Docs.com Blog

Based on hundreds of ideas and suggestions from you, we’ve just released our most significant improvements to the usability and discoverability of docs.

As the fall approaches, many of your workloads will increase. With this is mind, we’ve continued to push Docs forward.

In particular, we’ve addressed two key shortcomings: the inability to organize your own docs and difficulties discovering other docs.

Tags: Organizing your own docs

It’s now easy to tag a document with any keyword. As a result, you can then sift through your own docs to find exactly what you’re looking for. For example, I’ve organized my docs with keywords like “Docs.com,” “Example Docs,” etc. To see more, please feel free to check out the docs I’ve shared.

Tags: Discovering other docs

Tags help you discover docs in numerous ways. For example, when viewing your friends’ docs, you can drill down to see only those about a particular subject.  Or, when viewing your own docs, you can discover other docs about the same subject. To see an example, search for “docs.com.”

To learn more about tagging, read http://docs.com/1ZQY .

Search: People, Pages, Tags

No matter where you are on docs.com, you can now search for people, pages and tags. If you’re familiar with how search works on Facebook, search on Docs.com should be simple and intuitive. If you’re looking for docs authored by a specific friend or Facebook page, simply type the name and select the correct suggestion. If you’re looking for docs about a specific subject, type the subject and select the appropriate tag. This will show you all docs tagged with that subject. To try it, search for “Pat Kinsel,” “FUSE Labs,” and “Docs.com.”

Filtering/Sorting: Sifting throughout docs

No matter what list of docs you’re viewing, you can now sort by date, title and file type. Or, you can filter by criteria such as owner and tag.

These updates make it much easier to discover, create and share Docs with your Facebook friends. We hope you agree. And, as always, we look forward to hearing your feedback.

-Pat Kinsel

To see this post on docs.com: http://docs.com/5KV

In a recent update on our docs.com Facebook fan page on our long-awaited removal of the waiting list to join our service, I said the following:

It’s been a while… but we’ve made major improvements to performance and reliability. As a result, we’ve removed the waiting list at docs.com – invite your friends and they’ll get access immediately. If all goes well, we’ll keep the service open. Also, we’ve added a new Doc Gallery showcasing interesting documents – check it out on the homepage. As always, thank you for the continued feedback…

Some have misinterpreted my statement: “If all goes well, we’ll keep the service open…”

I now know what it must have been like for Larry Speakes, who sometimes after a President Ronald Reagan news conference would have to say, “What the president meant to say was…”

In perfect 20/20 hindsight, it’s apparent I didn’t even need to include the sentence.  But what I meant to say was that if we incurred a sudden spike in usage, we might reinstate the waiting list in order to continue our “controlled growth” strategy.

The good news: Since removing the waiting list we haven’t run into any issues, and usage continues to grow.  We’ve also just added support for Facebook Pages and have several other enhancements in the queue that I look forward to sharing with you in the near future.

I’ll choose my words more carefully next time.  In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy our  docs.com service, and I encourage you to check out our new Doc Gallery as well.

- Pat Kinsel

I’m very excited to announce that Docs.com now supports Facebook Pages…

Since releasing Docs.com back in April, we’ve paid very close attention to your feedback, which has helped us immensely in identifying and implementing many improvements to the experience and the overall reliability of the service.

We also have paid close attention and responded to your ideas and suggestions. The ability to post a document as the admin of a Facebook page has been one of the most requested features.

So I’m thrilled to announce that as of today, if you are an administrator of a Facebook page you can now:

• Author a document as your Facebook Page
• Post a document to your Facebook Page
• Add the Docs profile tab to your Facebook Page
• Share and co-manage all docs created by other page administrators

We believe that support for Facebook Pages opens the door to countless new collaboration, publishing, and Page administration capabilities. Support for Facebook Pages advances the social document lifecycle. For example, you may now create a document as yourself, invite a few friends to edit, change the author to be a Facebook page and share the ownership rights with other page administrators, and then publish the document to your page’s Facebook fans – where they can then comment, like, and share.

