Simplified access and usability key features of Safe4 secure document delivery platform

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With Version 4.0 the Safe4 platform, used by professionals in the Legal, Finance, Property and Government sectors to securely transmit documents to clients and business partners has taken a dramatic step into the future.

The Provider user interface for Safe4 has changed substantially, and the system has been enhanced in a number of ways.  The major changes are:

  • For users with more than one Provider account, these are now shown with appropriate branding on the Home screen
  • Clients are listed directly you enter the Safe4 Provider screen
  • The Provider functions that were previously accessed through tabs are now contained within the panel to the left of the screen
  • Performance has been further improved
  • A new title bar has been added at the top of the screen, with access to History, Notifications, Help and My Account
  • The My Account option now includes the logout facility
  • It is possible to place a link to an external website, together with the ability to carry across an account number, on the Files and Folders section visible to each client
  • The Provider management console now allows Provider users to upload logos to personalise the branding of the system
  • Users will now have the ability to restore recently-deleted files into the folder from which they were deleted
  • The file upload process has been made faster and more secure
  • Folder management buttons are now shown in the Folders panel, to the left of the screen

Importantly, Safe4 now has the option of enabling access through WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning).  This means that Safe4 can be made visible to users through Windows as a mapped drive, and through mobile devices that support WebDAV, such as the Apple iPad.  Safe4 are offering a service to assist you to set up this facility if you wish your users to access the Safe4 service in this way.

Your clients will also see some substantial improvements:

  • The Client user interface has changed, although all of the previous functions are still avaliable
  • A new title bar allows you to access the History, Notifications, Help and My Account functions.  The Logout option is now accessed through My Account
  • Your Provider has the option of adding a direct link to an external website; this will be visible in the Files and Folders view if it has been enabled
  • Recently deleted files can now be restored to the folder from which they were deleted
  • The file upload function has been made faster and more secure, and the Upload button has been moved to the the space above the list of files within a folder
  • Folder management buttons are now contained within the panel to the left of the screen

Significant performance improvements with new version of Safe4

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Many document-sharing business processes require the ability to manage multiple versions of a file within a single record, so that the history of changes can be tracked more easily. This facility is now available as a standard funcion with the latest release of Safe4.

The addition of file versioning follows feedback from a number of customers and users, who need to manage files throughout a lifecycle.  The simplicity of the Safe4 user interface makes it quick and easy to see that files have earlier versions, each of which can be viewed if required.  Earlier versions can also be “restored” to become the current version again if necessary.  When a file is added to the system with the same name as one already present in a folder, the new file will be visible as the current, or released, version.

Performance of Safe4 has also been dramatically improved, with some of the system functions now being shortened by up to 90% against v3.5.

Safe4 Moves All Customer Data to the UK

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Moving to the UK

You will have seen the announcement by Ben that we have moved the hosting of the Safe4 system from servers based in the US to the UK, where the majority of our current customers are based.

This means that all your files and data are now stored in the UK. This can, in most cases, make it much easier for you to comply with Data Protection requirements.

Background

Like a lot of internet services, Safe4 is run in the “cloud”, which provides you as customers with fast connectivity and gives us, as a service provider, flexibility, resilience and much easier growth without the headaches of buying, installing and maintaining a lot of hardware.

When we started Safe4, almost 2 years ago, we considered a number of options when we selected our cloud provider including capability and location in the decision. We eventually selected Rackspace, despite at the time their not having a UK offering on the basis of their very comprehensive service, fast connectivity, security and their outstanding support. We knew in making this decision that Rackspace were developing a UK based service and that we would move when the need arose.

The “need” became much more important during 2011 as we grew and new customers have asked, increasingly, for their data to be based in the UK. So we have taken advantage of the availability of cloud infrastructure in the UK to “move house.”

A lot of planning is needed in order to achieve the move with as little disruption to our customers as possible. In the end the site was unavailable for a little less than 25 minutes overnight one day last week – the real test is whether you actually noticed?

Making the move

It is an honour that you trust us with your business data, and it is something we take very seriously indeed – it is not acceptable for us if there is any risk of missing data!

Therefore one of the key challenges we had to solve was how we moved all of the files that have been uploaded to the system and know beyond any doubt that every file had transferred successfully to its new home. It was therefore not enough to simply “copy” the files – the real challenge was to establish whether we had successfully moved ALL of the files that the system stores.

In the end the only way we could satisfy ourselves that the move of the files was successful was to write a dedicated tool that moved the files one at a time, and then validated that the file had been successfully moved. The final run of the tool took over 3 days to move every file. The tool was very successful making it easy for us to see the progress of the move and to satisfy ourselves that the move was successful.

Designing in scale

We took advantage of the planned move to redesign how we implement the infrastructure that runs the system, to allow us to grow more easily in the future and to build in more resilience into the service. We have also changed some of the configuration of the application servers to further improve the security of your information.

We believe that our new infrastructure is better placed to grow as the needs of our customers increase and the Safe4 business continues to grow at the rate it has over the last year.

What’s next?

We have some major development activity planned for this year, beginning with an update to the service that will provide Safe4 with the ability to track multiple versions of the files on the system.  Look out for this update in the next couple of weeks.