The Blog has Moved

We're now running the My Docs Online Blog from http://blog.mydocsonline.com. Please visit us at our new location.

Problems accessing My Docs Online with older versions of the Upload Manager

If you're using the Upload Manager and unable to connect to My Docs Online please download the latest version. That should solve the problem. The latest version can be downloaded here.

To download and install the file just right click the link above and save it to your desktop.

Status after site update

All systems are go and running fine. However, we do have a few people who are unable to reach the site because of DNS problems. The result of a DNS problem would be a Page Not Found error in your Internet browser when trying to reach My Docs Online. Normally DNS changes take place in DNS servers around the world within about 60 seconds, but some don't update as quickly as others.

If you do get the "Page not Found" error please try the following in an effort to clear any cached DNS on your system. Please note the suggestions are operating system dependent.

Windows XP

In a command prompt window, use the "ipconfig /flushDNS" command:

Click Start...Run and type Command

In the black command window type ipconfig /flushDNS and hit enter

You should see the message "Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache"

In your browser refresh the My Docs Online home page

Windows Vista

In a command prompt window (as Administrator), use the "ipconfig /flushDNS" command:

Click the "Start" Button > "All Programs" > "Accessories"

rightclick on "Command Prompt" and choose "Run as Administrator"

In the black command window type ipconfig /flushDNS and hit enter

You should see the message "Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache"

In your browser refresh the My Docs Online home page

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

In Terminal, use the "dscacheutil -flushcache" command:

Locate and open the Terminal application (using Finder, or in location below)

Located by default inside the Utilities folder

Which in turn is inside the Applications folder

Type dscacheutil -flushcache

In your browser refresh the My Docs Online home page

Mac OS X (earlier versions)

In Terminal, use the "lookupd -flushcache" command:

Locate and open the Terminal application (using Finder, or in location below)

Located by default inside the Utilities folder

Which in turn is inside the Applications folder

Type lookupd -flushcache

In your browser refresh the My Docs Online home page

Still Having Trouble?

• Contact Support at our gmail address: support.mydocsonline@gmail.com
• Call us at 888-686-1181 or 239-495-1181

Update on Hardware Upgrade

1:06 AM EST Update

Everything appears to be working normally now. There may be some additional fine tuning to be done tomorrow but for now it appears as all of the new hardware has been successfully installed.

11:00 PM EST Update

Much of the new hardware has been installed now and is in the process of being tested. As of right now webfolders2.mydocsonline.com is back online as is the Transporter and SDK powered file transfers.

3:14 PM EST Update

Things continue to progress but more slowly than we had hoped. The good news is that the backup hardware continues to perform well. Please note that if you want to reach us via email use our gmail account as our mail server has not been brought back online yet. That gmail support ID is support.mydocsonline@gmail.com.

We appreciate your patience as we work though the holiday upgrading our hardware in an effort to improve the overall usability of My Docs Online. If you have an urgent need for something that you're unable to do with the active portions of the site please call us at 239-495-1181 and we'll make every effort to help.

Based on current estimates the upgrade will stretch into the evening. I'll keep the blog updated as new information comes in.

12:16 PM EST

Backup hardware is in place and in use for www.mydocsonline.com and webfolders.mydocsonline.com so if you're using either of those two interfaces you should have full access to the site.

Please note that webfolders2.mydocsonline.com will not be operational until much later in the day so if you have work that needs to be done please reset your webfolders connection to webfolders.mydocsonline.com. If you need help with that please call us at 239-495-1181.

For the time being the backup server supporting the SDK and the Transporter is not working correctly. If you normally use the Transporter please just log into the website to access your account for the time being.

We're currently running on backup servers so file transfers will be much than usual, but you should have access to files.

I'll post updates here as changes happen.

PLANNED OUTAGE for this coming Saturday, July 4th

An outage is scheduled for Saturday, July 4th beginning at 10 am U.S. Eastern Time (1400 UT). Service interruptions may occur intermittently from 10:00 am until the upgrade is completed.

The outage is for a hardware upgrade.

We'll keep the blog updated throughout the outage so please check back for more information. We'll also have the phone lines open so feel free to call with any questions at 239-495-1181.

Mac OS X Java Update Causing Problems with Java Web Start?

The most recent Java auto-update through OS X (Leopard) is causing some problems with Java Web Start, the program used to launch the My Docs Transporter program. If you've gone through the update and your Java Web Start is no longer available it means that the update wasn't completely successful.

A symptom of this is trying to launch a Java Web Start Application (Transporter for My Docs users) and having it open something that looks like a text file.

Fortunately there is a fairly simple solution to the problem. You can manually re-install the Java Update from this Apple location:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/application_updates/javaformacosx105update4.html

Let us know through the comments here if this doesn't work for you.

