Online Collaboration Software Use Cases

GroupCamp Project comes with strong task management features to make it easy to assign and track tasks within a project from different perspectives.
Managing an endless list of tasks is not efficient. So the first obvious way of organizing and tracking tasks is to organize them into lists.

To be able to manage your tasks and plan ahead, Project allows you to tack tasks from different angles:

• You need a view per assignee. You can use the filter system to know who added tasks in a project and to whom it was assigned.
• You also need to track tasks which were assigned to you to do your own personal planning. You can use the Tasks application in the Personal page for that.
• Tracking tasks by their due dates or by project milestones is also key. GroupCamp Project allows you to set due dates on tasks and also to link tasks lists to milestones. Use the Schedule viewer in a project's Overview app to get a view of upcoming due dates and milestones.
• Because we know that managers need more than lists to organize their tasks, every task can be tagged with a type as cross-reference. Types can be used in tasks to represent priority levels, company activity or group or product version. The view by types provides you another useful strategic view to track tasks.

To learn more about task management in Project, go to the Tour page for Tasks.

If you are a project manager on a tight budget, accurate time estimation is a key skill. It is important that you get time estimates right for all your tasks and more generally for all your task lists to get your project costing right especially if you are billing a customer for it.

In GroupCamp Project you can enter the time estimate for a task. This will give you a total of time estimates per task list. By using time estimates project managers can pre-configure a project before the project is launched by specifying the key milestones for the project and describing the resources needed for a project. The project manager can then have a fully calibrated project that can be shown to the management team for decision-making about scope, priority and budget.

This allows project leads to check whether their estimation makes sense based on the availability of internal resources.

Managing workload per user

Once the time estimates are entered for each project, you can filter your task application to have a view of the total time estimate for a particular project member. The total time estimate for a given project members gives an idea of the workload for that particular project member. It allows project managers to make decisions on resource allocation or on setting new priorities on the different tasks required within the project.

Managing workload per task type

The Task application allow project managers to set types on each and every task. When using task types,  it is possible to have a view of the total time estimates for every task type. For example, if you have a task list for « New customer request » and your tasks are cross-referenced with « Design » and « IT », you will obtain time estimates totals for both the workload represented by the new customer request and the load for the IT group and the Design group for that activity.

Start by creating companies in the Admin section and invite users from those companies. When you create a multi-company project, add the companies which should participate. In a multi-company project you can decide if a file or a task list is private or not. If you have multiple companies you can decide which one of them can see a private file. For example if you have multiple versions of a file you can mark them as private in the initial drafts. Once you reach a version that can be shared with outside companies, if the file is no longer marked as private, it will be shared by selected companies.
To share files with your clients and prtners, simply add users from outside companies to your project to access the secure extranet (SSL 256 bits - https access) with a controlled access.

Why use an extranet ?
    •    Share project content with your clients, suppliers and partners. Collaborate more efficiently without having to go through contant call conferences or drowning your clients in endless emails.
    •    Company daily management, for a club, a non-profit organisation, an internal department.
    •    To prepare a major event
    •    To start a collaborative writing project on a report or any project deliverable
    •    To launch an open project dedicated to new ideas
 
Extranet Study Case 1 : Sharing files in a managed workspace.
If you want to share files only in a secure extranet you can choose to enable only the Files application in one of your projects. The files will be available to the invited users and tou can select the relevant users to whom you wish to grant access.
Why use GroupCamp Project for your extranet :
    •    you can set different user rights for users depending on their company, for example vous pouvez autoriser ou interdire à vos invités le chargement de nouveaux documents dans le projet,
    •    you can enable the 'downloading history feature for every file. This feature allows you to make sure that a shared files has been downloaded by clients an partners.
    •    you can decide whether to authorise email notifications and whether to enable comments by email replies.
 
Extranet Study Case 2 : Add discussions to your extranet
You can add the Discussions application to your project. You can then organise discussions into topics. Invited users can then access discussions by signing into the project extranet and add their comments.
Why GroupCamp Projet :
    •    you authorise or deny users the right to create discussions or topics.vous pouvez autoriser ou interdire la création de nouvelles rubriques par vos invités, idem pour les discussions,
    •    you can decide whether to authorise email notifications to be sent out by the application. This means that comments can only be added by users who sign into the online project.
 
Extranet Study Case 3 : Use your extranet for collaborative writing
You can add the Wiki application to a project, to create pages on which several users can collaborate. Each page can be linked with a simple http link. Invited users can add their contributions, and edit existing content. You can also send out pages by email for followers to comment.

Extranet Study Case 4 : With your extranet, assign tasks to project members
Add the Tasks application to your project. You can decide to which member the task should be assigned. All members with access to the extranet can have a clear view of all project responsibilities. They can then ask for support for specific items to the relevant project members.
Why GroupCamp Project :
    •    users can work on the same tasks and can update a given tasks with different types or with comments.
    •    users can organise tasks into task lists which represent specific topics,
    •    users can decide whether invited users can add new task lists or new tasks,
    •    users can set priority levels on tasks (Ex: Urgent, Medium, Low)
 
Extranet Study Case 5 : If you have to meet tight deadlines, share a project schedule with all your project members.
Your extranet can become a collaborative project. You can add the Milestones application, which will allow you to put down all the key deadlines for your project. The corresponding project schedule is then displayed in the project overview so that all project members share the same view of the project scope and timeframes.

Extranet Study Case 6 : If time is critical for you...
The Timelog & Timesheets applications are what you need. By adding the Timelog application to a project, all members will be able to enter time records corresponding to the time spent collaborating on the project. 

With your extranet, collaboration is simpler, faster more secure and more efficient.

This is a very common use case. We have seen multiple companies achieve this with different methods. Here is one of them (which is actually GroupCamp’s way of working).

We use different online projects for New Feature Requests and Product Roadmap.

In the New Feature Requests section, we use task lists to describe new domains or an actual application. For example ‘GroupCamp Mobile is a task list and ‘New Features for Discussions’ is another. We then have reviews based on the task list and once we decide on a new feature and the way to design it, it will move into the Product Roadmap project which is the actual committed track for our products. We use the import feature to move tasks from one project to another.

Allowing users to enter new ideas makes it easier for an idea to progress in maturity by relying on the online collaboration of every team member. Every member can comment on the idea by replying directly to email notifications. In the Product Roadmap, we use the task lists to describe the workload for a particular quarter. You can use ‘types in tasks to set priorities or release dates. When entering tasks corresponding to new ideas, project members can enter the estimated time for the task.

During the reviews of the product team we then decide on the new priorities to be set on every task. One important aspect we use in making go/no-go decisions is the total estimated time for every task list. The total amount of estimated time is also available for each task type which is often the priority level. In the Tasks application, when an ideas gains traction, you can assign the task and have an estimation on the total workload per user.