Man, just typing the title of this post makes me cringe with boredom.

However, I have used this technique many times over my career, and just recently the issue came up from a JibberJobber user who imported his Contacts.

His problem was that the first name and last name were in the same column, but we want that broken out when you do the import.

Fixing this is actually really simple. In my user webinars I talk about opening a csv file in Excel, so you can see the pretty columns and rows… but for this little exercise I recommend you open it up in Notepad.

I know, I know: opening it in Notepad will make it really, really ugly.  Almost unreadable.  Especially files that have a lot of “columns.”  Just remember, csv stands for “comma separated values,” which means that each “field” is separated by a comma.  The comma tells Excel to put the next thing in a new column.  For example, this csv content:

First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Phone Number
Jason, Alba, Jason@Jason.com, 801.800.8123

Will look like this when opened in Excel:

What if your file is formatted like this, instead? Notice the name is ONE column (not broken out)?

Name, Email Address, Phone Number
Jason Alba, Jason@Jason.com, 801.800.8123
John Doe, John@Doe.com, 555.555.1234
Sally Jesse, Sally@Jesse.com, 800.123.4567

Right now we aren’t parsing this for you – the best and easiest thing to do is to fix it in the file.  Again, go to Notepad, open the CSV file, and then make these very simple changes:

1. In the first row, which is the header row, change Name to First Name, Last Name.  This will make TWO columns instead of ONE (make sure to put the comma between the column names).
2. In all the other rows, simply put a comma between the first and last name.

That’s it – it is very simple. I’m guessing if I had a file with 100 records (names) I could put the comma inbetween the first and last name in about 4 or 5 minutes, or less…

This might seem like a pain, and when we redo the import we might accommodate for one name field, but for now this is really quite easy.  And YOU are empowered with the knowledge to manipulate your csv files!

Now when you import it will import the name values into the right fields (first, last).

We recently got feedback from our survey of user requests, and then met as a team to discuss, prioritize and assign work orders.  We were all jazzed to plan out the first part of 2010 and make JibberJobber more intuitive and more powerful.  There is a lot of great stuff coming down the pipeline, and no suggestions where ignored.

Here are some updates we released last week (did you notice any of them?):

• icalendar: you can now export your entire list of log entries and action items to a iCalendar format, which you’d then import to Google Calendar, Outlook, your Mac, or whatever you are using. You can also export things one at a time.
• Merge option for companies: we had this for contacts for a while, and somehow overlooked doing it for companies — oops!
• Title change on List Panel pages: I talk about “List Panels” but nowhere on the site could you see “list panel” in a page. So we made this very simple name change, and now when you are on a List Panel page you’ll know it. A little design consistency to help make the training more intuitive.
• “Referred by” column now on Contact List Panel: Referred By is one of the most powerful things in JibberJobber… and now you can see the column on your Network Contacts List Panel.
• Events 2.0: still needs some work (I sent 1.5 pages of changes to the developer), but this is awesome – allows you to add your own local network opportunities so all JibberJobber users can see them. I’ll talk about this more after more development is done, but you can go add your own events now (or look at what other users have added).
• New fields on contact form: preffix, suffix: I debated taking this out but after we released it I got an email from a user who works in an industry where this is critical… the email was a huge YIPPEE – so we leave it in
• Ability to print the Log Entries and Action Items Report: this is a busy report, and now it’s printer friendly.
• Ability to delete a Networking Relationship Goal: This is a cool feature, even though I hardly talk about it. Anyway, if you use it, you can now DELETE these goals

There were also some minor bug fixes, as well as some nomenclature (wording) changes around the site.