We’ve focused on making this a seamless experience. In doing so, here’s what we set out to accomplish:

Create a natural experience that reveals Facebook Page functionality when appropriate

If you do not administer a Facebook page, this new functionality does not alter your experience in any way. However, if you are a page administrator, you’ll find that support for FB pages appears intuitively. Within ‘My Docs’ you will now see docs owned by your pages. When creating and uploading docs, you can now change the owner to any of your Facebook pages. And, when sharing a document to a Facebook Page’s fans, you will be prompted for the necessary permissions.

If any of the Facebook Pages that you Like have shared a document, you can now discover these docs within the ‘Friends Docs’ view.

Seamless evolution of the social document lifecycle

In your workflow, when you are ready to co-manage a document with other page administrators or post a document to your Facebook page, simply change the author… You can do this at any point in your work flow. For example: when uploading a document, immediately after creating a document, after working on a document independently, etc.

Seamless Facebook integration

Facebook Page support at Docs.com ‘just works’ and requires minimal setup. You don’t need to add the application or change settings.

Modeled after Facebook’s Pages application – a shared ownership model

Docs.com’s functionality is modeled after Facebook’s Pages application – for any page, all administrators are equals and can modify content. We’ve modeled Docs.com page support accordingly. By changing a document author to be a Facebook Page, you are handing ownership over to the Page and all administrators gain equal rights to edit and share. In addition to providing an easy way to publish docs to your Page’s fans, this creates a shared folder for all page administrators to easily collect and collaborate on documents.

We’re excited to see how you use Docs.com with your Facebook page. As always, we are eager to hear your thoughts and suggestions and look forward to updating this new functionality in the coming weeks as we learn from you.

-Pat Kinsel

To learn how Docs.com for Facebook Pages works, visit http://docs.com/1JIQ
To view this blog post on Docs.com, visit http://docs.com/1JUK
If you have any comments, please provide them at http://getsatisfaction.com/docs

Docs.com makes it easy for you to discover, create and share documents on Facebook. To achieve these goals, we’ve integrated with the Facebook platform and website. The following lays out specifics of how and for what purposes docs.com makes use of Facebook user data.

At a high level, why does docs.com need to access my Facebook content?

Docs.com uses Facebook content for two reasons: to verify your access to shared documents, and to personalize your docs.com experience.

How and why does docs.com use Facebook content to verify access to documents?

As a web service centered on the sharing of documents, docs.com assigns user permissions to each document on the site. You, the document owner, may grant the ability to read and edit your documents to whomever you’d like. When you grant others access to your documents, you may choose to have the docs.com service publish Facebook notifications one of two ways – by direct message to that user’s Facebook inbox, or by a post to your own News Feed. When your friends click these posted links, docs.com uses Facebook user data to ensure that you’ve granted them access to your document.

How and why does docs.com instantly personalize my experience?

Docs.com uses Facebook’s new instant personalization to enable smooth transitions when a user navigates from Facebook’s website to the docs.com website. Docs.com is then able to seamlessly verify access permissions, and to list other documents the user has access to. This increases the likelihood that the friends you’ve invited to edit your document will in fact do so.

What Facebook content does docs.com access?

Docs.com accesses your Facebook username, list of friends and profile pictures.

What Facebook content does docs.com store and why?

Docs.com stores the unique user number (ID) that identifies a given user on Facebook. This helps docs.com identify that user when they visit the site and enables docs.com to confirm a user’s ability to view, edit and create documents.

What content does docs.com cache (temporarily store) and why?

Docs.com temporarily stores a given user’s list of Facebook friends, including their names and profile pictures, for two reasons: to provide you a list of friends to invite to your documents, and to show you documents that your friends have shared with you.

How does docs.com gain access to this user data?

Docs.com only accesses this information if you or one of your friends visits the site.

What if I don’t want to participate?

You can click the “no thanks” button in the blue bar to opt-out of the instant personalization experience, after which docs.com will no longer be able to access your Facebook content without you explicitly signing into docs.com via Facebook Connect and granting the service permission. You can also block the application and the instant personalization experience within your Facebook privacy settings by going here.

How does docs.com gain the ability to perform actions on my behalf?

Once you’ve attempted to use some of the more advanced features of the website, docs.com will prompt you for extended permissions. For example, in order to comment on a document, docs.com must have been explicitly granted the ability to post comments on your behalf.

Docs.com has been designed to provide a seamless and secure document sharing experience while also enabling the user to remain in control of what information they disclose to others, including us.

