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Clibu Version 0.80 A major new release – Knowledge Base Sharing

In Part 1 I wrote about Clibu User and Account Management.  In this post I’ll walk through Clibu’s new Knowledge Base Sharing capabilities.

Sharing enables other people to view and collaborate on Knowledge Base content. Clibu updates all users content in real time, so everyone see’s changes as they occur.

To Share a Knowledge Base, open it and click on it Tab’s drop down menu and select Share.Tab Menu - Share KBThis opens the Share Knowledge Base dialog.

KB Share DialogStart by entering the E-mail address of the person you want to share the Knowledge Base with. They don’t need to be an existing Clibu User.

Next you can either grant them View Only access which means they can look, but not touch or you can grant Full Access, which means they can do everything you can. Click on the button to toggle between the two settings.

Finally click Share and an email is sent telling the person what they need to do to access the KB. The email looks like this:

Kb Shared Email

If the user you have shared the Knowledge Base with has Clibu open, they will also see a notification to this effect.

Shared Knowledge Bases are grouped together on the Knowledge Base menu and include an icon indicating they are shared.

KB Menu Shared ItemsThey same icon is used on Tabs that contain shared kb’s.

Sharing permissions can be changed at any time and shares can be removed. Select Share on the Tab menu and enter the email address of the person you’ve previously shared the KB with.

From here you can change Permissions and click Update or use Remove Share. The user will be notified by email and also by a notification popup if they are using Clibu.

If they have the KB open it will be closed if Remove Share was used, otherwise it’s permissions will be updated.

At present we’ve exposed just two permissions, Full Access and View Only. However we’ve implemented a much finer grained sets of permissions down to the level of; can a user add Tags, rename Tags, edit Articles, add Articles, create Knowledge Bases etc. etc. Based on user requirements and feedback we’ll look at exposing these advanced permissions in a future release.

I’ve also put the groundwork in place to track user activity, so you’ll be able to see who has edited an article, added tags to it etc.etc. and when.

The ability to collaborate with colleagues and share valuable information is all important. I hope you find this release is heading in the right direction and look forward to your feedback.

– Neville

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Clibu Version 0.80, a major new release – User & Account Management

It is time to surface from another big round of Clibu development and get the latest release into your hands. Since the previous release I’ve completely rewritten the User and Account management modules, or to be more precise, written them. Up until now there was very basic Login system, which was just enough to enable folks other than me, to use Clibu.

Fundamental to these new modules is the ability to let you share Knowledge Bases with your friends and colleagues and to have full control over your account.

And we’ve moved from a closed Beta to one where anyone can Signup and start using Clibu straight away.

In the first post I’ll focus on the new Account management capabilities and follow up with a post on Sharing.

CURRENT CLIBU USERS: If you are an existing Clibu User you will see the Login system has changed and you need to establish new credentials. Follow the steps below, your database will be updated and you will be back using Clibu again.

If Clibu is already open or there is any problem you must do a Browser Refresh to load the new release.

Signing up for a Clibu Account:

Click on the button on the Welcome page or on Signup on the User Login dialog.

Enter your E-mail address and you’ll be sent an email with your login password.

The User Login dialog should open automatically, if not click on the Login button.

The E-mail address you used in Signup will be prefilled. Copy and paste the Password you received in the Signup e-mail.

Next choose whether you want your Email address and/or Password saved on this PC. If both are saved then you can Login in future without having to enter any credentials. If you are using Clibu on someone else’s PC, you should not set these options.

Next Click on Login. As this is the first time you are logging in with this new account there is a final one time User Registration step.

Enter your first name, last name and a User name which will be used to uniquely identify  you amongst all Clibu Users. Note that once set your User name cannot be changed, so choose carefully.

Click Save to complete your Registration and log in to Clibu. If the User name you chose is already in use you will be prompted to change it and try Save again.

When you Register, you get added to our Clibu Newsletter Subscription list. You will receive an email asking you to accept this or not. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Forgot Password

If you look back at the User Login dialog you will see it now includes a Forgot Password option. When you use this, Clibu will create a new temporary password and email it to the address you enter. Your current password will continue to work until you use the new password, which will then supersede it. These temporary passwords expire after 2 days, so use them promptly or use Forgot Password again.

Changing your Credentials

You can change your email address and password on the new Account Details dialog which is accessed from the User Menu | My Account.

If you do set your own password ensure it is a strong one, and not one you use on other Web sites.