I find myself regularly pointing people to three of my most favorite features in JibberJobber.  In this post I want to share how JibberJobber interfaces with five outside tools:

1. LinkedIn – in various places in the JibberJobber experience you can tap into your LinkedIn network.  You can do a quick search on LinkedIn for companies or names, or you can see who is in your LinkedIn network by company.  I want to do LOTS MORE with LinkedIn, but their terms of service is too restrictive (sorry, talk to them about it). Need LinkedIn help?  Check out my LinkedIn DVD.
2. Twitter – I mentioned in that things I love post about how you can quickly add a contact by putting their Twitter handle in.  There is MORE coming… super cool stuff!
3. Skype – I use Skype for my business phone… when I’m in JibberJobber I can easily click an icon and initiate a phone call through my headset.  It’s one-click easy.  I can also click an icon and initiate a chat message through skype.
4. Google – just like I can do a quick search on LinkedIn, I can also do a quick search on Google. I thought this was just a cute “we did it because we could” feature, but I have used it more than I thought I would recently!
5. Anagram - people continually thank me for this feature – you can copy-and-paste contact information into a box, click a button, and then the information (names, phone #’s, etc.) is parsed into the correct boxes on the form.  It’s really quite brilliant (you can buy it for your PC, if you want, but you don’t have to have that to use the feature built into JibberJobber).

We would love to do more interfacing with other systems – send me a message and let me know what you’d like to see us interface with (and how the interface would work).

Update 1/8/09: thanks to the comment from Trevor Wilson, from Gradversity.com, we installed the patch/fix so that this is not important anymore. And it seems to have resolved at least one other thing that Marc reported… we’ll keep an eye on that!

Microsoft 8 came out a while back and they introduced a new feature bug… if you use IE 8 you’ll see something wrong on JibberJobber.  Fortunately it’s easy to fix.

When you login the Action Item panel is messed up … it looks weird… check this out:

To fix this once, simply go to the browser menu (not the JibberJobber menu), click on Tools, and then click on Compatibility View (red arrow). To fix it FOREVER, click on Compatibility View Settings (green arrow) and make sure JibberJobber is in the list of websites.

Here’s a snippet where I put JibberJobber as a website that should always show in compatibility view:

After you have done that you’ll see the top of the Action Item panel the correct way, like this:

Thanks Microsoft, for introducing another important (cough cough) feature (cough cough)

Many people ask how to send emails with/through JibberJobber.

It is important to understand that we are neither an email client (like Outlook, your Gmail page, etc.) or an email server (the system that processes emails – gmail, yahoo, hotmail, or a corporate email server).

Also, there are various services that allow you to send emails to many people (think: newsletters) such as Constant Contact, iContact, Mail Chimp, etc.  We don’t do that either – those companies invest mega bucks to ensure they are as compliant as they can be with current email policies (laws).  It’s messy, hairy stuff.

However, we can do various things.  Here’s my response to someone who recently asked how to send emails from JibberJobber:

“Just to clarify, JibberJobber is not sending the emails. We’ve found we get into trouble if we send too many emails (people flag us as spammers, which hurts all users). When you do what Liz suggests below (go to the Network List Panel, click multiple users, then click the Send Email icon (for premium users)), you are simply putting the addresses into the email client you are currently using – this could be outlook, gmail, etc. Whatever your computer recognizes as the default email client.

You can also do that from the List Panel – one of the columns you can show is the Email Address, and it can be hyperlinked to bring up the email client also (this is one at a time, compared to what Liz suggested). To show the column, if it isn’t showing, click Manage Columns. To make it hyperlink (if it isn’t), go to My Account, Preferences, and you’ll see a checkbox to turn on (one-by-one is a free feature).

My favorite way of doing this is with Get Contact List (premium feature – I see you are a Premium user). There is a video on how to use this on this page: http://www.jibberjobber.com/videos.php#Network (the first video is how to use it, the third is awesome).”

There you go…

Will we ever send emails FROM JibberJobber?

I doubt it… it is too easy to get into hot water with spam blacklists – it just takes one idiot who flags an email from JibberJobber as spam – whether it was by accident or because they forgot they signed up for a newsletter, or someone who was invited to JibberJobber from another user – and then every user is penalized.  I don’t want you to miss your Action Item reminders just because of all of the spam issues.

