At OnePlace, we understand that when life and work get busy, the best advice is often to work smarter, not harder. To that end, we've put together a list of ten ways for getting more from OnePlace, so that you can work smarter, not harder.

Organize Using Workplaces and Projects
Half the battle of being organized is the initial act of getting organized. The other half of the battle then becomes staying organized as time marches along. Workplaces and projects are a great way in OnePlace for helping you get organized, because they are containers that hold other information, so you can use them to put your information in the proper place. Think of OnePlace as your virtual filing cabinet, workplaces as the drawers of this filing cabinet, and projects as the folders hanging in each drawer. When you put your small businesses' information into the appropriate drawers and folders, now you and the other people in your business can find things much more easily. Someone wants to find the marketing copy for the latest press release? No problem, just open the marketing drawer (i.e. workplace), find the folder (i.e. project) labelled "Press Releases", and then thumb through the folder contents (i.e. notes, lists, or files) to find the press release you're looking for.

Use Permissions and Portals to Share Information Outside Your Team
Not only can OnePlace help improve your internal collaboration, but it's also designed to help improve your collaboration with people outside the four walls of your office. OnePlace has two features in particular which make it easy to share information with clients, vendors, partners and others outside your immediate team.

The first feature is Permissions, which allow you to choose how you want to share a specific piece of information. This allows you to control who sees what. For example, suppose you have a project to design a new web site for your business. This project might involve internal resources, contractors and consultants, and a small group of your best customers who will provide feedback on your designs. Using permissions, you can clearly delineate what each of these groups of people can see. Here is more information on how Permissions can help you collaborate with your team.

The second feature is Portals, which provide a very focused view of a single workplace. When a user views a portal, they no longer see everything in OnePlace, but rather see only a simplified view of that workplace. This is very useful when collaborating with people outside your internal team who are not everyday users in OnePlace. A portal makes it much easier for this kind of user to collaborate with your team, because they only see the information that you've decided (via permissions) that they should see. And, they're not distracted by all the other "stuff" that OnePlace offers. Here's additional help on using Portals for customer and team collaboration.

Use Search to Quickly Locate Things
There are two ways that people generally find things on their computer or the Internet. The first way is by using a program like Windows Explorer to browse their hard drive. Traditionally this is how people have done it. The second way, which is the primary way that people find things on the Internet, is to search for it using a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing. Can you imagine having to find something on the Internet by browsing through billions of pages? Impossible. Search engines are a must to quickly locate what you are looking for. Well, the Search feature in OnePlace is quite similar to a search engine. By asking a simple question, the OnePlace Search will go out and scour all the data you have access to, looking for things that match your search criteria. It then displays the search results in a manner very similar to how Internet search engines do it. So the next time you're trying to find that note that you buried five levels deep in a sub-project, just let the OnePlace Search find it for you.

Discover more information on how OnePlace Search can help you locate items and stay organized.

Use Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are not something we generally expect to use in a web application. Traditionally this is a feature only found in desktop applications. However, with the advent of Web 2.0, this feature is becoming more and more common on the web. OnePlace is no exception to this new way of doing business. OnePlace offers a large number of keyboard shortcuts for navigating around and for creating data. For example, did you know that you can press the "H" key to quickly return to your Home page? Or that pressing the "W" key pops open the Workplaces menu? My personal favorite that I use all the time is "T", which displays the dialog for creating a new task.

Here is a complete list of the support keyboard shortcuts to increase your OnePlace efficiency.

Use Data Links
Have you ever posted a message in a OnePlace discussion, and found yourself telling your teammates to go to a specific workplace or project to see whatever it is you are talking about? Rather than just tell them about something, why not provide a link that lets them quickly jump to that thing? Well, you can do this using a feature we call Data Links, and not only in discussions, but in other places as well, such as an Inbasket messages and team pulses. Each piece of information within OnePlace can be linked to by using a special syntax. For example, you can create a data link to task #4000 by entering {task:4000}. OnePlace also provides an easy way to automatically generate a data link in case you don't remember how to do it by hand.

Here is additional information on using Data Links to increase the speed of collaboration in OnePlace.

Turn Off Features in a Workplace You Don't Use
Sometimes less is more. To this end, OnePlace provides a way to turn off features you don't use in a workplace. When you create a new workplace, one of the steps in the process is choosing which features you want, and which ones you don't want. You can also adjust the features after the fact by editing the workplace. Don't use Lists and Files in a certain workplace? No problem, just turn them off.

Use Filters, Sorts and Grouping to Fine Tune Your Views
If you belong to business that is really leveraging OnePlace, then chances are you are dealing with a lot of tasks, projects, and other kinds of information. Even if you organize this information across different workplace (tip #1 above), you can still end up with lots of stuff in a workplace. No worries, here come filters, sorts and groupings to the rescue! Most views in OnePlace that displays lists of things provide controls for filtering, sorting and grouping the things in the list. You can use these controls to narrow down the list, move important things to the top of the list, and group things for faster browsing. For example, suppose you are looking for the latest file that Jane uploaded into the marketing workplace? Just go to the Files tab in that workplace, sort by "Created on", and group by "Created by". Now you can easily see the set of files that Jane has uploaded, and the latest one will be at the top of her group.

Hide the Workplace Navigator to Help You Focus
If you are like me, you want to remove things from your current view that are not directly related to whatever it is you are focusing on. I am this way with the Workplace Navigator. I use the Navigator to find whatever it is I am looking for, but once I've found it, I no longer want the distraction of seeing everything in the Navigator. It served it's purpose, but now it's time to get to work. So, I simply collapse the Navigator by clicking the small "-" icon in its upper right hand corner. Now I can focus on the task at hand.

Use Task Contexts to Help You Focus
If you are someone who juggles a lot of roles and responsibilities at work, or perhaps someone who is using OnePlace in multiple facets of your life, then task contexts are a great productivity feature you should check out if you're not currently using them. Task contexts allow you to group your tasks in an ad-hoc manner that fits your work style, and provides a way to easily narrow down your "To Do" list based on whatever role/facet you are currently active in. This helps you focus and be more productive.

Here is more information on how you can use Task Contexts to stay organized and increase productivity.

Use OnePlace Mobile
This last tip is one that can help shift your team collaboration into overdrive. The OnePlace mobile interfaces provide a way for you to stay connected to your team when you are on the go. You can read and respond to discussions on your mobile device. You can stay in the know by using Team Pulse on your mobile device. And you can send and receive messages via your Inbasket on your mobile device. Wifi access and 3G coverage are becoming more and more widespread these days, so if you aren't already, why not take advantage of OnePlace Mobile to remain connected to your team while away from your computer?

Here you can discover how to increase project management and collaboration ease with OnePlace Mobile.

We hope you find these tips and tricks useful for helping you get more mileage from OnePlace. If you have any favorite tips you'd like to share with others, by all means post them in the comments below. We'd love to hear other creative ways that you are using OnePlace to increase your productivity and effectiveness, while decreasing your stress and workload.