The CoachAccountable Blog

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Archive for File Sharing

Use Resource Packages to Share Coaching Material

We’ve added a small-but-powerful feature called Resource Packages. These allow you to install various resources (like files, courses, and templates) that were created by other coaches right into your own CoachAccountable account.  Likewise, these make it possible for other coaches to install YOUR resources (should you ever want to create and share your own packages.)

A couple scenarios in which this might be useful:

  • Finding Additional Resources From CoachAccountable. When you signed up, you automatically received some content from us pre-loaded into your account. We’ve provided even more content and templates for you in these packages.
  • Licensing Your Coaching Material. Many coaches start expanding their business by teaching other coaches their methods, with the additional value-add of providing ready-to-use templates. By using Resource Packages, you can make available your Courses, Worksheets, Agreements and more with just a couple clicks – and provide that package only for coaches who have paid your licensing fee. This is a way to sell your well-tested coaching tools.
  • Related Coach Accounts. Smaller teams sometimes vacillate between setting up with two single coach accounts or a Team Edition account (more on how to make that choice here). Now, those who choose two single coach accounts can replicate their resources and save time.
  • Coaches With Two Accounts. Some coaches use two separate accounts, for reasons like varied tax law with international clients or operating under two different coaching brands.
  • Franchises. We’ve heard from The Growth Coach and similar businesses: getting new franchisees set up quickly is key to their success. Corporate-sanctioned tools at their fingertips right away can help get new business owners inspired and active.
  • Referrals. If you’re someone who refers CoachAccountable to other coaches in your industry, giving them materials to start with can help solidify their use of the platform.
Let’s look at Resource Packages.

» Continue reading “Use Resource Packages to Share Coaching Material”

Linking Shared to Files from Session Notes and Worksheets

This feature’s not a big deal, but can be kind of nice.

When sharing written materials or giving assignments to clients, it’s often handy to reference certain files or other media as part of the content.

For a long time, CoachAccountable has supported embedding videos and other media right into your Worksheets and other documents.  (In fact, if you’re curious about THIS topic go check out THAT first… because that’s what you’ll probably want 90% of the time!)

But SOMETIMES the thing you want to reference is a file that just doesn’t lend itself to embedding (like a spreadsheet, or PDF), and OFTEN, that something is a file that you’ve shared with them (be it from your Library, as part of a Course, or even just as a one-off).

For those cases, it’s workable (but admittedly kind of clunky) to say “Please go find such-and-such file in your Files tab…”  Better instead to have a button that takes your clients right to the file you want them to access, and have it open right there with no need to jump away from the Worksheet/Whiteboard/etc. at hand.

» Continue reading “Linking Shared to Files from Session Notes and Worksheets”

Private Files for Comprehensive Client Records

Coaches have long had the ability to add items into a client’s record that aren’t meant to be seen by the client. Specifically, you’ve been able to add private journal entries, private Session Notes, and private comments, as well as a few key areas to add private information to the client’s profile.

Megan of Fidelity National Financial recently made a compelling case for private files:

Would it be possible to create an option to mark uploaded files as private (like there is for session notes and journal entries)? We would like to upload a PDF to our clients’ dashboards for our records (as to keep everything in the same place), but we would like it to be for our eyes only.

In particular the phrase “to keep everything in the same place” made our ears perk up, as we’re very keen to make CoachAccountable be that magical one-stop-shop for coaches.

Fast forward a few days after that request was made, and private files are now a thing!  Let’s take a look.

» Continue reading “Private Files for Comprehensive Client Records”

Share Your CoachAccountable File Library With a Group

Thanks to Brian Icenhower’s team for inspiring this new development for our online coaching tool!

You already had the ability to share a file with multiple people at once, but now you can share multiple files with multiple people at once, as well as share multiple files with a single person at once.

This can come in handy if, say, as part of onboarding a client you want to share all your files at the same time with her. Another use case might be if you have a Group that needs to be updated with your entire Library, and you want to skip the step of adding them to a Course that delivers all your documents (which would also require adding any new files to the Course).

Here’s how.

-Create a Group and add the appropriate members.

-From the Group Stream, click “+ File.”

-Select “Actually I want to share multiple files from my Library.”

-Use Shift and/or Ctrl keys to select as necessary.

To keep the Group up to date, you’ll just need to do the following:

1. When you add new clients, add them as members of the Group.
2. When you add new Library files, share them with all members of the Group.

