Online Collaboration???

[Shaun v Rooyen]

We are looking at methods of "Virtual Teamwork", if you could call it that.
Online project collaboration/co ordination. I know of Buzzsaw & FTP, but, was wondering how you all are dealing with sharing your project documents with your teams/consultants. And if there is anything, I should take into account when considering moving away from the mundane, manual email option that we currently run.
Any views in the matter would greatly be appreciated.
Thanks.

[Shaun v Rooyen]

Jeez thanks for all the invaluable input. Come on, are you telling me you all use e-mail?

[blads]

Jeez thanks for all the invaluable input. Come on, are you telling me you all use e-mail?

Yep! 'fraid so... email to clients and/or consultants

[Max Lloyd]

E-mail here. Occasionally we use fax?????

[Mr Spot]

Sometimes we use www.aconex.com but mainly FTP or email.

[gbrowne]

I asked about collaboration software a while ago, in the dedicated forum and got a suprising lack of resposes too. Which leads me to think buzzsaw, although on the surface a really great idea, is not being implemented...

We were going to get it, but nobody in our office was interested, I think I was the only person who was keen.

Is it the case that everyone thinks everyone else is using it? But in reality aren't?

[rhys]

I asked about collaboration software a while ago, in the dedicated forum and got a suprising lack of resposes too. Which leads me to think buzzsaw, although on the surface a really great idea, is not being implemented...

We were going to get it, but nobody in our office was interested, I think I was the only person who was keen.

Is it the case that everyone thinks everyone else is using it? But in reality aren't?

Too expensive for me

[janunson]

We've never used buzzsaw, but have used PlanWell and another version that i forget the name of. They work OK, but don't offer any amazing benefits in my opinion. We're in the process of installing a planwell server to use to manage all our printing and file distribution (to take away the administration of the FTP site for consultants) We don't know that much about how well it works yet... still trying to get the basic functionality operational.

Correction - I'VE never used buzzsaw, but we have in our company. It worked ok, but was slow and cumbersome. As far as i know that was more than a year ago, so i'm sure it's changed since then; several upgrades have occured.

[Shaun v Rooyen]

Thanks for all the responses it just concluded, what we already assumed.

[PeterJ]

If you have Microsoft's Small Business Server you can set up threaded discussions and mark them as closed out etc. makes it easy enough, in theory, to run an issues log for a project through a web server in one party's office. I looked at it with a colleague a while back but we were only 2 or 3 at thye time and couldn't find a reason not use fax and email.

Mintersoft have a product called Truedesk (www.truedesk.com) which is offered as a groupware server and offers similar functionality to the Small Business Server but also adds project forums, which provide the issue log functionality, and project folders that enable you to upload files and work with version control. I use it to provide webmail for myself and it is easy enough to set up, either on windows or linux, and gets you going quite quickly including permissions and all the rest.