We’ve had some really cool upgrades lately, and I wanted to share 3 things I do my own relationship management in JibberJobber that I really appreciate:

1. Adding new contacts just by using their Twitter handle. Sometimes I find myself adding a new contact manually, and then remember that I know them because of Twitter.  Alas, you don’t have to use Twitter to make use of this cool feature – the neat thing is we pull in stuff from their Twitter profile, including their picture (!), location, bio, URL, and some stats from Twitter.  It takes about 4 seconds to enter all of that if you have the person’s Twitter handle… so cool! (how?  click here)
2. Adding images of contacts from a URL. I just announced this last week, but man it’s so cool.  In fact, it’s been on my development wish list for over 2 years!  I LOVE how it takes about 30 seconds, from start to finish, to put someone’s picture on their profile.  Oh, if I’m already on their detail page it takes about 8 seconds!  So cool! (how?  click here)
3. Create log entries via email.  This is another relatively new feature, but I find myself using it multiple times each day.  When I write an email that I want to log, I first make sure the contact is in my JibberJobber database, and that their email addy is the one I’m sending to, and then I put my ultra-secret JJ email addy in the BCC and the log entry is automatically created.  SO USEFUL. (how?  click here)

Love it – thanks to the users who share their ideas, and thanks to my dev team who makes all the magic work!

Viva la relationship management!

I’ve had a pet peeve with adding images for, well, quite a while.  But that pet peeve just went away, thanks to my fantastic dev team.  This might not seem like a big deal but it will shave significant time off of my JibberJobber use.

Before yesterday, the only way to put an image on a Contact or Company was to go to the add/edit page, and then browse to your C: drive and upload it.  Today there are new options (you can still do that option).  Check this out (I’m using a Target Company as an example):

From the Company Detail Page, mouse over the company image area – in this case I haven’t put an image so I just see the default image of a building:

When you mouse over the image, you see two icons.  The first icon is the standard EDIT icon, which  brings up the “open” dialogue box from your C: drive…. very cool that you don’t have to go to the entire edit page anymore.  This is pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll let you just figure this out on your own (it is very similar to how it has worked in the past).

The second icon is super cool – you can now simply put in the URL of the image from any website.  I’ll show you how to do that below…

To get a good logo, I go to Images.Google.com.  The reason I do this is because some corporate websites don’t have their logo as a distinct image (instead, it’s part of the background).  I want a distinct image…

1. Go to images.google.com and search for Franklin Covey Logo, like this:

2. I  click on one of these result pages… in this example I click on the one from BusinessWeek, and I get this page:

3. Now, RIGHT CLICK on the link the arrow is pointing to, and from the Right-Click options I choose “Copy Link Address” (or something like that – it is different with each browser). THAT LINK IS CRITICAL.

4. Next, go back to my Detail Page for the company, and click on the second icon … the one with a globe. When I click on that icon it opens a popup box where 5. I put the LINK that I just copied. You can see that I pasted it into the popup box.

5. Click the the OK button, and it takes that image and associates it with the contact record, which now looks like this:

That’s it!

I have dozens of contact records I’m going to do this for… I know this is simple but this is really going to streamline a process I’ve been spending too much time on… YEAH!!! So excited for this cool feature!

This is a feature that has been on our list for over 18 months.  We’re really excited to announce it is finally available to you (it is a premium feature).

In a nutshell, this new feature allows you to create a Log Entry by sending an email to a special email address.

When I say Log Entry, realize you can:

1. Also create an Action Item,
2. Associate it with multiple contacts, companies and job postings, and
3. Change the time when you get an email reminder, if it is an action item.

If you are not a Premium users use the Contact Us form and we’ll bump you up for five days so you can play around with this very super cool feature. Here’s what you do:

Go to My Account (from the main menu, when you are logged in) and then click on the Email Address Tab

Here is the page where you set it up and make it active.  These are two security measures so others can’t create log entries on your behalf (not foolproof but they are pretty good).

The second/bottom section says Log Email Address.  This is where you activate it.

The first thing you do is set up your unique email address.  Simply put some keyword in the Keyword box – your personal, unique email address will show up as you type it – this is he email addy you will use to create a log entry.  I put the word “secret” in my box…

Notice (corresponding to the numbers above):

1. This top sentence tells you this is NOT active yet – you can tell because the email address is RED.  Once you finish the steps it will be GREEN (and active).
2. This is where you put your keyword.
3. As you type your keyword the email addresses labeled 1 and 3 will change, so you can see what your email addy will be.

Next, put in the email addresses that are authorized to create a Log Entry.

