all the wikis

business solution for online collaboration

Central Desktop is aimed squarely at supporting collaboration for businesses, but does have a free option. All plans are hosted; Central Desktop pride themselves on the effort they put into looking after the integrity and security of your data.

The only glitch for businesses is that you cannot use a custom domain name. However in Company plans you can choose a domain name such as mybusiness.centraldesktop.com and access to html and CSS allows you to alter the look and feel to make visitors and collaborators feel they are still on your company web site.

Central Desktop provider statement

“Central Desktop is a web-based collaboration tool for business teams and workgroups to efficiently share information and communicate with others both inside and outside the firewall.

Central Desktop provides easy ways to collaborate in real-time (web & audio conferencing), manage projects, coordinate tasks, foster group discussion and track documents and files.”

Wide range of hosted plans

Central Desktop has two types of plans, Team Plans and Company plans. The Team Plans range upwards from a free version with 25 MB of storeage, two workspaces and up to five active members per workspace.

The company plans are more expensive than the Team Plans and offer more storage, lots more workspaces, unlimited members, secure information transfer, enhanced privacy options and access to the sites html and CSS to enable control over the look and feel. The top Company Plan costs $249 per month and provides 10GB of storage, 100 active workspaces and unlimited archived workspaces.

Central Desktop also offers additional web conferencing plans which include free audioconferencing, web meetings and instant messaging into your site. Use of this is free for the first 30 days of any plan.

A 50% discount is available to academic and non-profit organisations.

Domain names

Your url will be something like www.centraldesktop.com/yourname. On a Company Plan, you can choose a sub-domain name: www.YourBusiness.centraldesktop.com. You cannot use your own domain name.

Permissions depend on which plan you use

Access at Central Desktop is defined at the level of the workspace. The workspace owner decides whether or not individual members can read, edit, add or delete information in the workspace. For Company Plans activities can be hidden from non-company members.

If you want to keep something totally private you need to define a workspace with only you as a member.

Public workspaces are ungated and available to anyone on the web.

Central Desktop Security

Central Desktop is designed with business use in mind and so claims to “provide maximum security performance and reliability”.

Keeps out spambots  - Required log-in

Blocks vandals  - Required log-in

Lockable pages   - Yes

Can review changes to pages  - Yes

Can revert to a previous edition of a page  - Yes

Can restore your site from a local back up  - Yes, you can download a zipped file of your data.

Censored word list  - No

Privacy policy  - Yes available here

Secure information transfer  - Yes

Secure attachments  - Attachments secure and searchable.

Central Desktop wiki language options

Central Desktop has limited language options in WYSIWYG mode.

Translations  - No

International characters  - Not supported in WYSIWYG

Right to left writing  - Not supported

Help language - English

Editing in Central Desktop

Central Desktop has an easy to use WYSIWYG editor. Company Plans allow access to html and CSS.

WYSIWYG  - Simple WYSIWYG editor

Markup  - No

HTML  - Company Plans only

CSS  - Company Plans only

javascript  - No

Spellcheck  - Yes

Content supported

You can do most of what you want with the WYSIWYG editor such as inserting files, or images that you want in your page or attached to it. Access to html gives you even wider options.

Images  - Yes

Flash  - No

Audio  - No

Video  - No

Instant messaging  - You can use most available instant messaging services, including Skype, in Central Desktop for free for the first 30 days but at a cost thereafter.

Mathematical notations  - Not supported

RSS feeds - Yes

email notifications - Yes

Diagrams  - Not supported

Attachments  - Yes, shared text documents and spreadsheets. Other files can be attached.

Task lists  - Yes

Calendars  - Yes

Maps  - Not supported

Shopping basket  - No

Content restrictions  - No

Central Desktop is business friendly

Central Desktop is clean and easy to use. It looks and feels business like.You can customise in Company Plans.
There is a simple navigation sidebar and tabs in project management workspaces.

Search is competent and searches documents as well as the online pages.

Search engine friendly  - yes

Access by mobile  - No

Looks match topic  - Customisation in Company Plans

Easy to read  - Yes

Provider placed Ads  - No

Clear navigation  - Yes

Effective wiki search  - Yes

Recent activity list  - Yes

Wanted pages list  - No

Custom template for new pages  - No

email pages to friends  - No

RSS feeds  - Yes, very flexible.

Easy to make and read comments  - Yes

Page history available  - Yes

Central Desktop Management

Automatic save - Not sure

Site statistics  - No

email notifications  - Yes, very flexible

Income from Ads  - Not supported

Technical support  - Yes

Server support 24/7  - Yes, someone on site 24/7

Stable provider company  - Yes

Help and support for Central Desktop

Central Desktop has a commitment to support its customers. It holds regular webinars at which you can learn tips and tricks, ask questions and hear about upcoming features.

Loyal wiki community  - Yes

Community forum  - Yes, good involvement of Central Desktop staff in this

FAQs  - Yes, though limited

Help  - Yes

If you want to take a look at a Central Desktop page layout, I have set up a Central Desktop example page. As a public page it does not give you a full idea of Central Desktops capability. For that you will need to sign up for your own free page.

• Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Tagged with: Central Desktop • Review • Wiki