#chnl101

Whether you are working on group projects where you need a second set of eyes or just for fun - CHNL is a collaborative tool.

For example, Team CHNL has a dedicated private channel for internal communications and digital strategy. When we find information about our industry, news  or even some not so serious things we want the others to know about, we CHNL our finds.  Everyone gets notified via an email immediately or via an email digest at the end of the day, either way we don't have to check it then, its always archived in our CHNL so we are all connected.

Here’s how to do it:

Go to the CHNL you want to edit click on EDIT >

Then click on ADD COLLABORATOR >

Invite collaborators via Facebook or Twitter

OR

Enter email address or CHNL username and an email will be sent directly from CHNL inviting them to collaborate on your CHNL.

OR

Copy and share the custom LINK created and paste into a personal email to invite friends and colleagues to collaborate.

Compared to similar curation services like Pinterest, Scoop.it or Publicate, CHNL offers users both public and private channels to use amongst colleagues and groups who want to share information, build a knowledge base or create an archival solution of all their links and content related to a topic of interest in a beautiful, simple and sexy interface.

It comes down to use cases, while CHNL does offer a discovery engine to find curated topics from its community, we have found a lot of traction in the education and small team spaces where collaboration and visual curation is needed to communicate more efficiently rather than using long email threads to share links and documents.  

Take a peek at these two case studies:

Case Study: Improving Information Sharing and Collaboration in The Classroom. 

Case Study: Small Teams Thrive on Information Sharing & Collaboration.

Have you ever put together a highly informative or classified private channel and now want to share the information without allowing guests to post on the channel? We heard that many of you have and wanted a solution, so we just dropped a new privacy feature called Protected Channels.

Protected Channel allow you and collaborators to add content, but gives read-only access for guests with the pass phase.

Protected Channel feature was highly requested by users who want to share sensitive materials which would require extra security.

Simply go to your CHNL.

Click on EDIT >

Select Protected >

Create a pass phrase >

A shareable link will be automatically created to share.

Click Save and you are done.

The CHNL tool has been a perpetual work in progress. It’s safe to say that it’s been a strong beginning to 2014 here at CHNL. Our team has been working hard, listening to user feedback, testing and implementing. Last week we released customized headers and this week we’re excited to announce the launch of the UPLOADER.  

The Uploader was one of the most requested features as way to share documents, PDFs and images along side videos and article shared in a single channel.  This enabled CHNL to act as a beautiful and simple knowledge sharing platform which can be use for promotional and archival purposes.  

Simply go to your CHNL under the + icon on the top right side of the page, a drop down menu will appear UPLOAD A FILE. Click, choose a file (PDF, JPEG, MP3) and upload. The document will show up in your channel. Uploads are limited to 10MB each but will allow larger sizes and more storage with premium features coming soon.

Watch your email and look out for more new features and announcements coming soon.

We built CHNL for individuals and businesses to collect and organize the important things they find on the web.  Whether small teams want to share knowledge privately or for friends  collaborating and sharing their favorite jams and videos, we have been focusing on three primary functions: simplicity, ease of use, and beauty.

Since the launch, we have tried to stay true to our words and are stoked to share with you the announcement of CUSTOMIZED HEADERS. For those who would like to add a little flavor to your curations or for branding purposes, you can now add your own custom background header.

Simply, go to your channel and EDIT the channel, you’ll see right at the top a place to add your image.  For best result use large images without words, but smaller one will also give interesting result.  The image will cover the entire header background and will automatically adjust to always cover that space.

Your channel will be unique just like you are and can’t wait to see what yours is all about. 

Here are some cool examples:

With so many choices of communication has the relevance of email gone the way of the typewriter. Well not quite yet. Email is great for some communication. Especially messages that can wait. But not for rapid response, quick fire discussions or spontaneous collaboration or sharing information.

In the '90s, email was a turning point in the workplace. It became the primary communication tool. It’s difficult to remember a time when we did not use email as a way to develop business relationships, have short conversations with teammates or send quick messages to associates. More so than any other tool during that time of tech expansion into the workplace, email changed the way every one of us work. But now, the notion that email is a good tool for information sharing or collaboration is no longer valid.

How many complaints have you heard about the clutter of daily email? Try collaborating with a large group over a long period of time, you’d very soon know what I'm referring to. Cluttered in boxes, lost information, missing documents, out-of-the-office auto responses are real problems which we encounter every day and lead to inefficiencies.

Let’s look at my average day. After coffee, I pick up your phone or crack open my laptop and begin reviewing emails. On an average I have 40 emails to sift through. How many of these are important or relevant to my action points for the morning? It's hard to say at first glance.

My inbox quickly feels like quicksand. Some things are going to get glanced over. Some things are going to disappear. There are a few emails requiring a response or action, lots of spammy promotions, some emails containing links to blogs or articles which I'd like to read later. But now I have run out of time before I've waded through all the junk time. And that important reference article shared by a teammate will have to wait until tomorrow. Which really means that it just got buried. Alive.

Here are some tips in coping with email and avoiding the quicksand.

Keep in mind:

• 50% can be deleted or filed

• 30% can be delegated or completed in less than two minutes

• 20% can be deferred to your Task List or Calendar to complete later

And tell your boss, emails should never be used for multi-person information sharing or collaboration.

The BPM Network is a startup with a small team some of whom work in a common office space and others who work remotely.  BPM is building an entertainment network for fans of electronic dance music. Daily they identify news and trends and they need to regularly circulate info internally. 

Several team members work in different time zones which had been a challenge for collaboration. The team has a heavy flow of relevant items including articles and links which they had been sharing via email.  They found email was not providing easy archiving and overall important items were being overlooked.

The team chose to demo CHNL when they were seeking a better solution for sharing the media they discover on the web.

Steve Levy, CEO of the BPM Network, states, “I immediately found CHNL to be a great system for our team to share information we were discovering online. Setting up our own private CHNL was easy as was inviting the collaborators. Now whenever one of us pins relevant content to our CHNL we all are notified. The CHNL format allows for easy consumption, search and archiving. Its a great tool.”

CHNL provides a solution for organizing articles and shared links. It’s easy to setup a dedicated channel for multi person use. The content is appropriately tagged for easy discovery.  Team mates are invited to collaborate. All emails with links are visually displayed on an organized landing page. Now when collaborating, there is no longer a need to use email.

Just a helpful tip, after you've added some content to your channel, you can easily share it directly from your CHNL to your social networks. It’s not automatic, so you can customize and compose your post depending on the network. When you share via CHNL, your friends will be directed right back to your channel where they can continue to explore your curations. Sharing is caring, enjoy.