Clibu Web Clipper

We’ve updated the Clibu Web Clipper Login to match the changes we’ve made in Clibu. We’ve also simplified it so that if you are logged into Clibu, the Web Clipper Extension will log in automatically, so you can start clipping straight away.

The V0.80.30 Clibu Web Clipper is now available in the Chrome Store. If the Extension doesn’t update on its own then delete the current one and install the latest version from the Chrome Store.

Fini

You can clearly see that we’ve come a long way with User and Account Management in this release. We’ve also paved the way for more User based functionality to be added in future releases. And finally we’ve improved how we manage users on the server and made this more efficient.

Part 2 on Knowledge Base sharing is now available.

For a summary of all updates see this Forum Announcement.

– Neville

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New Web Clipper functionality & New Clibu Release

The Clibu Web Clipper has been enhanced to enable you to both add and append Web page content from the Browser right click context menu.

Clibu Web Clipper on Browser Context Menu

In addition to creating new Articles from clipped content you can now append content to an existing article. This is extremely useful  when you want to keep adding bits of information to an article.

The context menu items come in two flavours, depending on whether any content is selected on the Web page or not. If content is selected the menu items above are available and the selected content, along with the web page title linked to the page url, plus the page description (if any) are either used to create a New Article or appended to the current article.

If no web page content is selected then this menu is shown.

In this case the web page title linked to the page url, plus the page description (if any) are either used to create a New Article or appended to the current article.

Clibu and the Clibu Web Clipper are now at Version 0.71.0. Click Browser Refresh in Clibu to get the latest release. And in Google Chrome use Tools | Extension | Update Extensions Now.

Before you can use the Context menu items you need to Login to Clibu using the Clibu Web Clipper Browser button.

Both New Article from Clip and New Article from Bookmark create the article in the Knowledge Base selected in the main popup window accessed via the Clibu Web Clipper Browser button.

Choose the Knowledge Base from the dropdown list and then click anywhere on the web page to close the popup window.

Append Clip to Article and Append Bookmark to Article append  content to the current article. The current article is set in one of two ways. The first way is selecting the article in Clibu using the checkbox beside each article. Whichever article has been selected most recently is the one the web clipper uses.

Clibu Article selection checkbox

The second way an article is treated as selected is whenever you use the context menu items New Article from Clip/Bookmark or Add Article in the web clipper popup window. This enables you to create a new article and then append content to it which is a fairly common task.

If you want to add Tags and edit the page description for New Articles then use the full featured Web Clipper popup.

An issue with selected content in the Web Clipper Popup window has been fixed and links and images in selected content which are relative to the page the content came are now processed correctly.

Clibu itself has been updated to cater for these new Web Clipper capabilities and the Clibu start screen is now displayed when new users access Clibu for the first time and when logging in fails. Links to sign up to the Beta program have been added to the start screen and to the Login dialog. See the Release notes for further details.

I hope you find these new Web Clipper features as useful as I do and look forward to your feedback.

-Neville

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Getting content in has to be easy. Clibu V0.70.0 Released

Clibu makes it really easy to lookup information, but just as importantly it has to be easy to add content to your Clibu database, and not just when you’re sitting in front of your PC.

Hot on the heels of the Clibu Web Clipper I’m excited to announce the release of Clibu Version 0.70.0 which enables you to add articles to Clibu by simply emailing them.

I imagine there are a lot of people like me who email themselves snippets of information to follow up on later. This typically happens when I’m out and about somewhere, see or hear something of interest and have my smart phone handy. The problems is that the Inbox of my email program really isn’t the ideal place for these snippets. Wouldn’t it be so much better if they went into my knowledge gathering application Clibu, and now they can.

Getting content into Clibu by email couldn’t be simpler. Select ‘Compose’ in your favourite Email program and set the Email To address to kb@myclibu.com and the Email From address to your Clibu Login email address. The email Subject line enables you to set the Article Title, the target Knowledge Base and a set of Tags. And the body of the email will be the body of the new article.

The Subject line works as follows. Start with the article Title, then if you want to specify a target Knowledge Base use @Knowledge Base Name and finally to add Tags use #tag name1 #tag name2 etc.

The Subject line: Denon AVR-X3000 @Home Theater #AV Receiver #Denon will have a Title: Denon AVR-X3000 and be added to the Knowledge Base named Home Theater and tagged AV Receiver and Denon. For folks moving from Evernote this will be familiar.

