All GroupCamp applications are strongly integrated with email. And even with the best online project management tool, email remains the most used communication tool of all business users. But email as a service has its own drawbacks. and needs to be strongly integrated with your online project management to bring enhanced productivity.
When you upload a file or assign a task, you can decide to notify members. They will receive an email with a description of the event with links to the content.
Emails sent by GroupCamp will accept replies. For example if you comment a shared file and choose to notify colleagues by email, you can add a comment by replying to the email. All the followers of the thread of comments receive the reply and the online thread is updated.
Convincing project members to use an online project management tool in conjunction with email can be challenging. Below are examples of how, used together, email and an online project management tool can bring more efficiency and productivity to project members.
Sending emails to an online project dropbox address
You can use GroupCamp Project to update your online projects without leaving your email software. Every online project comes with a customizable dropbox email address. Simlply add as destination or copy your project dropbox address when you compose a new message. The project will be updated with the email. You can also send emails with attached files; they will be automatically added to the Files application. You can send emails directly to the dropbox address or forward specific incoming messages or add the dropbox address in the CC field when you write project related emails.
Email weekly digest or report for emails and tasks
The weekly digest is an email delivered to your inbox every week. It contains all the relevant late and upcoming tasks for the online projects in which you are participating. As long as the on-going tasks are not completed they are added to the weekly digest.
Email notifications for Project applications(GroupCamp Project -> Email)
When creating a task, uploading a file, opening a discussion or creating a wiki page, you can choose to send out email notifications to selected project members. All project members who are added as followers of a task file or discussion, will receive an email notification. They can add a comment simply by replying to the email. The online project will be updated automatically.
Adding comments by email
One of the drawbacks of using only email for a project is the loss of context. All the project history is lost in emails. With an online project management tool suwh as GroupCamp Project, you can keep all your project history and evey newcomer to the project can quickly come on-board and become familiar with all project items.
For Google Apps users, using GroupCamp's contextual gadget in Gmail to create tasks directly from an email
For users who have installed GroupCamp Project in their Google Apps domain, there is a great way to transform an email in your inbox into a task in an online project. When an email is received in your online project the GroupCamp contextual Gmail gadget will be displayed at the bottom of the email. Use the gadget to extract the email body or subject and add it as a task in one of your online projects without leaving your email interface.
Email privacy
Bear in mind that in using GroupCamp project, the privacy of your project information bears higher security than regular email. Most business email service allows all the content of your email to be transferred on the public internet without any encryption mechanism. When using groupCamp project to share files or other project items, all communications from the browser to your online project uses 256-bit SSL encryption and is actually more secure than regular email.
