New Navigation

After you sign on you should notice that the READ and WRITE portions of the main menu have been replaced with INBOX and OUTBOX respectively.

Our purpose here was to change the interface from who you are (the reader or the writer) to what you want to do.

In the INBOX section you will see a list of all messages that you have received and not archived.  You will not be allowed to archive a message until you have read it.  A new button REPLIES TO ME lets you list notes that have been sent to you as a reply from a message that you sent to someone else.  NOTES FROM OTHERS lets you see traffic sent to you from someone else’s circle.

The OUTBOX selection takes you to a screen that shows each message that you have sent if at least one person has not read the message.  SEND HEADS UP will allow you to sent another e-mail to the recipient reminding them to read your message.  DON’T WORRY will remove this person from the list of people that have not read the message.  Click on the Subject of the message to see the original message.  CIRCLES I WRITE will take you to the original navigation.

Circle listings

Before today if a circle had no new messages  it did not appear in your circle list.  You needed to press “Show All” in order to get all of your circles to show.  Due to popular demand, we have removed that feature.  Now all of your circles show each time you enter the system.

 

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Searching incoming messages

The reader of a Circle can now perform a search of messages that they have been sent.

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FAQ available

Clicking Settings on the Main Menu will take you to a screen where Frequently Asked Questions is an option.

The remainder should be intuitive.

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Sending to unregistered recipients

Circle.me now allows you to send your message and attachments both to members of your Circle and to others.

At the bottom of the screen that allows you to select recipients there is a text area that allows you to enter up to 15 e-mail addresses separated by semi-colons.

The e-mail recipient gets a heads-up with the link to circle.me.  Following the link takes the recipient directly to the message and to the attachments.  The audit Trail function keeps track of their reception.

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Searching

You can now search for an older message.  The search function examines both the subject field and the text of the message.  Multiple search words are handled on an “or” basis, so if any of your search words are  found the message is returned to you.

The wild card character is the percent sign.  Searching for “Sear%” will find any word beginning with “Sear”.  Searching for “%sear” will find any word ending with “sear”.  Searching for “%sear%” will find any word with “sear” in it.

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New Features

This week we spent some time cleaning up presentation and added two new features.

First, we have added an “Add Recipients” button when you are reviewing mail that you have sent from your circle.  You might want to use this if you have a standard note or file that you want to send to everyone in your circle.  From time to time new people will join.  Use this button to bring up a list of all current members of the circle that have not had the message sent to them.   You can then choose who will receive the note.

The second feature concerns the “heads up”.  If you send a “heads up” along with a message, the system will automatically (through your e-mail) let you know when the recipient has read the message.  Right now we are calling this the “reverse heads up”.  What do you think a good name would be?

Several have asked if they are allowed to create and use their own circles.  By all means.  We need to learn from your experiences.

Invitation Process

You can now send multiple invitations to join your circle.  Enter the e-mail addresses separated by a semi-colon.  Circle.me allows you to invite up to 15 people at a time. 

Invitations are now treated like individual messages.  You will see them in your list of sent messages and will be able to use the “Trail” function once the invitee accepts your invitation.

Guidance requested from the user community

We need some input from the user community.  It is becoming clear that many users feel that circle.me should run exceptionally in their particular environment.  We agree. 

The problem is that there are many different environments and they do not all run the same.  So the question is, “how should we handle this?”

Convenience Features

As of late yesterday, we changed circle.me to have two new features.

Firstly, if you are the owner of a circle (for now we are calling you the “square”) you can click on “Show Members” when viewing your list of circles.  That will show you who has accepted your invitation to join the circle.

The second change relates to invitations.  Invitations now appear in your message list and act like regular messages so that you can see who you have invited.