Saturday, December 26, 2015

WEB SPECIAL........... THE BEST WEB TOOLS FOR COLLABORATION


THE BEST
WEB TOOLS FOR
COLLABORATION


Working cohesively as a team ­ whether it is for a
college assignment, an office project, or even as
part of a social service initiative ­ doesn't have to
be difficult. There are online tools that will help
your group work as a tight unit, irrespective of
the physical distances between team members.

...
PLANNING
Mind42 is a web tool that lets you create a visual plan for
 the project you are working on. Its mainstay is that you
can invite teammates to jointly work out a master plan.
This way , you will have a clear idea of the processes you
 need to follow, the issues that may arise, along with
possible solutions.
Registering with Mind42 gives you a whiteboard and tools
 to flesh out the intricacies of your project. Say, you have
to host an offsite event. Your whiteboard can include venue,
catering, entertainment, etc. You can add notes, images,
links, to-dos, and add icons to each of these points.
Mind42 saves multiple revisions, allowing you to refer to
earlier versions at any point of time. Your final “flight plan“
can be exported to multiple formats, including PNG, JPG,
RTF and PDF. Print it and you can then start assigning tasks
based on this plan. It is recommended that you refer to the
Guide and the public gallery on the site to get an idea of
Mind42's capabilities.mind42.com

TASK MANAGEMENT
Once you've planned your project, you will need a
task-management service to keep a tab on all your
processes. Wrike gives you a bird's-eye view of the work
in progress.
A free account allots you 2GB of online storage and lets
you create a fivemember team (including yourself). It also
lets you work with unlimited collaborators (clients and
freelancers who need to be part of the discussion).
Each project in Wrike can comprise multiple tasks. You can
configure each deliverable to have a start-finish date,
complete with supporting file attachments, which can be
sourced locally or from Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and
Microsoft OneDrive.
Each task can be accompanied with detailed information,
and can be viewed as a list, live stream (similar to Facebook),
or an easy-to-read spreadsheet format. These can be
searched by keyword, status and assignee.http:www.wrike.com

SHARE DESIGN
Marqueed is a cloud-based image sharing tool. Designers,
for instance, could share a mock-up image with clients along
with annotations that explains each design element.
Clients, in turn, can reply to those with their feedback.
You could share interior plans for your home with your
decorator ­ with notes and pointers in the image ­ to explain
the look and feel you desire. While photographers could,
perhaps, critically discuss a snapshot.
Create a free account, upload an image, and invite
collaborators to view it and start a discussion. A free
account gets you 100MB of storage and lets you create
two collections of images (think of them as folders that
can be individually shared “privately“ with an unlimited
number of collaborators).With a paid account, you can
get up to 25GB of space, an unlimited number of albums,
and priority support.
When you sign up for Marqueed, you also become a member
 of a social network, where you can share your creative
manoeuvre with the public. You can follow others, and they
 can choose to follow your work. And this even allows folk
to invite you to view their collections, resulting in a neat
 little community of collaborators, artists, designers and
photographers.http:www.marqueed.com

COMMUNICATION
Like it is with document sharing, Microsoft and Google
have an equally strong offering in the form of Skype and
Hangouts for video conferencing. Skype limits the number
of simultaneous users to five, while Hangouts lets you have
discussions with up to 10 people.
For pure voice calls, however, we recommend Voxeet. This
service, which can accommodate up to eight people in a
single virtual conference room, is available for Windows PCs,
Mac machines, Android and iOS devices. It uses proprietary
technology to capture high-quality audio and allows for clear
group conversations. Volume bars alongside speaker avatars
on the screen let you know who is talking and you can send
instant messages while the audio call is in progress.
Voxeet also lets you move a call from one device to another ­
say , PC to smartphone ­ seamlessly with a single click of a
button. What's more, you can schedule a group call through
Voxeet and get the service to automatically start the
conference by calling all the participants for you.
http:www.voxeet.com

MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA
There are a number of paid solutions that will help you
handle an group social media account with its team
management functions. However, for small teams, you can
use TweetDeck Teams (now a part of Twitter). It is a free
service that lets you share a Twitter account with multiple
users. Here, you will play the role of “owner“ who can add
remove members.
To begin, visit tweetdeck.twitter.com and sign in.
Click on the Accounts symbol (found at the bottom left corner
 of the side navigation bar).
Then, click on Team @YourID (where YourID is the name
of your account) and add teammates (they need to be
registered with Twitter). Finally , click Authorize.
Team members will receive a notification and have to click
 Accept to begin tweeting on behalf of the official Twitter ID.
Similarly , you can take charge of a group Facebook Page
and authorize team members to post updates. It is
recommended that you clearly define who does what so
as to minimize duplicate updates.
To do this, login to the Facebook account that is linked to
the group page.Navigate to that page and click Settings.
Then, click on Page Roles (in the left column).
Enter the name of the person you want to delegate
responsibility to and click on the Editor dropdown list to
select a role ­ admin, editor, moderator, advertiser, or
analyst. Click Save and enter the password to confirm
the change.

SHARE DOCUMENTS
If you need to work as a team on text documents,
spreadsheets and presentations there are very few
services that match up to the features of Google Drive
and Microsoft OneDrive.Both services allow multiple
people to edit the same file, allowing for real-time
collaboration. The best part is the login for your Google
Microsoft account also gives you access to a Drive One
Drive account.
Using these services, you can choose to keep documents
 (like personal to-do notes) `private'. You can give
`read-only' access (to project plans and objectives);
allow your team to collaborate and edit certain other
 files (text docs, presentations and spreadsheets), and
you can even give `comment only' access to project
stake holders. Both services give you 15GB of free space.

TOI12DEC15

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