The admin community has so far provided YouFig with loads of great suggestions and ideas for new and improved functionality, and YouFig developers have been hard at work responding to and implementing these ideas.

Among the many great ideas we've collected are comments to be treasured from Branden of Indigian Networks. Here's what he had to say... Thank you Branden from Indigian!

Community admins now have their own YouFig community where they can interact with one another as well as with YouFig management, developers and support personnel.

Community admins can benefit from each others' experiences and insights about using, customizing and managing your communities while communicating your wildest requests for new features directly to our developers!

Click here to request access to join admins.youfig.com.

YouFig launched its public beta just two months ago and has already seen over 500 new collaboration communities from small enterprises to start-ups, universities, non-profits, and more, all looking to interact in a fun, dynamic, and productive collaboration environment among their members.

Organizations are finding that collaborating in a secure community environment (as opposed to stand-alone, out-of-context workspaces) is the ideal solution to manage not only your workspaces, but also your members, groups and communications.

Companies have also been using YouFig as a souped-up company intranet that provides all of the collaborative tools you can imagine, along with the most granular customization capabilities for managing each member's administrative rights within workspaces and within the greater organizational scope.

So stop guessing whether YouFig really is the right solution for you, and give us a go. It's free for all users who sign up during our beta!

One of the beauties of a YouFig collaboration community is the support for both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration.

Synchronous collaboration means communicating with others in real-time like on instant messanger or over the phone. Asycnronous collaboration means that you're communicating with others on your own time like email or snail mail, regardless of where the others are located or when they get your message.

Although all workspaces within YouFig's communities support both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, it's often necessary and more convenient to "be there" online with others to discuss and contribute in real-time.

The new "Summon all collaborators now!" link on the list of collaborators allows you to summon all offline members of the workspace, letting them know via an email notification that their presence is required at this exact moment in time.

To avoid accidental "over-summoning" of your fellow collaborators, summonings are limited to once-an-hour per workspace member.

Each file library widget now supports 5GB worth of storage (up from 100mb).

If you need more storage space, you can simply create additional instances of the file library widget for your workspace.

YouFig now also supports single file uploads of up to 100 mb per file (up from ~15 mb per file), so you can enjoy increased upload capacities for your large graphics, videos or multimedia files.

While most YouFig communities are closed, private collaboration communities restricted to the members (employees, customers, etc.) of a single organization, we've seen an increased demand for communities that are open and public (and not invite-only) with less restricted access.

Now-available are open, public communities that allow anyone to register and become a member to share, meet, and create together and work on projects in unison using real-time collaboration applications & widgets.

If you already have a YouFig community, you can easily convert it to an open, publicly-available community by modifying its settings via the "Manage" link.

If you don't yet have a YouFig community, you can specify the community type during your community's registration.

To make things even simpler, the "My Home" tab now shows a summary of all your events and tasks for the next three days.

So in addition to "News from Your Network", you now have a summary of events that involve you, so you have a birds-eye-view of what's happening, all on a single page.

If you have ideas for additional info you would like to see on your "My Home" tab, please let us know!

Managing events for your community is now a breeze with the new calendar available in your community.

Community events, which can be private or public, can be created by and for members of any group in the community, regardless of where in the world (and in which time zone) you're located.

The calendar also conveniently shows due dates for any tasks created by or assigned to you using the new Task Manager widget in your workspaces.

Community events are compatible with Microsoft Outlook® and Google Calendar® so you never miss an event, regardless of whether you've recently logged in.

Community administrators can click the calendar's "Admin Mode" to see all of the events in the community.

The Todo Widget (previously with simple done/not-done options) has undergone a major metamorphosis into a fully-fledged Task Management application for your workspaces.

Using the new Task Manager widget you can create tasks, assign & reassign them to other workspace collaborators, assign due dates, get notified by email of pending tasks, set task priority and percentages, and update each task with periodic comments to share its progress with others.

Even better, you can see a summary of all your tasks, by status, workspace, group and category, on the new "Tasks" tab.

Managing your project and community tasks in real time has never been so much fun :-)

Your community now sport smarter, more organized navigation allowing members of your community to filter the view of any page by groups & categories.

For example, if you're viewing "My Workspaces", simply click a group or category to filter the view, narrow-down results, and find things more quickly & intuitively.