Planned outage for this coming Saturday April 17th

We've got some new hardware that needs to be installed this Saturday, April 17th. The addition of this new hardware will cause at least one outage of about 45 minutes and there may be other brief outages as well. The outages are scheduled for our least busy time of the week, on Saturday between the hours of 11:00am and 2:00 PM EST.   Of course we will do everything we can to keep them as short as possible.

Thanks for your patience as we continue to improve your user experience with My Docs Online.

Mysterious escape characters explained

We received the following question from a customer earlier today.  The question was something that many people are curious about so we've posted both the question and the answer below.  

Q - Is there any way to keep a space from changing to "%20" or "#" from changing to "%23" in a file name that's being uploaded to MDO through web folders or in the Public Folder?

A - The short answer is "No", and there are other special characters as well.

 

Using web folders means each file has to have a web URL and web URLs cannot include certain characters because they are used in HTML itself. "#" is one. Also blanks are not allowed. When a file name includes one of these characters they get replaced with an "escape" character which will start with % and a 2-digit code (%23 = # %20 = blank).

 

This is a web/internet thing, not a My Docs Online thing. All you can do is avoid using them in file names.

 

Here is a complete list (many of them aren't allowed in filenames in any case):

 

Table of URL Escape Characters
Character	Escape Character	Character	Escape Character
Space	%20	#	%23
$	%24	%	%25
&	%26	@	%40
'	%60	/	%2F
:	%3A	;	%3B
<	%3C	=	%3D
>	%3E	?	%3F
[	%5B	\	%5C
]	%5D	^	%5E
{	%7B	|	%7C
}	%7D	~	%7E

 

Scheduled outage for Saturday March 7th

We've got some new hardware that needs to be installed this Saturday, March 7th. The addition of this new hardware will cause at least one outage of about 20 minutes and there may be other brief outages as well. The outages are scheduled for our least busy time of the week, on Saturday between the hours of 2:00 and 5:00 PM EST.   Of course we will do everything we can to keep them as short as possible.

Thanks for your patience as we continue to improve your user experience with My Docs Online.

New Feature: Account Activity Logging and Reporting

We're pleased to introduce a new feature for Enterprise and Transcription Edition accounts that logs account activity and generates a daily report for the account administrator.

If you've ever wondered "when was this file uploaded" or "who deleted that folder" this new feature could be for you.

Each My Docs Online interface (browser, web folders, Transporter, etc) is now able to log key events like file upload/download/deletion, folder creation/deletion and many other events. Included in each log entry are time and date, login ID, and the IP address of the user.

We deliver the reports to account administrators by creating a "comma separated values" (CSV) file at about midnight for that day's activity, with the file generated and deposited in a special folder named "\Logs\Activity".

Using CSV files means each day's report can be downloaded to Excel for data manipulation like sorting or searching.

Currently this feature has to be configured by My Docs Online Support Staff, so if you are interested in using it contact support@mydocsonline.com and include your administrator ID, and we will turn the feature on for you.

Webfolders Instructions for Vista

As you may have noticed Microsoft's WebFolders works somewhat differently for Vista. We have added some very specific Vista related configuration instructions on our WebFolders page which can be found here under the section header Windows Vista: Creating a Webfolder.

As always if you have any problems at all please let us know and we are happy to help with Webfolders configuration.

If you have a Mac or an XP machine the Webfolders implementation is unchanged.

MDO user statistics

Some interesting statistics (at least to me :)) on how people are accessing the My Docs Online website.  These figures do not include Webfolders access, they are just related to the website itself.

Operating Systems

Windows 95%

Mac OSX    4%

Others               1%

(Interestingly the leading candidate in the others category is the Apple iPhone.  One other interesting note is that we have users accessing the website through the Playstation Portable gaming devise.)

Browsers

Internet Explorer 82%

Firefox 14%

Chrome 1%

Others 3%

It's not surprising that the largest percentage of our users accessing using IE but the Firefox numbers were a bit of a surprise.  Most of the people that we talk with on the phone are IE users.  

Other points of interest:

98.3% of our users have Java Enabled which is wonderful since Java is required to use the Transporter product.  If you haven't tried the Transporter you should.   Click here to download and test with it. 

Internet Service Providers (ISP) information - My Docs Users are very diverse when it comes to ISP usage.  The leader, as you might have guessed was Comcast, but they represent only 7.1% of our visitors.  Next is Road Runner, then Cox Communications, Quest and Bellsouth.    Last month our users accessed the website through over 3,500 different Internet Service Providers.

In terms of connection speed nearly all users access the My Docs site through some type of high speed connection.  Cable modem usage is the most popular with DSL running a fairly close second.  Amazingly enough 2% of our users still use dial up connections to connect to the Internet.  If you are one of those dial up users you will definitely want to consider using the Transporter.

Search Results - 80% of the people who find us via search find us using Google. The most popular search terms are different variations and spellings of My Docs Online.  Nearly 30% of the people who find us via search are looking specifically for My Docs Online. 

Need a receipt for tax time?

