News of a possible H1N1 virus, or “Swine Flu,” pandemic is causing many commercial firms and government agencies to examine their Continuity of Operations (COOP) plans so business can soldier on during the crisis. The threat of an H1N1 outbreak is even prompting the United States Centers for Disease Control to recommend that small businesses have telework and business continuity plans in place.
This could place even organizations with well developed telecommuting programs in a challenging position, because a major virus outbreak may mean that their remote worker needs exceed their current capacity.
On the flip side, there are organizations that are far from telecommuting-friendly, which face even more challenges because they aren’t set up for remote working. In order to keep their business running in such a crisis they are going to need to buy or build an infrastructure to meet a new model of working.
At WebWorkerDaily, we get a chance to review some of the best office productivity, social media, online collaboration, project management, and Web 2.0 tools that in a worst case scenario — like a pandemic outbreak — can help an organization maintain some semblance of operations and communications, even though its employees and contractors are working from home during the crisis.
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Team Effect jokingly calls its competition the “the vast swathe of online task lists…and Basecamp clones” that make up the current market for project management solutions. The claim is that, unlike its competitors, Team Effect is “fun to use.” I won’t go that far, but the Team Effect web interface and interactive Gantt-style calendar — the main selling point of the app — are visually appealing and relatively easy to use.
Like many similar products, upon login, users are taken to a dashboard where they can see an overview of activity for projects with which they are associated. The “Comments and Messages” area is laid out in a Twitter-like fashion,
and users can see more detail, or respond, by clicking an existing message. Oddly, it appears that one needs to go to a different screen to compose a new message. Read the rest of this entry »
At first peek, web app Teambox looks like another collaboration tool: it’s a Basecamp rival that facilitates collaboration and notifies team members of additions and changes to your projects. Both come with a simple, user-friendly interface. But Teambox has one bonus; it lets teams create unlimited projects for free. Teambox charges for branding, installing it on your own server and subscribing to maintenance plans.
The dashboard has details of all your current projects. Every project consists of messages (discussion forum), lists (tasks), pages (wiki), people (contacts on the project) and chat. In less than 10 minutes, I created two projects and added content for each. Read the rest of this entry »
Zoho has released a major update to Zoho Projects, its online project management system that allows you to share projects with your team via the web. Zoho Projects 2.0 could be a tempting service for small- to medium-sized organizations that cannot afford Microsoft Project, the “gold standard” for project management in the enterprise. Zoho Projects requires no special software, just a browser and an Internet connection.
Several plans are available, including a free account that enables you to manage one project. That free account has unlimited users, which is a great way to get your feet wet. Create an account, invite all your team members, and give Zoho Projects a test drive before splashing out on one of the beefier plans. The good news is that you can now also import Microsoft Project files, which means you don’t have to recreate everything from scratch for an active project. Read the rest of this entry »
The other day I noticed that someone had posted a quick poll on LinkedIn. I thought a poll like that might be a good tool to use for informal market research, so I clicked on the link to create my own. However, I was met with a message saying that I needed to upgrade my account to access the polling feature. I perused the prices, then quickly determined I wasn’t going to upgrade.
This isn’t the first time I’ve considered upgrading my LinkedIn account and decided against it, which led me to start thinking about all of the “freemium” apps — basically free apps with premium upgrades — I’ve been using. I started feeling guilty about taking advantage of the “free” in freemium services, especially because I’ve had the opportunity to interview founders of these companies, many of whom confess to struggling over pricing. So what makes us decide to pay for an app? Read the rest of this entry »
As I continue to struggle to find the ideal project or task management tool for my growing Web business, I find one app that really tracks project progress well but doesn’t handle individual task management then another app handles task assignments but doesn’t give me a view of the big picture.
Then there are the enterprise level apps that give me a headache to even look at because they cram a gazillion features and functionality into their interface. Or the apps that have robust features that I can’t find or figure out how to use.
Task2Gather is a pretty straightforward application for managing tasks plus it has an iPhone app which in my book is always a plus. On their site, they define their app as:
“…a free online service for task and project management that organizes your personal, family, social and business lives by keeping all your commitments in one place.”
I have mixed feelings about an app that organizes every aspect of your life although I know my whole like – not just my work – needs it. Still, when I see “organizes your family” on the same app that is supposed to organize my business functions in an efficient and cost-effective way, I get a little wary. But maybe this is the way organizational tools are moving – apps to take care of every aspect of your life because ultimately, they really are inter-related.
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Before I fell asleep last night, I started thinking about what I’m spending on Web applications. I take advantage of the free levels of apps whenever I can, however, in some cases, I have to give in and pay for the services.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have buyer’s remorse, but I do think I need to get a firm grasp of what Web apps or SaaS’s I have on autopay on my business credit card because it is getting to be too easy to charge these things.
Here is the list of Web apps I’ve been paying for and why I pay for them:
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Project Management and Collaboration applications are one of the staples of the typical web worker. And while we’ve covered our share of alternatives, the ubiquitous Basecamp is the one that I seem to run into most often.
With a healthy userbase and a robust API, it’s no surprise that a number of useful add-ons have been created to make our Basecamp lives just that much easier. One such add-on I’ve been testing lately is Periscope by Ten Seven, Interactive.
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News of a possible H1N1 virus, or “Swine Flu,” pandemic is causing many commercial firms and government agencies to examine their Continuity of Operations (COOP) plans so business can soldier on during the crisis. The threat of an H1N1 outbreak is even prompting the United States Centers for Disease Control to recommend that small businesses have telework and business continuity plans in place.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