Furthermore, categories have been restructured and simplified.

There is now one level of categories (instead of two) and they are nested under groups, so you the relationship between groups & categories is direct and easier to understand.

Community and group admins will see an "Edit" link next to groups they can administer for quick customization and management of the community's navigation.

If you rather refer to your community's workspaces as "projects", "work rooms", "round tables", or some quirky term that only members of your community understand (e.g., one private community renamed "Workspaces" to "Figs"!), you can now do so easily from your community's custom settings.

For example, The Homework Community, has renamed "Workspaces" to "Assignments" as a more suitable term for its community & members and contents.

The new term will be reflected immediately for everyone to see.

The long wait is finally over. YouFig's spreadsheet widget is now available in your workspaces!

YouFig has teamed-up with EditGrid to offer real-time, collaborative spreadsheet editing for all YouFig communities.

Authoring and sharing spreadsheets with others in real time has never been so easy.

Simply add the spreadsheet widget to any new or existing workspace and plug away!

The new file viewer widget, which is now available in your community's workspaces, allows you to embed documents, presentations, spreadsheets, PDFs, and other files for easy viewing and sharing with others.

The file viewer widget, which uses Scribd's iPaper technology, allows for smooth paging and zooming of your documents and presentations, offering you and collaborators in your workspace the most comfortable document viewing experience the web has to offer.

If you've already uploaded files to any of your workspace's file library widgets, those documents can be turned into separate file viewer widgets for sharing with others in your workspace in a single click.

You no longer need us to create communities for your organization, since now you can create them on your own from here!

For us, that's one small step closer to our public beta. For you, that's a huge leap in efficiency & productivity in creating custom communities for your organization's collaborative needs.

So what are you waiting for?

Start your own custom collaboration community now »

The new YouTube widget allows you to search YouTube and embed any YouTube video directly into your workspace to share with others.

Simply add the YouTube widget from your workspace's widget gallery, enter a search term, browse through the results, and save the desired video to your workspace.

Other workspace members can view the saved video and add YouTube video widgets of their own.

The new RSS widget now allows you to add as many feeds as you like directly into your community's workspaces.

Simply add the RSS widget from the widget gallery, enter the feed URL, and the widget will show continuously updated items from your favorite sites.

The RSS widget allows you to effortlessly track your favorite sources of information in real-time along with with others in your workspace.

Very soon we'll be releasing an extensive set of widgets for your communities.

These include productivity apps, academic tools, research & reference utils, real-time collaborative games, video sharing, and so much more.

Your collaboration community is about to become a thousand times more fun & productive!

Every community admin can now customize their community's categories!

Custom categories can be added, renamed or removed, and even placed under other categories.

To modify your community's custom categories, click "Settings" then click "Update community categories".

Custom categories are a great way to manage and browse through community members and workspaces.

Community admins can easily manage who can and who cannot invite members from outside the community.

Knowing exactly who is in your community is essential for any organization (schools or company) who wishes to keep track of their members.

Individual invitation rights can be changed for specific members at any time by the community admins.

To manage a member's invitation rights, simply click their name then click "Manage this community member".

Community admins can now message the entire community via "My Messages".

When composing a new message, simply choose "Entire community", and everyone in the community will receive your message.

Messaging the entire community is the quickest and easiest way to get the word out to everyone!

You can now assign others to administer a workspace with you.

Workspace admins can invite and dismiss other workspace collaborators -- a privilege that until now was reserved only for the workspace owner.

In addition, you can restrict collaborators from modifying any workspace widgets.

While members with restricted access can chat using the workspace's discussion, widgets for these users will appear as "read-only".

To set a member's permissions, simply click their name from the workspace "Collaborators" list then choose the desired permission under "Manage this workspace collaborator".

Community admins can now assign other members to administer the community along with them.

Community admins have complete control over all aspects of the community including customizing the community's look & feel, managing members & workspaces, setting other members' rights & privileges, messaging the entire community, and more.

To assign a member "admin" status, simply click their name then click "Manage this community member". Members will be notified of their new "Community Admin" status.

Cycling through your workspace's widgets has just become significantly easier!

Simply click either of the arrows next to the "Widgets" link to cycle forward or backward through the workspace's active widgets.