As tax time approaches you may have a need to provide a hard copy receipt of your membership fees to your accountant.  If so it is possible to generate a printable version of your most recent receipt by logging into your account at www.mydocsonline.com and clicking the "My Account" button.  

Once you enter the My Account section you'll see the Account Information section at the top of the page.  In that section you should see a link to View / Print Most Recent Receipt.  Clicking that link will provide a printable version of your most recent receipt.

If you have a quarterly membership and need a receipt for all purchases made during the year just email us at support@mydocsonline.com and we'll have our accounting group prepare that receipt for you.

Tax time can be chaotic so if there is anything we can do to help please let us know.

Problems opening PDF files using Web Folders

We've had reports from a few users who are unable to open PDF files from within their accounts through the Web Folders interface.  After some research we've found that this is a known problem with Web Folders for XP users who are also running Office 2007.  

Microsoft has released hot fix KB943337 that should resolves the problem for most users with webfolders (also known as webdav) and PDFs. You must request this hot fix as it is not part of their automatic update process. 

 

The link to the fix on the Microsoft site can be found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943337

When reading the directions for the hot fix please note the section requiring that a previous webfolders update, released May 18, 2007 (907306) be installed prior to installing this current hot fix.

Thanks to our friends on the Adobe forum for finding a solution to this problem, which seems to only effect XP users.  

Pie Chart for these trying economic times

I've finally found a pie chart that provides some comfort during these trying economic times.  This is the kind of pie chart that actually makes sense right now.

Telephone support hours have been expanded

We have expanded our hours for telephone support by one hour so our new hours for telephone support are 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM EST on Monday thru Friday.  Our course you can send us email 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and we'll respond promptly.

As always if you need to speak with us outside of our telephone support hours we would be happy to schedule a call to you at your convenience.  Just send an email requesting a call at a certain time and we'll email back with a confirmation.

Top Five Reasons to use the Transporter with your account

We introduced the beta version of our MDO Transporter a a couple of months ago yet many of you haven't tried it yet for uploading and downloading files.  So, to try and encourage you to take the leap here is our top five list of reasons to use the Transporter.

1. It's fast!  Really, it's the fastest way we have to transfer files to and from your account.  It uses My Docs code on both ends which avoids many of the headaches involved with browser based uploads.

2. It uses intelligent file compression during uploads and downloads - once again making it Really Fast!

3. Cross Platform support.  Because the Transporter is a Java Webstart application it can be run on any flavor of Windows or Mac OS.  If you or your customers use Macs the Transporter is definitely something you should consider.

4. You can launch it from here or download it to your desktop from here.  If you download to your desktop it can be launched from there whenever you need to move files.  

5. Did I mention it was really fast at transferring files?  

Please give it a try and let us know what you think.  

Using a My Docs Online WebDAV server to synchronize OmniFocus with your iPhone

OmniFocus provides professional grade task management software for Mac users. With the introduction of the new iPhone version of OmniFocus it is now possible to synchronize your OmniFocus tasks through either MobileMe or through the use of a WebDAV server. If you have an existing My Docs Online account you can use it to process your synchronizations. If you don't yet have a My Docs Online account you can click here for a free seven day trial of the service which will allow you to test the synchronization process. Should you decide to purchase the annual fee for the account would be $34.95.

Once you have your My Docs Online account set up it is fairly simple to configure OmniFocus to work with our WebDAV servers. On the desktop side just launch OmniFocus and from the menu bar click OmniFocus, Preferences. From the preference window click the sync button at the top. Then select the advanced button and enter the following location address: https://webfolders.mydocsonline.com. Please refer to the graphic below for an example.

Once you have the address entered click the sync button and you'll be asked for your My Docs Online login ID and password, following which the synchronization will be initiated.

Step two is to configure the OmniFocus app on your iPhone. You'll first need to purchase and install the app from the iTunes store. Once the application has been installed go ahead and launch it and then tap the "Settings" icon. On the ensuing Settings page scroll down to the Syncronization section and enter the same URL, https://webfolders.mydocsonline.com. Please see the image below as an example.

Once again you'll need to enter your My Docs Online login ID and password here after you've entered the WebDAV server address.

Please review the instructions from OmniFocus for complete details on how the synchronization works. For the time being the only version of OmniFocus that supports the iPhone syncronization is version 1.1, which they refer to as a "sneaky peak" version.

My Docs now has users in 163 different countries

I was just looking at our latest numbers from Google Analytics and saw, buried among the reams of data, that we have users in 163 different countries. Of course the vast majority of our users are located in the English speaking countries but it is really cool to have users in so many different countries. Thanks to each and every one of you for helping to spread the word about My Docs Online!

Webfolders2 problem resolved

The problem we've experienced for the past couple of days involving the webfolders2 server has been resolved.  There should no longer be any problem creating new folders or moving files between folders using the webfolders2 server.  Thanks to everyone for their patience while we worked through the solution.