Best Practices in Collaboration Software
Collaborative Web-surfing and Social Bookmarking
These are applications that allow the mass of users to tag web content, rate content,
share them and discuss websites. Best examples are del.icio.us, stumble upon, furl
(social bookmarking), digg.com (rating).
A new service with a good feature set is www.diigo.com: Basically it is a browser
extension with a social bookmarking database with some good collaboration features. It
allows people to highlight texts in website, make comments on websites that are
searchable and shareable. More powerfully, it lets people define groups to which they
want to share bookmarks, content. When a person in the group visits a website, he/she
will see all comments, notes, highlighting made by other people in the groups on the
website.
Another feature is that the interface is very team/group friendly and integrates well
with other web services (del.icio.us, mag.no.lia, twitter, blogs) to maximize the ability to
share and “broadcast” the link to the group or to the public.
Collaboration Space
This is the concept that teams should work in a “virtual” workspace where everything
related to the project can be stored and managed. The structure of this “space” is
important because it would help the team improve on their processes, reduce wastage
of time and cultivate a true collaborative environment. Thus, even though most
collaboration space applications tend to offer the same standard feature set like
document management, wiki, task management/tracking, they differ quite a bit on their
approach in the design of the interface and the flow of the application.
www.openteams.com:
- This is deservedly called a solution that takes the “icky” out of wiki: it approaches
collaboration/project management as from a document development
perspective and provides the tools and workflow to let teams collaborate very
well to reach those goals.
- Very slick user interface (http://www.openteams.com/screenshot-tour.php)
which also resembles Outlook’s three panel view.
- Projects are meant to be “idea-centered”: ideas start from pieces of notes,
documents, go through cycles of discussion and elaboration, and finish as
presentations. The interface provides all the tools for these, and the way it is set
up also suggests the team move in that direction.
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Simple but very nice and effective features: discussion tracking (threaded
discussion, RSS feed of discussion, built-in user-friendly wiki, horizontal scrolling
for long list).
Tagging for documents, discussion and presentation.
www.centraldesktop.com
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Another smart platform with a great approach to collaborative environment.
Main features: It offers a “desktop” with multiple workspaces, each of which can
be tailored by templates: project management, discussion, wiki, company's
intranet, general workspace.
The platform allows for extensive customization of workspaces: customization of
welcome pages, navigational panels, inserting codes, “plug in” (snippet of code,
applets that become part of the pages) because it treats all elements of the
workspace, whether it is content or layout, navigation as elements that can be
customized and edited on the go.
Basic document management: check in, check out, versioning, comments,
different stages for document: completed, draft, pending, access control
It has an integrated calendar, task tracking, milestones (to group tasks together
and allows for percentage work done tracking)
Updates of discussion, tasks, documents as RSS/Email feeds
Users can email notes, files, updates directly to discussion, tasks, documents etc.
Export email addresses of task, discussion thread, wiki pages as standard Vcard
for easy importing into Outlook
Documents can be managed as part of the workspace or attached to discussion,
tasks, etc.
A basic database is integrated for features like contact management
A full text search function.
www.whodo.es
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This is a suite of timetracking, document sharing, project management
A nice feature is the “journaling” feature for tracking all activities and compiling
them together.
It has a different approach to collaboration: it focuses on the team members,
team members are listed like in a social network and the “profile” page of a
person is that person’s main dashboard.
The idea is projects revolve around people and people manage their parts in a
project best by focusing on their own workspace and how they interact with
other team members.
www.huddle.net
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This company’s approach is around the Project Management Portal
Again, team members as member of a social network and the project might end
up being an enterprise wiki/social network. However, other features are not
lacking either.
www.phuser.com
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Take out the pain of having to sign on different name/password.
The "phuser" is the “same page” in the sense that all teams members should be
at together all the time.
Other Good Interfaces/Other features in the Collaboration Space
www.goplan.com: Very nice integrated environment. We have not tried out the
language, but from what they show and from the public’s reaction, it seems that they
have a nice, intuitive GUI.
www.activecollab.com: Classic web 2.0 interface for collaboration and project
management. It also allows for plugins and API capabilities.
www.collanos.com: This is basically Outlook for Project Management. Download, on
premise software that looks very similar to Outlook but geared towards project
management, bug tracking, shared workspace.
www.conceptshare.com : Flash-based document sharing and collaboration for the
creative profession.
http://www.joyent.com/connector/collaboration-suite: Very nice left-tabbed navigation
panel, user-oriented workflow, and great universal “bookmarking” feature.
