Customers have requested easier ways to add people to workgroups. Previously, you were required to invite people and have them register and accept your invitation before you could start sharing your content with them. We have added the option to let you register the accounts for new people you want to add to a workgroup. The new collaborator is automatically added to the workgroup and receives an email with the username and password you specify. If you need to establish many new accounts, you can simplify the process and import a .csv spreadsheet file to create up to 50 accounts at a time.

Also, workgroup members are now added to your contact list so they can be easily added to new workgroups. And if one of your collaborators forgets their username or password a new function on the workgroup tab allows “staff” members to email it directly to them.

Today we are happy to announce the public beta release of our latest collaborative experiment: a Cozimo WordPress plugin! That’s right – now rather than just displaying an image or a video as a static participant in your blog posts, you can use the plugin to enable a dynamic media experience where readers can chat, draw and comment directly on your images and videos. You can even use the plugin to collaborate in real-time with others and to synchronize the playback of a video so that everyone is watching the same frame at the same time.

We hope this functionality will open new opportunities for how blogs can be used in professional, educational, creative or just plain fun applications. Try it out for yourself! The beta plugin is available free of charge for installed versions of WordPress.org. You can get all the information you need to download and install it here.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Have a lot of files to review? Now you can save time by uploading them all at once using the new multiple file upload tool. On the “File” tab of the collaboration folder click on the new “add multiple” link. Then simply select the files you want to upload from the file browser. You can use the Ctrl and Shift keys to select multiple files. The progress of the upload will be shown on the file page and when it’s completed a thumbnail image will be displayed.

Green Grass Studios, a leading design communication firm based in Dallas, recently approached us about developing a customized client extranet for them. As Ryan Iltis of Green Grass explains it:

“Basically, Cozimo had everything we were looking for, but we really just wanted to provide a better experience for our clients by providing them with customized access through our website.”

Well, rather than develop a custom solution for Green Grass, we decided this would be a better opportunity to work with them to develop the features they were looking for as part of our standard services.

We’re now pleased to introduce the results of this collaboration with a number of new customization features. These include the ability to create an alternate branded login page (at a branded URL) and the ability to display a custom logo in place of the Cozimo logo when any collaboration folders created under that account are accessed. These features are now available as part of our standard services starting at the “Plus” level plan and higher.

Unless you’re a freelancer, the typical way to use this feature is to set up an account under the name of your company that can act as an “umbrella” account for all the project workgroups your company maintains (this is also, by the way, the most economical approach). The username of the account automatically becomes part of your custom URL. For example, Green Grass Studios created their account with the username “greengrass” and have created a custom client login page available through the “client login” link on their website homepage or at http://greengrass.cozimo.com. (Adding this logo is done by going to Account Settings > Update your personal profile.)

When using an umbrella account, one administrator can set up all the project workgroups that are required for the company and invite the relevant staff members to be part of the workgroups established. Each individual in the company should sign up for a free personal account with Cozimo in order to participate and personally identify themselves in the workgroups they are involved in. A great benefit to this approach is that your personal account can be used to participate in any Cozimo workgroup, whether it originates from your own company or from any other company you work with. With your one personal login and password you can access all your project content and messages from a single secure online location. That may not seem so important when you’re just starting out, but as your network and the number of workgroups you are involved with grow, you’ll find it becomes an invaluable time saver and organizational tool for you.

One of the trends we noticed quite early on in our Beta program was how many people found their way to Cozimo from all over the world. That’s a trend we want to encourage because it’s really at the core of what Cozimo is about – helping people to work and create together regardless of where they live. We designed the Cozimo interface to support multiple languages and as we move forward we will be continually adding support for new ones. To get started, we recently added support for both French and Spanish. Our efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. In fact, one of our first reviews came out in French at Les infonews d’ARCH’image.