eXpresso

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eXpresso brings the online collaboration features that MS Office lacks, without replacing or competing with Office. Similar to online Office suite replacements, spreadsheets (and soon slides and documents) can be shared with anyone. Users can chat with each other while working on the same file at the same time. A significant difference is what eXpresso calls “Asymmetric Collaboration” - the ability to share a file with multiple people, while giving each person a different level of view and edit access. When multiple people are editing a file at the same time, they see each other’s edits in real time and eXpresso maintains a full audit trail of all changes, down to the cell level.

The online interface looks and operates like Microsoft Office, yet operates working in a browser and on a centrally stored file. eXpresso can also be used offline through an Add-In for Excel, Word and PowerPoint. Files opened “offline” in Office temporarily can’t be accessed by other users. Once changes are saved back to eXpresso and the spreadsheet it closed, it can once again be opened by anyone with access.

The application also lets users use tags, notes and folders to categorize, organize and mark files. If your wondering who made changes to a spreadsheet, the history section reveals all actions that have been taken. In addition, users can setup e-mail alerts to always know what is happening with a particular file.

The eXpresso Add-In for Microsoft Office is a companion to the eXpresso web application. It installs as an additional toolbar (or ribbon in Office 2007) that you can use to sign into eXpresso and open your centrally stored files from your desktop Office applications. You can work with your file in your desktop environment while all changes are being saved to the central file in eXpresso’s database.

There is also a feature that lets you check-out a file to work on it while discsonnected from the Internet. When you are reconnected, you can just check-in your changes.