Time Tracking
The main focus in this space is making time tracking, timesheet management as simple
as possible. Most are standalone time tracking application with no other frills.
14Dayz (www.14Dayz.com) and GetHarvest (www.getharvest.com) seem to be the most
fully featured but most useful.
They both have good features like
- Separating common vs. particular tasks.
- A ” start timer” button for time tracking – www.getharvest.com
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Big tabbed calendar that makes daily tracking easier (instead of showing the
whole month, just show the week with big tabs for the days) – www.14Dayz.com
Integration with other software/web apps (such as with Basecamp)
Easy time-tracking across multiple projects.
Intuitive the timesheet page design
Abbreviation/shortcuts and some natural language processing for entering time
Use a series of filter for reports
Categories and sub categories to organize projects
Work with mobile phones
Use email notification for completion updates
RSS feeds for updates.
Document Management
Many of the applications in the category “Collaboration Space” have basic document
management features; and the following are some others that are more geared towards
“team document” sharing such as:
www.nomadesk.com
- Teams can sign up for a central hosting “folder” for documents.
www.foldera.com
- "Smart" folders that are organized by projects/tags/users, not by rigid folder
structure (Joyent’s collaboration suite has similar feature).
- Also organizes email, rss, documents, tasks.
www.spoxel.com:
- This application sets up a virtual file server to which documents can be uploaded
and stored.
Other solutions: www.catalystoffice.com, www.hyperoffice.com
Document editing/versioning: these are applications that emphasize secure sharing and
versioning of text-based documents: www.versionate.com, www.wideword.net
www.projectx.com: new technology that lets us integrate media directly into project
tasks.
Email Integration
Email is the most important method of communication and for most people; Outlook is
the central dashboard for all activities. Hence, organizing the traffic flow of email and
centralizing all activities via email are some of the most interesting ideas in productivity
software:
- www.CentralDesktop.com, www.wrike.com, www.IwantSandy.com (an emailenabled personal assistant) are able to do basic natural language processing and
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thus are able to understand a variety of email commands and sort them in the
right order.
www.iwantsandy.com and www.stikkit.com also feature natural language
processing that allow them to do more sophisticated tasks like taking phone
numbers, creating contact cards from email signatures, setting up meetings
between two users by parsing email exchanges.
They also generate specialized, task/project specific email addresses and VCard,
Calendar invites for easy integration with Outlook or other email clients.
www.xobni.com is a pre-launch startup that advertises a nice feature set worth
checking out: email analytics, email search, natural language processing etc.
Web Meeting/Web conferencing
www.Vyew.com – Web Meeting
Vyew.com is organized on the concept of "viewbooks", which are whiteboards that are
shared by participants in the online conference. It addresses most of the basic
collaboration needs such as sharing files, whiteboard, screen sharing, voice conferencing
and video conferencing. The viewbooks are natural to use (for example, if you want to
share a file, just upload the file and it becomes a new viewbook), and the application is
fully web-based.
www.campfirehq.com
Extremely simple but powerful multi-person chat, the key here is ease of use (for both
setting up, joining the room) and ability to preview/share files. More advanced features
include archiving/searching of text messages, RSS feed and room locking/unlocking.
Spreadsheet
The online spreadsheet space is becoming very competitive with multiple vendors
employing different technologies towards the common goal of creating an online
version of Excel. Following are some notable solutions:
www.editgrid.com is a great online, Ajax-based platform that comes very close to
emulating most of Excel’s features: functions, formulae, panel freezing, shortcuts,
charting etc. Its more powerful features allow for versioning, offline synchronization,
and dynamic data streaming for other sources, plug-ins, and white labeling. It is being
used as the online spreadsheet of choice for financial analysts and CentralDesktop is
using the platform for their spreadsheet editor component.
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Editgrid is also great for collaboration because it allows for sharing and inline/on page
chatting between concurrent users, cell locking, and conflict resolutions (as with Google
Docs).
www.xcellery.com
This is first a connector that lets users share Excel files online and synchronize the
different versions and they now also have a browser-based Ajax-powered editor.
Other solutions:
www.expressocorp.com (See this article for an overview
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2540 )
www.sheetster.com
www.smartsheet.com
Calendaring
New calendaring applications try to simplify time management by offering integration
with office standard software such as Outlook, Lotus Notes, as well as other messaging
platforms like Twitter, RSS, text messages, and integration with blogging platforms,
MySpace, Facebook. It is important to have the ability to export appointments, contacts
and meeting requests using industry standards such as the Vcard, outlook meeting
requests, and iCal items.
