OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group

Did you know that we offer a Complimentary RightFax Administrator Course? A lot of you know about it because a large number of students have already attended this fantastic class which is offered at no additional cost. Many students have told us that the course gave them a well-rounded overview of the administration tasks related to RightFax. Attending the complimentary class also better prepares students about to attend the full three-day training.

There are many reasons though why some potential students may not attend a class. Often the classes are built around our schedules rather than yours. Since we hold them once every month, there is a good chance that other important projects will come up between now and then and a free course is sometimes pushed aside. We have been listening to our customers about these concerns and are delighted to now make the course available on your schedule.

The course is now available as a series of streaming videos. It has been split up into 7 sections, each covering a different aspect of the product. A total 22 feature-specific videos have been carefully designed to get you up to speed as quickly as possible. To help reinforce what you have learned, each section has a short quiz.

Here is how you can get started:

1. Visit http://faxdocs.tv/training and click the big blue button to register for an account
2. An email will be sent to you to help verify your account. Click the link to return to the site.
3. Now start watching the videos and answering the questions.

That’s it! And because the course is available as streaming video, you can come back to the site as often as you like to help refresh your memory. To get a better idea of what you will learn, check out this quick summary video.

If you have any feedback, let us know in the comments below. Your feedback is how we know what’s working and what needs improvement. I am really excited about this new offering and I look forward to hearing from you after you have had a chance to attend.

Are YOU on Google+? In case you haven’t seen it, Google has a new online property that’s taking the world by storm. Is it a Twitter killer? A Facebook Killer? I don’t know, perhaps its’s too early to tell, but it certainly has a lot to offer.

About a week ago, they opened Google+ to businesses, whereas before that it was just for real human beings with real names. Businesses can have pages just like on Facebook. The pages are a bit different than the Facebook variety, but all of it is so new, what I say here today may change tomorrow. All that I can say for certain is that if you are not there yet, you should be. And now that everyone can join without an invite, there is just no excuse to not join in.

The Fax & Document Distribution Group has a page on Google+ now. When you get onto plus.google.com, do a search for FDDG (the full name is OpenText FDDG Videos and Training). Or just click on this link to go right there. Then add us to one of your Circles.

Whenever we post anything to our Google+ page, you will see the message in your main Google Plus page. Go look around for your friends as well and add them to your circles. Then you will see news from everyone. On the left you can click on individual circles to filter down the news. I have circles for co-workers at OpenText, for people in FDDG, and for those in my department at the company. I also have circles for friends from when I was at Microsoft, and at other companies, and photographers I find interesting. How you create your circles is really up to you. Then when you decide to share something, you can share it with only certain circles.

One of the most exciting things for us on Google+ is the idea of a Hangout. This is like a multi-way video conference. You can have a bunch of people (for now its up to 10) join in on a hangout. We might have a hangout to just talk about RightFax or Alchemy. Or we might interview someone, maybe a partner or someone interesting inside OpenText we though you might like to meet. Who knows?

Its a new platform and the first few times we try it, it might not work. But if you would like to join us for the first experiment, add our page to one of your circles. I’ll post the link to the hangout there. At a minimum, I will be on there (this is Matt Williams posting), and Joshua Butcher is planning to be there as well. If you join you can ask us a question about anything you like. I am thinking its going to be on Tuesday at a time thats not too inconvenient for both the US and Europe. But you’ll have to watch for the announcement on Google+ for the precise details. If you aren’t one of the first 10 to join, don’t worry. I plan on streaming the hangout on Livestream.com as well, but the details for that will be on Google. You’ll also be able to post questions to Twitter.

I look forward to seeing you add us to your circles. I’ll then add you to our circles so that I can see what you are up to as well (if you choose to share any news with us). And look out for the posting on Monday or Tuesday morning at the latest. And then we will see each other on the Hangout.

See you then!

UPDATE November 9, 2011 – Now with a video!

