The following points answer commonly asked questions about Live Documents. For any other questions on Live Documents, please drop us a line at info@instacoll.com

What is Live Documents?

Live Documents is a hybrid online Office suite that allows you to work on your documents on the desktop or on the browser.

What can I do with Live Documents?

With Live Documents, you can:

• Access your documents on the web or on the desktop
• View and edit your documents from anywhere at any time in your browser in a rich user interface that provides the functionality and responsiveness that you expect in your familiar desktop applications.
• Use your existing desktop Office application (Microsoft Office currently and shortly Open Office) as a smart web-enabled client with collaborative capabilities normally expected only in browser-based applications.

How is Live Documents unique?

Live Documents is an online Office suite that offers you the best of both worlds - the desktop and the browser - rather than force you to choose between one or the other. Other web Office suites are browser-centric and allow you to interact with your documents only through the browser when you are online. Live Documents gives you an online Office suite that you can access on the browser or on the desktop. The browser version gives you the flexibility of accessing your documents from anywhere at any time without requiring Microsoft Office. The desktop version embeds collaborative capabilities into your familiar desktop productivity applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. All changes that you make to your document on either platform are automatically synchronized to the other side without requiring any manual actions like check-in/check-out or import/export.

Our goal is not to replicate Microsoft Office in a browser - rather, we want to give users the best attributes of the desktop and web worlds - the richness and responsiveness of desktop applications merged with the collaborative capabilities of the web - without forcing an either-or choice. Our browser-based applications, therefore, look and feel like your familiar desktop productivity applications and our desktop client brings the collaborative capabilities of browser-based online Office applications (like Google docs) to your familiar productivity applications. So, the application experience spectrum ranges from a pure browser-based experience which completely frees you up from Microsoft Office to a pure desktop experience where you can use Microsoft Office as both a productivity and collaboration hub without ever having to fire up a browser.

Does Live Documents compete with Microsoft Office?

Live Documents extends and embraces Microsoft Office - it extends the power of these productivity applications to the browser and if you choose to, embeds collaborative capabilities into your existing desktop applications. But unlike Microsoft Office, Live Documents gives you the choice and flexibility of working with and sharing your documents without having to worry about operating systems, document formats or version compatibility. We believe that our primary competitive dynamic is Microsoft's efforts to get you to upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Office - Live Documents, on the other hand, believes that your existing version of Microsoft Office is good enough (whichever version it might be) once it is infused with the collaborative capabilities that we offer. That said, even if you are an avid Microsoft Office user, we make it better in ways that Microsoft itself hasn't.

How does Live Documents make Microsoft Office better?

Live Documents, embeds collaborative capabilities into Microsoft Office - using our plug-in within Word, Excel and PowerPoint gives you all the collaboration features that Google docs or other browser-based online Office applications posit as their primary value proposition. With the Live Documents plug-in, you can control who can access your documents and what they can do with them. You can modify these privileges at any point of time. Multiple people can view and edit a document at the same with all revisions automatically recorded at a granular level to give you a full audit history of all changes made. You can also assign and track workflow actions around your documents from right within Microsoft Office and attach other documents to your documents. Live Documents also allows you to have a threaded discussion forum attached to each document and conduct real-time collaboration from right within Microsoft Office. The bottom line is that anything that you can do with Google docs or a Wiki solution, you can now do within Microsoft Office - without ever having to open a browser!

That said, if you so choose, you can also use Live Documents without ever having to open a Microsoft Office application - our browser version gives you most of the capabilities of Microsoft Office within a browser. As mentioned above, the unique aspect of Live Documents is that this is a choice that does not require you to sacrifice the desktop or the browser - you can use either platform depending on your requirements at any given point of time.

Does Microsoft have anything to do with Live Documents?

No, Microsoft is not involved in Live Documents in any way.

Does Live Documents compete with Google docs?

Google has repeatedly said that it does not compete with Microsoft Office - since we do compete with Microsoft in some respects, we guess we do not compete with Google docs directly! Jokes apart, we offer many of the capabilities that Google docs offers but we do not insist that users give up the desktop applications that they are already familiar with if they choose not to. Also, we believe that our applications are more feature-rich than Google and other online Office suites.

Who is it for?

Anyone who uses Microsoft Office, Open Office or a browser-based Office suite such as Google docs can benefit from this service. Live Documents gives you the choice and flexibility of working on the desktop or on the browser without having to do anything manually to manage your documents across both platforms.

Is my information protected?

Live Documents protects your documents on the browser as well as on the desktop. You control who can view, and edit your documents. You manage permissions and decide whether someone has access to a document and can modify or remove permissions at any point of time.

Do I have to download anything?

No downloads are required. There's nothing to install, so just sign up and go. All you need is an Internet connection and a web browser that supports Flash . For a better experience with Word, Excel and PowerPoint - features such as offline access and local availability of content, we have a Live Documents Add-in available for the Microsoft Office suite.

What are the system requirements?

To access the browser version of Live Documents, you only need an Internet connection and a Web browser. Live Documents works on any system and browser that supports Flash (Flash 9 is required).

To access your Live Documents on the desktop, you need a Windows system with any version of Microsoft Office (2000, XP, 2003, 2007) installed. The desktop version of Live Documents is essentially a wrap-around application that plugs into your existing desktop productivity suite of applications (Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and makes them collaborative. It also facilitates offline access to your documents - any changes that you make to your documents when offline are recorded locally and automatically pushed to the server the next time you go online.

Can Live Documents work with Office on the Mac?

No, unfortunately, Microsoft decided that the API for Office for the Mac should not be as extensive as the one for Office on Windows - so our desktop plugin will not work on Office for the Mac.

What about Linux systems?

As mentioned above, as long as your system has Flash 9, you can access Live Documents on the browser but if you are looking for a desktop plugin for Linux, that will be available once we have completed our Open Office plug-in that is currently in development. In addition, we are also developing our own cross-platform desktop version that should be available in mid-2008.

What types of documents can I share with Live Documents?

You can upload Microsoft Office documents as well as ODF formats.

Is Live Documents available in other languages?

Currently, it's available in English only. We plan to add more languages in the future.

What is a 'technology preview'?

The term ‘technology preview' means this is the first version of the service that we release to invited members of the public. If you would like to be invited to the technology preview, please sign up using the "Get Invited" link at the top. We know that we still have a lot of work to do and we are working hard to refine and improve the service to ensure it meets your real-world needs. We expect to have a production-strength release before the first quarter of 2008.

What are the limitations of the technology preview?

The technology preview is primarily intended to give you a taste of what we are trying to do and get feedback on what you would like to see going further. There might be several bugs and issues in the technology preview mode and performance might not be optimal. The technology preview mode also has a limit of 50 MB for the total storage space per user.

What happens to my documents once you come out of technology preview mode?

We intend to have a free personal version even after we have come out of this technology preview mode. If you would to continue your account under a paid subscription that offers greater storage space and functionality, you will be able to do that any point of time. If you would like to discontinue your account at any point of time, you can send us a note at info@instacoll.com and if you would like to archive your documents, you can publish each document back into a normal Office document format at any point of time from within Microsoft Office using our desktop client.

Is Live Documents available only as a hosted service?

A free hosted version of Live Documents is available for personal use. Commercial versions of the product are available for enterprises in multiple modes - as a hosted service, as an on-premise server and as a plug-and-play appliance. We also offer OEM options - If you are an application provider and seek potential in embedding Live Documents within your solution, do drop us a line at partners@instacoll.com.