Most innovation has been in automation and usability, following are some good
solutions:
www.iscrybe.com: Intuitive interface, built for usability: time zone adjustment features,
offline synchronization, export/import into excel, drag and drop, note taking tool, digital
scrapbook tool, ability to print calendar in various formats.
www.kiko.com: Drag and drop calendaring, natural language processing, contact
management, iCal and vCard import, reminders via Email, SMS, RSS.
www.ikordo.com, www.ipolipo.com: meeting organization via email, share outlook
calendar (or open slots) online and let participants signup.
www.30boxes.com: Extremely sharp focus on calendaring with a slick, Mac-like
interface: synchronization with Facebook, ability to print daily/weekly/monthly
schedules, sharing, mapping of events using Google Maps API, export to RSS, MySpace,
Facebook, tagging. It communicates seamlessly. It is actually part of a “webtop” scheme
that aggregates useful apps on the same simple desktop.
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www.myticklerfile.com: task reminders. It separates reminders/tasks to be done into 43
virtual folders for each month of the year and each day of the month. Tasks are filed and
removed daily, and the boxes show up and disappear. Automatically generate lists of
task done, task to be done, some other analytics.
Wiki Software
We just list wiki-software companies with good features:
www.wetpaint.com
www.mindquarry.com
www.mindtouch.com
www.socialtext.net
www.openroad.ca (www.thoughtfarmer.com) (a wiki platform in the form of a social
network)
www.near-time.net (a wiki/social networking/blogging platform for enterprises)
This article on InfoWorld might be helpful in understanding the main features of a wiki
system: www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/05/02TCwiki_1.html
Dashboards/Business Intelligence Analytics
There is a clear disconnect between enterprise class dashboard suites and more basic
dashboard software. We focus on SMB-suitable dashboard software and do not studies
enterprise software such as Cognos, Hyperion, and BEA Aqualogic.
The applications listed here mostly have flash or java-based charting engines and a nice
interface. They can be hosted dashboard applications or plug-ins to corporate intranet
or websites that help render the charts and dashboards.
www.idashboards.com (offer an OEM program for ISV)
www.serence.com (offers installed software, widgets)
www.fusioncharts.com (very powerful charting engines, sold as components)
www.activestrategy.com (corporate strategy dashboards)
www.logixml.com (very powerful connection tools, web reporting platform)
www.qlikview.com
Task Management
www.taskbin.com: Simple, no frill tasks management (www.taskbin.com/todolist/index)
www.voo2do.com: Another simple task management application.
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Web 2.0 /Flash Goodness
Here are some other applications that feature good interface design or nice feature set:
- Simple but effective design for those with short attention span: www.Twitter.com
- Flash-based visual search tool: www.oskope.com
- Flash-based online word editor: www.buzzword.com
- Flash-based flickr.com photo explorer that makes flickr.com content even more social:
www.bcdef.org/frappr
- Resource for AJAX-powered UI components: http://miniajax.com,
http://ajaxian.com/archives/swfaddress-20-deep-linking-for-flash-and-ajax
- Shortcuts for web applications: www.keyxl.com has a list of shortcuts (mainly for
desktop applications), but what we find is that web applications become even easier to
use if they emulate the same shortcuts as their well known counterparts.
- Sources for good web designs and interfaces: www.smashingmagazine.com
www.netvibes.com, www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/06/20/ajax-javascriptsolutions-for-professional-coding/, www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/30/65excellent-flash-designs/
Selected Bibliography
Useful articles about the use of collaboration software and platform in the enterprise/as
tool to improve productivity.
- Enterprise 2.0, article by Professor McAfee, Harvard Business School
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/wsj/insight/pdfs/47306.pdf
- Collaboration 2.0, article by Jay Cross, Internet Time Group
http://internettime.pbwiki.com/collaboration
- Elements of Collaboration, by www.mindquarry.com,
http://internettime.pbwiki.com/collaboration5
- 6 Views of Project Management, article on Techsoup,
www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page7648.cfm
- Review of RallyPoint, an early Web 2.0 collaboration software,
www.solutionwatch.com/295/rallypoint-powerful-online-collaboration-made-simple
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for Team Collaboration Software
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6777
- Project Management Blogs – How to run your project on the web
www.cogniview.com/convert-pdf-to-excel/post/how-to-run-your-project-on-the-web/
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- Mindmapping and Project Management,
www.innovationtools.com/Articles/ArticleDetails.asp?a=148
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