And that’s it!


Sound like a good solution for managing your files and your people? Try CoachAccountable for free with a 30-day trial.

System Email Addresses

“I love having messages to my clients captured in CoachAccountable.  It would be nice if I could just send a regular email without having to log in, and have it show up in their file.”

– Like, a dozen coaches.

CoachAccountable messaging is nice, a quick way to fire off messages between coach and client, affording tidy, on-topic comment threads and becoming part of The Record of the coaching process.  But traditionally, messages sent via CA had to be send from within CA.  Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could post a message to your clients from right within your usual email?

» Continue reading “System Email Addresses”

Seamlessly Share Video & Audio with Embedded Files

Got videos hosted on YouTube, Vimeo or Viddler that you’d like to share with clients as part of their coaching program with you?

CoachAccountable now lets you share such media (as well as audio clips) right within the system itself, allowing for seamless delivery of video and audio content in your programs.

You can now embed from:

  • Video
    • YouTube
    • Vimeo
    • Loom
    • Wistia
    • Viddler
    • TED
    • educreations
    • Cubby
    • LibSyn
    • Spotlighr
    • Viloud

    Audio

    • Soundcloud
    • Audio Acrobat
    • Clyp

    To do this, simply add the video or audio clip to your Library by pasting in whatever embed code is provided by the hosting site.  YouTube’s embed code for a given video, for example, can be found under Share:

YouTube embed code

» Continue reading “Seamlessly Share Video & Audio with Embedded Files”

Gettin’ Pictorial

Last week my wife and I were in Vancouver enjoying a little getaway, during which I had my second international face-to-face with a CoachAccountable customer.  This time it was David Frank Gomes of Life Compass Coaching.

Relative to the timeline of CoachAccountable, David and I go way back.  He was one of the very first people checking it out with whom I chatted on the phone, one of my early attempts to convey in words the how and why of the system.  This was in November of 2012, just over 2 months into CA’s public existence.

I think the job I did of convincing him was good but not great in that green period of my sales call ability: it wasn’t until 5 months later that David came back as a full-fledged user of the system, but to my delight he’s been a vocal fan ever since.

During our visit we talked of Team Edition’s imminent release, our mutual paths as entrepreneurs in the coaching space, and David’s experience of using CA for his year+.  For David’s practice though he loves the system he finds a lot of its mechanics (for example of Metrics and Actions) to be cold, uninspiring, a little too right-brained.  For his sake, he told me, he’d love to give his clients a more visual experience: something to viscerally inspire the dynamic process that dealing with life’s issues and ambitions generally is, and communicate more than just numbers and graphs.

“Like sharing images,” he said, “yes I can upload it as a file to share with the client and put it in their Files tab, but then they have to click through and download it to their machine and open it.  It’s clunky.  It would be nice to see them just appear in the Stream tab.”

» Continue reading “Gettin’ Pictorial”

Delightful Collaboration II – Externally Hosted File Sharing

A few weeks ago I reached out to a coach who was new to the system to see how it was going for him.

Though “so far so good” was the overall message, part the feedback was this:

There are a few issues. Can I send Audio (.mp3) or videos thru the system? It would be terrific to integrate links to sugar sync or dropbox folders so as to not get heavy on the files I send.

At first glance my answer was clear, of course!  I proudly began to type out my reply:

You’ve got a few options for sending audio and video though the system.  You can upload those files into your library once (My CA >> My Library) and then share them with clients with a few clicks on the Files tab of their respective client pages.  Or in your case (and this might be better as you’ve already got your files already online) you can share links to those files with your clients via CA in, say, a journal entry or as part of a worksheet assignment, or in a Stream comment.

As I wrote this I got to thinking this was actually a lackluster answer, and I was surprised to realize it.

» Continue reading “Delightful Collaboration II – Externally Hosted File Sharing”

File Sharing: Beyond Email Attachments

In coaching we often need to share files.  File resources for your clients can take all kinds of shapes: e-books, images, slides, videos, audio clips.  In the course of a coaching engagement, your style may call for sharing such files.

The most obvious and basic way to do this is to email ’em on over as an attachment.  From that simple baseline, let’s look at how CoachAccountable can do you a few better.

Share File With CoachAccountable

» Continue reading “File Sharing: Beyond Email Attachments”