Great new Sixent features (Part 3 of 3: Streamlined "Add" Process)
[ September 4, 2008 Update: This feature is now live. View Tutorial (2mins) ]
The third and final post of this series (read part 1 and part 2) covering three major enhancements to Sixent focuses on changes to how you add content and items to your Sixent profiles, pages and groups.
Streamlined "Add" Process
This particular enhancement is in response to a lot of great feedback we've received from both Sixent.com Beta members contacting us directly as well as from kind Sixent members who gave up their time to participate in our in-house usability sessions.
Generally speaking, we've discovered that people struggle at first to learn how their
"Pages" are related to their "Profiles". Simply put, your pages hold your content, your profiles describe who you are.
The content you add to Sixent lives on pages that are linked from your profiles. For example, items you add to your Professional page are seen and accessed through your Professional profile. The Activity Stream system also alerts your contacts that you've posted new content (reminder, your contacts only see activity from the profiles and pages you've given them access to).
To help make this better understood and to greatly speed up the time it takes to contribute new items to your pages (and groups), the "Add" button located on the top-right of most pages has been greatly enhanced.
Using the updated dialog shown below, you only have to answer two simple questions:
- What would you like to add?
- Where would you like to add it?
Not all types of items can be added to all locations. No worries, the new process takes care of it all. For example, you can add pods to a profile but a new file can only be added to a page. After you pick "Files", the locations that are no longer valid (e.g. your profiles) are dimmed out leaving you with a clear set of location choices.
This built-in knowledge of where you're allowed to add something
comes in very handy in Sixent Groups. Many different permissions setups could
exist within a single Group. Some members, for example, may only be permitted
to add some item types on only some pages, etc. The
new process guides you through it all. For example, choose "Photo" and
it will tell you which Groups allow you to contribute photos and even
which pages in the group are open to you.
Summary
In summary, the next release of Sixent will provide even greater utility and be even easier to use. We will post an update in this blog next week once the new features are available. Please post any comments or suggestions you might have. We appreciate all your feedback.