To see a menu of all active widgets (where you can also rename and delete widgets) just click the "Widgets" link.

Your community's private workspaces are an ideal place to brainstorm, research and collect data & references.

That task just has just gotten significantly easier with the new Link Library widget under the new Research & Reference widget category.

The Link Library widget allows you to collaboratively collect and save information from any link or website on the internet by automatically extracting site data so you don't have to enter anything manually!

Anyone in the workspace can contribute links to the Link Library, and each entry can be updated as needed by any collaborator.

Expect many more Research & Reference widgets in your community workspaces soon!

You can now prevent members from creating workspaces in your community.

This is done by clicking "Update permissions" for a specific member from the list of members in the relevant group in "My Groups".

You can also specify whether a group member can or cannot add others to the group.

Your community now supports creating private and public groups in your community.

By default, only community admins can create groups in the community.

Groups are extremely useful for organizing and managing community members and workspaces.

For example, your community can have different groups for different classes (e.g., Fall Semester English, AP History, 2008 Debate Club) or for different company divisions (e.g., Sales, Marketing, Development).

Community members can belong to as many groups as needed.

Private groups are useful for managing members and workspaces in an area of the site that is inaccessible to the rest of the community (e.g., for Teachers, PTA, Student Council, etc.).

Community admins can create new groups, disable existing groups and add & remove group members from community groups as needed.

While some YouFig collaboration communities are top-secret invitation-only communities that are sealed from access to outsiders, other communities are less restrictive and welcome the public more openly. In either case, using allowed email domains allows you to easily limit your community's exposure to specific user populations.

Community admins have access to a feature called "Allowed Email Domains" (Settings --> Update Community Details) that limits community registrations only to people whose email addresses match a pre-selected domain.

For example, if you are administering a community for collaboration among Cornell University, the US Environmental Protection Agency and Proctor & Gamble, just add "cornell.edu", "epa.gov" and "pg.com" to your domain filters and the community will be freely available for people with email addresses ending in those domains.

Email filters can be freely added and removed to broaden or restrict community access.

Removing all domain filters makes the community "invite-only" and limits new community registrations only to people who were invited by an existing community admin or member with invitation privileges.

Organizations collaborating using YouFig's platform now enjoy SSL security and encrypted communications in their communities.

Security is supported within each community including the registration & invitation process, internal messaging, workspace collaboration and in every other nook & cranny of the system.

All collaboration widgets within workspaces also use secure & encrypted communication, both to and from our servers as well as the servers of any 3rd party widgets available in your workspaces.

A new map widget using Microsoft's Virtual Earth technology is now available in your community's workspaces.

The new widget allows you and collaborators in your workspace to search, locate, mark and save destinations around the world while viewing them in 2D, 3D, road, aerial, hybrid, bird's eye view, or traffic view.

The map widget is extremely useful when planning a trip or just looking for a place to meet with friends or colleagues.

Most importantly, you can mark and save any view for other collaborators in your workspace to later modify or study.

Click here to share ideas for collaboration widgets that you would like to see in your community. Creativity encouraged!

A new "Full Screen View" feature is now available in your community's workspaces that allows you to see more and do more when collaborating.

The full screen mode is supported by all collaboration widgets and takes full advantage of the width and height of your screen.

To collaborate in full screen just click the "Full screen view" link in the upper right-hand-corner of the workspace.

Click the link again to exit full screen view and restore the workspace's normal layout.

YouFig launched its private beta today, opening up its white label platform for organizations to create their own private collaboration communities.

YouFig's platform is a fuse of both real-time and non real-time collaboration with a social networking flavor, allowing members of a group, class, school, or enterprise to collaborate in centralized workspaces using "real-time collaboration widgets".

YouFig's collaboration widgets are secure, real-time, collaborative and persistent applications that allow you to create, save and edit content of any kind in a secure group environment, together with other people in your community.

Available collaboration widgets include documents, file sharing, photo sharing, maps, to-do lists and more. Many more widgets created by us and by others using YouFig's open APIs are being added every week!

Community administrators who have their own communities enjoy complete administrative control over all their members, workspaces, and groups as well as the look and feel of their community.

Community admins can also limit the community's access to only certain collaboration widgets and manage workspaces and groups for their community's members.

Click here to get started with your own community. As a wise person once said, you have to see it to believe it.