As docs.com continues to evolve, we will notify you on this blog of any changes that might impact such key issues as information confidentiality, disclosure and privacy.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at docspriv@microsoft.com.

-Pat Kinsel

Hi, I’m Matt Augustine, one of the developers on the team building Docs.  We’re psyched about this opportunity to share the beta of Docs with you.  I’d like to point out a few things that make Docs unique; three things excite me in particular:

1. Our full compatibility with Microsoft Office;
2. The incredibly rich viewing and editing experiences the Office Web Apps provide in the browser;  and
3. The deep Facebook integration that makes sharing and discovering documents fun and easy.

As Takeshi Numoto, Corporate VP, Office, pointed out in his blog post, Docs users can create and view documents using the Office tools they already know, even when they’re on the web.  This is made possible by the Office 2010 Web Apps technology that we’ve adapted for use on the site.  These Web Apps render text and layouts beautifully, displaying your documents just like they look in the rich-client Office apps on your PC or Mac. They also support full fidelity round tripping of edits between rich-client Office apps and the web, something no other online document service can do today.  So I’d like to extend a special ‘shout out’ to the Microsoft Office team, particularly my colleagues who worked on the Word, PPT and Excel Web Apps for making this possible!

You can create new Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents right on the site, even if you don’t have the rich-client Office app installed, and of course, you can upload existing Office documents you’ve already created.  If you prefer using the rich-client app to read or edit your documents, you can open them directly from the browser and save back to Docs when you’re finished, or you can download a local copy of the file.

We worked closely with our friends at Facebook to make sure Docs is truly social.  Whether it’s sharing a presentation you’ve created with all your friends, or inviting a classmate or two to help on a group assignment, we think that connecting Docs with the social web is going to enable some interesting new sharing scenarios.

To start with, we are using the Facebook API to set viewing and editing permissions for each doc based on your Facebook friends, to publish documents you’ve shared to your Wall, or to send invitation messages to individual friends.  We’re also excited to be one of the initial sites to partner with Facebook to enable an instantly personalized experience. This allows the friends with whom you’ve shared a document to view it without having to sign-in to docs.com or add the Docs application.

Hopefully the “beta” tag makes it clear that Docs is a work in progress.  Our team will continue working hard and fast to improve the user experience and feature set as we go.   We hope this initial experience is enjoyable, and gives you a sense of what’s possible.  The initial feedback you’ve provided already has inspired several new feature ideas, so please continue to let us know how we can make Docs better for you.

- Matt Augustine

To everyone that has used and reviewed docs.com thus far, thank you for your kind words and thoughtful feedback. We’re working hard to sift through the bugs, errors and suggestions. Docs is designed to be a simple, yet powerful tool for sharing and collaborating on documents with your Facebook friends. With your input and encouragement, we’ll get there soon…

Since launching docs.com last Wednesday, we’ve updated the site several times. Improvements include:

• Better sign-up and waiting list flows
• Better timing of prompts for extended Facebook permissions
• Fixed several styling bugs across browsers
• Better thumbnail generation
  … etc.

In addition to these changes, we’re working to improve:

• The comment stream beside each document
• Issues opening documents in Office running on your Mac or PC
• … and much, much more (including new features!!)

We are gradually opening up the full featured offering to those of you on the waiting list, granting you access to create and upload new documents. If you have not received an invite yet, please regularly check whichever email address you use to manage your Facebook account.

Once you receive a token, you will have full access to the site and can upload or create new docs to share with your friends. We recommend that you try a few of the following:

• Upload papers from school and share them with your friends to get their comments
• Share any presentations that you’ve given
• Create new docs to work on with your friends
• And, of course, comment on your friends’ docs

We plan to work quickly to improve the site… and we’ll keep you notified as changes are made. If you have any feedback, please submit them via the “Support” tab on the Docs Facebook page. And don’t forget to become a fan of Docs!!

-Pat Kinsel

I’m so excited to announce today the launch of a new beta Facebook app from FUSE Labs called “Docs”, also available at our docs.com website.  Built on Microsoft Office 2010, the Docs app enables Facebook® users for the first time to create and share Microsoft Office documents directly with their Facebook friends, using the Office tools they already know.