If you don’t enter a Knowledge Base name or the name you enter doesn’t exist, the Article will be created in a KB named ‘InBox’. Also any Tags that don’t exist in the target KB will not be added.  Note that Knowledge Base names and tag names are not case sensitive.

A final feature to look forward to is the ability to move articles from one Knowledge Base to another. This will enable you to move articles which go into the InBox KB to where you really want them to live.

As always I hope you like this new Clibu feature and look forward to your feedback.

-Neville

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The Clibu Web Clipper has landed

It has been a bit of a journey and took a bit longer than planned, however I’m excited to announce the initial release of the Clibu Web Clipper, Browser Extension.

The Web Clipper makes it quick and easy to capture information from any Web page. This includes the page URL, Title, Description and any content you select on the page. You can also add your own Notes and Tags.

Once installed, you open the Web Clipper by clicking on it’s button on the Browser Toolbar.

Once you’ve logged in you will see the ‘Add Selected Content’ window.

From this window you can select the Clibu Knowledge Base that you want the article added to, add Tags to identify the article and edit or add a Note.

You can also edit the Web Page Title and URL if you want to.

Tags utilize the same auto-suggest capability as Clibu, along with the ability to create new Tags.

One thing I love about the Clibu Web Clipper is that if you have Clibu open, it is automagically updated. Any Tags you create in the Web Clipper will instantly be displayed in the Clibu Tags Tree, and new articles are likewise instantly available.

And this applies to any Clibu’s that are running with your account, be they on your PC or a colleague on the other side of the planet, they are all automagically updated.

Of course this automagic updating is built-into Clibu’s core, so that all instances of Clibu that are open, as well as Clibu Extensions, regardless of where they are, are always up to date and in sync with each other. This is a breath of fresh air compared to the way applications used to work and most still do.

I started development with the expectation we’d have the Web Clipper available for Chrome, Firefox, IE & Safari from day one, however this proved too ambitious and unfortunately the cross-browser extension framework we were using fell short of our expectations. So at the last minute I made the decision to discard the framework and resort to native browser development.

The easiest and best Web Browser to develop extensions for, is by far Chrome, so this first release of the Web Clipper is for Chrome.

To install the Web Clipper select it from the ‘User Menu’ as shown above. If you can’t see ‘Web Clipper’ on the menu then you need to do a Browser Refresh to get the latest version of Clibu.

This is the first release of the Clibu Web Clipper and further capabilities such as capturing entire web pages and adding content to existing articles is planned. If you have other ideas to make an even better web clipper, do let us know.

-Neville

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Clibu Version 0.66.10 has been released

Clibu has been updated to V0.66.10. This release includes some cosmetic & usability updates based on the feedback we’ve been receiving, as well as fixing some bugs. Simply Refresh your Clibu Tabs in your Browser to start using this new release. See this Clibu Forum Announcement for full details.

The really big news though is we now have the Clibu Web Clipper Browser extension available for Chrome. More on this in the next post.

For folks who use Twitter I’ve recently created a Twitter account @getclibu which you can subscribe to. This will supersede the @surfulater twitter account.

Finally thanks to our Beta testers for all their help and feedback.

-Neville

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Search Keywords – by Ken Moshier

I’m very pleased to publish this Guest Post by Ken Moshier and greatly appreciate Ken’s contribution. It would be great to see more guest posts, so please do contact me if you would like to join in.

Note that Ken is primarily discussing embedding searchable keywords in articles, and note about Clibu’s Hierarchical Tags. I have my own ideas about embedding ‘actual tags’ in articles, so stay tuned for that.  Neville

ABOUT ME:

I am a down-load software “junkie” – a note taking “aficionado” on crack.

I am a hairdresser-I am a Visual (right-brain). Linear concepts and structure give me brain contusions. I was a salon owner for over twenty-seven years, a National Educator for many beauty companies for thirty-five years and also a Creative Director for a high-end spa/salon network. I helped with manuals, assistant certification guides etc.

I can look you in the eye and tell you for a fact that, every beauty related manual/knowledge base started with an outliner/note taking app. These notes were eventually exported to a word processor for further development and distribution to all stylists in our spa/salon organization. Planning and structuring this amount of information couldn’t have been possible for me (visually handicapped) if it weren’t for an note taking type of software. This goes back to the days of DOS and windows 3.1. By the way.. the app of choice in that era was InfoSelect. In that program I currently have over 15 data files, most with an extreme amount of text notes. Today, with my obsession with note taking software I have around 75 total data files.

