Fuzzy scheduling tool Liquid Planner is expanding its reach into the collaborative task management market with a neat new feature called project portals. These are group pages that offer some of the same basic collaboration features you get with the core product, however they can be branded and shared with anyone else who is not a paying Liquid Planner customer.
Any project you're working on in Liquid Planner can now become "portalized." These pages serve as a central place to access shared files and lets outside users keep track on a project's status and ongoing tasks without the coordinator having to go out of their way to keep the other parties updated.
Every portal page includes a built in group microblog, that like Yammer, is a place for team members to provide small status updates on what they're working on. All the other users within that group can then track and respond to those updates, replacing big group e-mails and putting things like edit requests and approvals in the project's workspace.
Most importantly, portals have been designed to serve as a simplified heads-up display. For someone who hasn't used the product before, this makes it far more approachable. There are quite a few knobs and buttons, which give the service an incredible amount of power, but can be overwhelming to someone who isn't familiar with the product. This simply focuses on the basics of progress, tasks, files, and communication.
Project Portals can be branded to match a company or client's look and feel, and give both parties a quick eye on all the details of an on-going project.
(Credit: Liquid Planner)Liquid Planner is letting its users create as many project portals as they want, but unpaid users who have been invited don't get access to all of the service's planning and tracking features. For instance, these users cannot track time, or see the full detail and structure of a project the same way they could if they were a subscriber.
Next up for Liquid Planner is a mobile client. In a phone interview last week, CEO and co-founder Charles Seybold told me the first device to get a native Liquid Planner app will be Apple's iPhone. It's the platform that's most requested by the service's users--the majority of which are in IT. Seybold says the mobile client will bring live notifications, let project members edit task lists, and track project activity. The iPhone version of Liquid Planner won't be here until later this year though. After that, Seybold says other platforms should follow.
Box.net, the online storage service, has updated their embeddable widget with a new group sharing feature for members with premium and professional accounts. Users can password protect a shared folder, which can then be accessed privately by others with the code. Storage owners can opt-in to allow user uploading, which lets anyone with access add files. The company is gearing it at businesses, whereas its previous widget incarnation was aimed at users with social networking profiles.
For group users to keep track of updates to shared folders, each share gets its own RSS feed. Once subscribed, the name and direct download link will be broadcast to any subscribers. Neat.
Note: I have the anonymous uploading turned off on the widget below. Read previous Box.net widget coverage here.
[via Mashable]
Wetpaint, the wiki editing and hosting service, added private and group messaging this morning. The new service allows users to communicate one-on-one just like e-mail, and gives wiki administrators a new way to communicate to those moderating and contributing to their pages.
Sending a message in the service is pretty simple. If you're signed in, just click a user's name to pull up a "send message" pop-up. If you want to send out a group message, just start typing in names and the service will pull them up (like Gmail does).
In comparison, wiki juggernaut Wikipedia relies on private e-mail and threaded discussion called "Talk" for member-to-member communication. That site also has dedicated IRC chat rooms and a listing of chat client screen names for Wikipedia contributors. Wetpaint's new system makes things a little simpler by consolidating chatter into one medium, and integrating it into the site.
Previous Wetpaint coverage here and here.
When you reply to a message, Wetpaint will automatically add the previous messages in the thread below. It's just like e-mail.
To privately message another user, just click on his or her name.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
HiTask is a(really simple collaborative task management tool for small groups. Members can create tasks, meetings, reminders, notes, and birthdays to add to their own schedule or assign to others. The entire interface is drag-and-drop, and any actions by team members will instantly be reflected on your tasks page. It's a mix of a scheduling app and to-do list tool that's dead simple to use. In testing, we were making and managing several projects in less than five minutes without reading any documentation, which bodes well if you're collaborating with non-tech-savvy people.
Adding tasks to HiTask's daily schedule via drag-and-drop. Color coding per item will also show up.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Assigning tasks to other users is really simple. Once you've created a task, you can just drag it over to the group member's name. You'll get a note on the task letting you know who you've assigned it to, and as soon as they're done with it you'll be notified in real time. Likewise, when a group member assigns something to you, it will show up on your schedule, along with a note of who it's from. The one thing missing from HiTask is the option to view other members' schedules, which would be helpful--especially for gauging how much is on someone's plate.
If you do need to talk, there's a built-in chat module, which is limited to one-on-one. There's no way to group chat, or share files like you get with some more advanced group collaboration tools like BaseCamp, and activeCollab, but HiTask is pretty early in development.
HiTask has both a free and premium service. The free service reaches its limit at 10 tasks, making it little more than a demo. The $15 a year service provides unlimited tasks, group members, and projects. See the screenshots after the jump.
Related: Under the Radar Office 2.0 coverage of group collaboration tools.
[via SolutionWatch]
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