fuss. Windows Key + Up = Snap active window to top Windows Key + Down = Snap active window to bottom Windows Key + Left = Snap active window to left Windows Key + Right = Snap active window to right 12. “Print†documents to PDF © Provided by Dennis Publishing Limited Not so much a trick as a tip for those who hadn’t already noticed: Windows 10 finally lets you “print†documents to PDF. No more installing a third-party app to save a web page or document for use offline; now you can select PDF as a printing output option to have Windows 10 export documents into Adobe’s indispensable file format. 13. Extend your laptop’s battery life Microsoft has introduced a new Battery Saver tool into Windows 10, helping boost your laptop or tablet’s battery life if you fall below a certain threshold. You can find Battery Saver settings through Settings > System > Battery Saver and Battery Saver Settings. In these menus, you can have Windows automatically switch to Battery Saver mode when your charge falls under a certain level, disabling push notifications and lowering screen brightness in the process. Handily, Microsoft also allows you to exempt apps, meaning they’ll run as normal regardless of your settings. 14. Turn off Microsoft’s worrying “Wi-Fi Sense†functionality © Provided by Dennis Publishing Limited Microsoft has what it believes is a handy system for sharing your home wireless network with friends. Anyone who’s in your contacts list automatically gets your Wi-Fi password, meaning when they come round to your house or office they’ll automatically connect to your network without needing to bother you with the password. While Microsoft says this is completely safe, with users unable to access networked storage or any other sensitive data, alarm bells should be ringing. If you’d like to keep your home network unclogged from your friends’ Instagram feed and YouTube streaming, Microsoft allows you to turn this functionality off via “Share network with contacts†when you first connect to a new network. However, this doesn’t stop other Windows 10 users from sharing this information when they connect to your home network. If you want to completely remove your wireless network from Windows 10’s Wi-Fi Sense scheme, you actually have to rename your network’s SSID to include “_optoutâ€Â, which is less than ideal. 15. Windows Key shortcuts you HAVE to know We all know our Ctrl + Alt + Del and Windows Key + D shortcuts, but with Windows 10 Microsoft has included a new set of incredibly useful keyboard shortcuts that you need to commit to memory right away. Windows Key + A = Open "Action Centre" Windows Key + S = Open Search Windows Key + C = Open Cortana in listening mode Windows Key + Tab = Open "Task View" Windows Key + Ctrl + D = Opens a new virtual desktop Windows Key + Ctrl + Right/Left = Cycle between open virtual desktops Windows Key + Ctrl + F4 = Close current virtual desktop Windows Key + G = Opens "Game Centre"
How to recover deleted text messages on your Android phone If you've deleted your SMS inbox you have to act quick, because the messages are only until the portion of memory on which they are saved is rewritten. The longer you wait, the higher the likelihood that deleted text messages, app updates or who-knows-what will be obliterated forever. Here's how to recover deleted text messages on Android. Tools to recover deleted text messages There are a couple of different PC and Mac-based tools to help you through this part of the process which we've detailed below. The particular tool you choose will depend on your personal preference, but they basically do the same thing: scan your Android's memory, then identify and recover your ''deleted'' messages. They'll all walk you through the process, which is usually only four steps long: connect, scan, preview, recover. The process works for other data besides text messages as well. Some programs worth trying out include: Download now: Wondershare Dr. Fone for Android (for Mac or PC) Download now: Coolmuster Android SMS+Contacts Recovery (for Mac or PC) Wondershare has a free trial that lets you recover deleted text messages. / © ANDROIDPIT How to recover lost text messages on Android Depending on which program you choose, the steps may be different, but the process is very similar (I'll use Wondershare for illustration purposes): Download and install one of the programs above. Launch the program on your computer. Enable USB Debugging on your Android phone. To do this, you need to have access to the Developer Options in your main Settings menu. If it's not there, just go to About Phone, scroll down to Build Number and tap it repeatedly until it tells you that you have developer access. You'll now get access to Developer Options in the main Settings menu (just above About Phone). Go into Developer Options, scroll down to USB Debugging (or Android Debugging, depending on your ROM) and check the box. First you need to enable USB Debugging on your Android smartphone. / © ANDROIDPIT Download and install the free Wondershare trial, then connect your Android phone to your computer. Connect your phone to your PC with USB Debugging enabled. / © Wondershare Follow the prompts in the recovery program to scan or analyze your Android's memory. Once the process is complete you can browse and preview the deleted and undeleted data on your Android device. As long as the particular part of memory on which it was originally stored has not been saved over, you can still retrieve the data. This is why it's important to act quickly if you've lost data. You can filter the data you want to recover: in this case, text messages. / © ANDROIDPIT Next, open the 'Messages' folder in the left-hand pane, select the messages you wish to recover, then click 'Recover' at the bottom right to put them back on your device or save them to your computer for safe keeping. Click 'SMS' or 'Messages' in the left-hand pane to view both deleted and non-deleted messages on your device. / © ANDROIDPIT Note: if you want to complete this process without a PC, chances are you will need root access on your device and more than likely a paid recovery app. In any case, it's easier and free to use a computer. How to never lose a text message again Maybe you've learned your lesson, maybe you haven't. If you're not into paying for any of the programs above or simply don't like the free options, your best bet is to ensure you don't have to use them again. This means backing up your messages from now on. The good news is, it only takes five minutes. I use a free app called SMS Backup & Restore. It's straightforward, looks nice and works perfectly: basically all you need for this type of operation. Check out the screenshots below for the walkthrough. SMS Backup & Restore Once you've downloaded and installed SMS Backup & Restore, open the app then tap 'Backup' Next, choose what exactly you want to create a backup of, then - crucially - tap 'Local Backup and Upload' if you want to send your backup to Google Drive, Dropbox or an email address. When you're ready, tap OK. SMS Backup & Restore is clean and simple to use. / © ANDROIDPIT Hit Backup, select what you want to save and where, then tap OK - simple. Restoring your backup is explained clearly too. / © ANDROIDPIT To restore your backed-up SMS messages, tap Restore on the app's home screen, then on the Restore Backup page you can just tap the backup name in the list to restore it if it's stored locally. If your backup's stored in the cloud, tap the menu icon (three dots) at the top right, then 'Load from' and select whichever cloud service it's stored on. You can back your messages up to cloud storage, then restore them easily. / © ANDROIDPIT There are plenty of extra options in SMS Backup & Restore, such as scheduled backups and password protection. You can find these by tapping the menu icon at the top right of the app's home screen, then 'Preferences'. Source: https://www.androidpit.com/how-to-recover-deleted-text-messages