It’s been quite a sprint for the FUSE team to deliver this beta – from concept to its initial implementation in less than four months.  The FUSE Labs mission is to explore a range of “Future Social Experiences”.  In this exploration it’s our belief that we may increase the value of Office ‘docs’ by giving everyone the ability to seamlessly take their friends and connections with them from Facebook to docs.com.

The fact that we’ve been able to adapt the Office 2010 “Web Apps” technology to work directly with Facebook truly speaks to the flexibility and power not just of the Facebook platform, but also of the Office system’s rich “contextual collaboration” capabilities.  And we’d never have been able to achieve our critical ‘simplicity’ goals had it not been for our ability to use a new test feature from Facebook that allows us to build an instantly personalized and seamless document authorization & sharing experience directly from our site.

This exploration exposes yet another facet of Ray Ozzie’s broad and long-held vision of social productivity.  Although quite simple (and fun!), docs.com integrated with the Facebook experience bring together the best of ‘software’ with the best of ‘services’.  Documents can be created directly within the app, or can be uploaded from your PC.  After starting work on a document alone, you might then choose a few others with whom to share it.  Or you might instead share it with all your friends, or you might share it with the world.  Documents can be viewed and edited directly within a web browser – or, with a single click, you can edit them more richly and powerfully through the Microsoft Office software on your PC or Mac.

One of our FUSE Labs principles is that ‘it’s not what you say – rather, it’s what you do, what you learn, and how you adapt’.  So, we hope you’ll register at docs.com, have some fun with our app, and help us explore!  See you there!

- Lili Cheng

*Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.

Getting Started for Docs

Welcome to Docs

Getting started with Docs for Facebook is easy.  The best way to start is by heading over to docs.com.  If you don’t already have an active Facebook session, login using Facebook Connect.  If you already have an active session going, you are already set to begin.  From the front page, you can browse and view any of the ‘Suggested Docs’. By clicking on the ‘Friend’s Docs’ tab, you can quickly see, read and comment on any docs your friends have shared.

Because this service is in beta, there will be a limit on how many people can create and upload documents initially.  If you are seeing a message on the docs.com home page inviting you to add your name to the waiting list, you should do so—and we’ll get you access to the full featured version you as soon as we can.

Let’s assume you have access to the full featured version of Docs.  To activate your account, just upload or create a doc by clicking the ‘Add a Doc’ tab and choosing upload or create a Word, Excel or PowerPoint doc.  Either way, your account will be activated, but I suggest you create a new doc—it’s more fun, and it gives you a chance to see the new Docs web interface.

Once you’ve chosen to create a new Word doc, you can edit it just like you would when using the desktop version of Word.  Don’t forget to give your doc a title—which you do at the top of the page.  A good hint here is to choose a title you can live with for a while.  Because of the way feeds work in Facebook, once your doc is shared it locks that title to the feed.  You can change the title later in your doc, but you won’t be able to change it in the feed, so choose wisely.

Just like docs on your desktop, you’ll want to save your docs when you are done editing them.  To save, click the ‘Save’ button at the top of the page. Then click the ‘Finish editing’ button just to the right of the ‘Save’ button to exit the document.  You’ll be in ‘view mode’ now, which is the same mode that your fiends will have if you only give them “viewer” permission.  Speaking of friends, this point in the document lifecycle would a good time to add some.  Your controls for this are in the right side of the window under the “SHARING” headline.  There you can click to “edit” viewers and pick the friends you’d like to view the document.  You can share it with as few as one person or as widely as all Facebook users—or many options in-between.  When you’re done adding viewers, check the “send a message to people” box to send a message to the friends you selected, and then click OK.  You can add editors in just the same way.  Remember to click the “send a message to people” check box there as well, and finish by clicking OK.

To make accessing your docs easy, you’ll want to add Docs to your profile…and add a bookmark on your home page.  To do this, go to your Facebook page, select ‘Account,’ ‘Application settings,’ find ‘Docs,’ in the list and click ‘Edit settings.’  Under the first tab, click ‘Add’ and leave privacy set to ‘everyone’ since you already control who can see and edit your docs from your Docs page.  Lastly, under the ‘bookmarks’ tab, check the checkbox here and then click OK.

And that’s it.  You are now fully set-up and have shared your first doc.  We hope you enjoy using Docs for Facebook, and please let us know how we can make Docs an amazing social productivity tool for creating and sharing your ideas.

- Pat Kinsel