Continue reading “Search Keywords – by Ken Moshier”

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Clibu V0.65.04 Released

A new version of Clibu V0.65.04 has been released today. It includes enhancements such as improved word matching in Tags auto-suggest lists, clicking on a link now opens the link when you aren’t editing an article, plus with various other User Interface updates. See the Release Notes for complete details.

Log into Clibu and use Browser Refresh to get the new release.

The bulk of our recent development effort has been focused on the new Clibu Web Browser Extension, which enables you to add Web content, along with Tags to a selected Clibu Knowledge Base, all from within the Extension’s popup window.

I’m pleased to say the Extension is working very well, is quick and easy to use and looks good. We’ve got a bit more work to do on the User Interface, packaging and testing and expect to have a release available in the coming weeks.

Our Clibu Community forums are a great place for you to create and participate in discussions about Clibu, including features you would like to see in the future. So do join in and help us move Clibu forward to meet both your needs and those of the wider community.

Finally if you’ve recently signed up to participate in our Beta program, we plan to approve the next batch of people today.

– Neville

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New Clibu Website + easier Beta Signup

We’ve completed the initial Clibu web site and it has been live for over a week now. I am very pleased with how it has come together and feel that it does a good job of getting the message of what Clibu is about out there. The feedback we’ve had so far agrees.

The new site also makes it much easier to sign up and participate in the Clibu Beta program. And it includes social buttons so you can help us let the world know Clibu exists. Please do go and have a look.

We’ve removed a few folks that signed up for the Beta early on but have never tried it or provided us with any feedback. This helps us free up places for new people that are signing up.

The Clibu community forum is starting to get some traction and we encourage you to join in with your suggestions on ways to improve Clibu to meet any specific needs you feel are a good fit.

The new Browser Extension for Clibu is coming along very nicely and as of yesterday is fully functional, which is very exciting. It has much more functionality than the Surfulater Browser Extension, simplifying and streamlining adding new content from the Browser. More on this soon.

-Neville

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Clibu Beta V0.65.03 Released. Streamlined Tagging etc.

This latest Clibu release makes it easier to add Tags both to Articles and to the Tags Tree. If you are a heavy Tag user these new features will speed up and simplify your work flow.

The ‘New Tag’ button which is beside the ‘Hide/Show Tags Tree’ button located above the Tags Tree, lets you create a new Tag and add it as a child of any existing tag. Ctrl+G also does  this.

The Tags Tree item menu now includes ‘New child Tag’ which lets you quickly add a Tag as a child of the selected Tag.

The menu also includes ‘New Tagged Article’ which creates a new article tagged with the selected tag.

This release provides a new quick way to add tags to an article from content (words) in the article. Select the text you want to use for the tag and the selection toolbar pops up.

In this example I’ve selected saffron threads. Clicking on the ‘Add Tag’ button adds saffron threads to the tags for this article.

saffron threads doesn’t exist yet so you are given the option to Create it or edit it.

The two screen shots above also show the new look tooltips we’ve implemented in this release. Different colored tips are used in different contexts and along with better positioning enable us to provide more targeted feedback.

The final area I want to highlight is Clibu’s ability to both Rename and to Merge Tags. Merge comes into play when you want to rename a tag and the new tag name already exists.

In this scenario all articles using the original tag are updated to use the new (existing) tag and the original tag is deleted, hence merging the two tags into one.

In my experience some applications allow you to rename a tag, but typically only if the new tag doesn’t exist. This is a pity as the ability to merge similar tags is an important one when it comes to effective tag management.

In this example I want to rename the Tag Harira soup to Harissa soup.

As soon as I finished typing Harissa soup two things happen. First a tip pops up telling me that the tag Harissa soup already exists in the current parent tag Moroccan and second the ‘Rename’ button changes to ‘Merge’, making it clear what will happen if I continue.

With this release we’ve continued to add important new functionality, enhanced existing capabilities and fixed a variety of bugs.

For complete release notes see: Clibu Alpha V0.65.03 Beta released, 23 April 2014

If you are looking for a better way to collect, manage and share information and would like to influence Clibu’s development direction then you should participate in our Beta program. See the Clibu web site for sign-up details.

If you are signed up for the Beta program but are not actively participating in it, you may find that you’ve been removed. Contact us if you want to restore access.

Happy Clibu’ing, Neville