As you may know, we have offered training for the RightFax Administrator course online for quite a while. For those of you in the United States, the class was offered at a sensible time, meaning during the day when you would normally be at work. Due to some technical issues we just can’t get around, that was the only course offered. For those potential students in Europe, the online option started somewhere between 4 and 6 pm. Since these are often 8 hour sessions, you are going to be on the phone till as late as 2 in the morning. Students in Hong Kong or Sydney would be online from close to midnight all the way to when their coworkers are just waking up.

In the last 6 years, I have done upwards of a half million miles of airtravel, so I know a thing or two about changing timezones, and that kind of stuff kills you. I have heard some people give figures of it taking upwards a day to adjust to each hour in a timezone shift. The more I travel, the more accurate I think that gets. So asking our customers to do this is a tough sell.

But now we are offering online courses in whatever timezone you are in. At first, it will be in my timezone. I live in Amsterdam, so the first course will be from 9AM my time (Thats CETor Central European Time) until about 4 or 5 in the afternoon. You lot in the US should not sign up for that course.

The first of these online courses in Europe is going to be held on November 22-24 and you can sign up at this link on the website. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see the RF Fundamentals course with a location of Virtual Classroom – Netherlands. These courses, like all of our courses, are open to customers and partners alike.

We will be adding some of the other courses to this system in the next few months as well, but if you need to take one today, start adjusting your sleep patterns for that US-based session.

If you would like to see a Fundamentals class in your timezone and you are in Mumbai, or Kathmandu, or Hong Kong, or Sydney, or anywhere else, contact us (best to contact your usual OpenText representative) and we can work on delivering that for you. If you want to do a more customized class, focusing only on Integrations, or end users, or anything else, contact me so I can work on getting that setup for you. I am reachable at mattheww atopentext.com or on twitter at technovangelist.

Have you ever tried to use the keystroke, Control-F10 in FaxUtil. If you have, you might have wondered why such a useless keyboard shortcut was added to the product. I wondered that myself for the first 5 years I worked here. But then I stumbled on to a variant of the normal command. It all happened about a year ago.

I was teaching a three day RightFax Admin class and mentioned the keystroke, kind of as a side note. But I was shocked when it looked different than what I was used to. I think I was on a different service pack than usual, so I attributed it to that at first. But then one of my students said his looked the way I was used to and we were both on the same version. That student’s name was Fritz and he noticed that he sorted his list of faxes based on Date and I sorted them based on phone number. It was amazing.

I tried changing the sort order and with each Ctrl F10, I got a different view. Very cool. That night I decided to make a video documenting what I found. I set up a tripod in my kitchen and recorded my monologue. And then I sat on it….for 9 months. I’m not sure what happened, but I stumbled on the video last weekend. A little clean up and it was ready to publish. And here, at long last, is my Ctrl F10 video.

Let me know what you think. Did you know CTRL F10 did this? Was I the only one in the dark? Share it with me in the comments.

UPDATE: February 8, 2012 to show current course dates

Six months ago we started offering FREE instructor-led RightFax training for anyone who wanted it. Since then, we have taught hundreds of RightFax admins. The training covers the basic tasks every new RightFax administrator needs to understand. This includes how to manage users, groups, printers, cover sheets, and reporting. I demonstrate everything on a WebEx and you listen in on the phone. Its roughly scripted, but I am eager to go off on tangents depending on what the callers are interested in. If you have any questions, we can try to address them on the call. We have dial-in numbers for most countries in the world so the only cost to you is a few hours of your time. This isn’t a replacement for tech support, but in teaching RightFax courses for five years, I have learned a thing or two about how people manage our solutions. Some example tangential topics that have come up in recent sessions include fax to email and email to fax, user synchronization with Active Directory, and managing more than one user at a time.

The courses are offered at two time slots, once per month. The first time slot is at 10:30 AM where I live in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The second time slot is geared for the Americas and is at 8:00 AM PST. To register, visit http://captaristraining.webex.com, then click on the Upcoming tab. You will see all of our schedule courses. The ones I am talking about here are labeled Complimentary RightFax Admin Training. The dates for all of the trainings offered in 2011 are listed below. If you are new to RightFax or have a customer who needs to get up to speed, join me on one of the upcoming FREE trainings.

• February 9, 2012
• February 20, 2012
• March 9, 2012