Note that you can put in multiple email addresses… just separate them with commas.  I have two main email accounts I use, so I put both of those in this box.  Email from other addresses to my unique address should not create Log Entries.

Finally, click on the Set Keyword button.  You should notice the bold/red email addy is now bold/green.

Now, go to your email client and send an email to someone in your JibberJobber network, and BCC your new unique email addy you just created.  I use BCC so people don’t “reply to all” and have a chance of creating a Log Entry.  NOTE: I put in multiple email addresses – all corresponding to contacts I have in JibberJobber, and a Log Entry was created for each email address I put in the email.  THAT IS COOL!

Then, within 5 minutes (we check for new emails every 5 minutes) you should see the Log Entry created on their contact record in JibberJobber.  Here’s the Log Entry created when I sent to the address I have on a record in JibberJobber:

#1 is the email Subject, and #2 is the email Body.

To do the other cool stuff, like associate multiple contacts, companies or jobs, or to make it an Action Item, etc., go to that page and click the HELP icon .

Let us know if you have any feedback on this feature… thank you!

I remember when I finally understood I was supposed to followup with people on a regular basis… networking is about nurturing relationships, right?

What about the person you haven’t communicated with for years?  What do you followup with them about?  You might sound to pushy, with an agenda (“btw, please help me find a job!”) or you might sound to empty (“just writing to say hi, even though it’s been five years.  Okay, bye now!”).

That’s why I LOVE birthdays… it’s a great opportunity to reach out with no strong agenda, but also without being empty.

I have birthday reminders set up in JibberJobber and get an email on the day someone is having a birthday.  It brings me a bit of festive joy when I know someone is having their special day, and I hope that sending them a happy birthday email (cuz I’m an email-kinda-guy ).

Aside from the birthdays I have for my contacts in JibberJobber, I also get notices on Facebook and from Plaxo.  In addition, when I look at my Twitter stream I sometimes catch a “happy birthday to ______!”  I usually take the info from Facebook, Plaxo or Twitter and put that into JibberJobber, so I’m sure to get a birthday reminder email next year.

Consider birthday networking as part of your relationship nurturing strategy – just a simple but genuine message can help you maintain those relationships!

More on birthday networking with JibberJobber at these two posts:

Why Grandma Should Use JibberJobber

Adjusting your Birthday Reminders

JibberJobber is a Career Management Tool.  One feature that really breaks it out of the short-term “job search tool” and makes it more valuable in your long-term career management is the Job Journal.

Don from Pittsburgh suggested that we give free users the ability to add Job Journal entries without upgrading.  After chatting about it with my team we agreed, as this is such a significant part of managing your career.

The Job Journal allows you to record your past accomplishments:

• Were you Employee of the Month?
• Did you save the company $50,000, or earn the company a $3M contract?
• Did you do something that really helps others understand your character, skills, integrity, and what you bring to the table?

Let me suggest that when you most need this information (like when you are creating your resume, or when you are in an interview) is the time you are least likely to recall it.

I wrote Depression Clouds Everything, the most commented post on this blog, with this in mind.

You know you are awesome, and you have a terrific history of bringing value to your employer – but when you start your job search (or as it drags on) it’s easy to forget your accomplishments – and these accomplishments are part of your story.  These accomplishments are what you can use to help an interviewer understand just how valuable you are.

When I was putting together my own interview question responses, and my resume, I easily overlooked more than 50% of my accomplishments – they were long-forgotten.

This is where the Job Journal comes in – login to your JibberJobber account, mouse over Tools (in the main menu) and click on Job Journal.  You can enter 25 accomplishments in the free level… sure it’s not unlimited but it’s a great place to start.  I’d be quite impressed if you could list 25 accomplishments right now

As you put your accomplishments in the Job Journal, flesh out the story – you should be able to state the Problem, your Actions, and the Results (PAR).

Career Management is a long-term thing, for sure.  Please do not lose track of your professional accomplishments – you won’t remember all of them when you really need them – and that’s where JibberJobber and the Job Journal help.

Past posts about the Job Journal are here:

The Job Journal – Sept 2007

Liz Handlin writes Keep a Job Diary – Jan 2007

Not Just A Job Search Tracker – Why Professionals Need JibberJobber – Oct 2008