Collaboration Tool Archives

An Underestimated Collaboration Tool in AceProject – The Discussion Forum

Nowadays, we hear more about wikis, blogs and tweets than forums. Actually, forums are not as "Web 2.0" as these collaboration tools. Nevertheless, discussion forums are incredibly useful in a project management application, from a collaboration standpoint.

Everybody's talking about Twitter and how cool it is to post 140-character messages. I definitely agree with that. However, let's not forget that a forum enables you to post both short and long messages. With Twitter, if you have a lot to say, you'll have to post several short messages, which is not always convenient and interesting to read. A forum still remains the best of both worlds.

In AceProject, there's a comment thread at the task level and a discussion forum at the project level. Both empower involved users to share ideas, knowledge, tips or any other useful information. The discussion forum is more powerful however. In addition to general discussion, it permits creating topics. Messages are then posted in a specific topic and replies to these messages can be posted thereafter. Hence, collaboration capabilities using this feature abound. […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-28T13:36:00-04:002009-10-28|

The new quiet revolution?

Webcom in Montreal today was a very stimulating conference. While the last one, in May, was all about being open (APIs, OpenID, etc), this one seems to be all about 2.0. The revolution in marketing, medias, products and doing business in the modern world.

In the spirit of the conference, I decided to use Google Wave to document the conferences I was going to attend during the day. A few participants joined me in my documentation of the wave. I’ve had a Google Wave account (and the envy of more than a few of my peers) for a few weeks now, but I hadn’t had a chance to really use it.

With Webcom, everyone was taking notes and sharing their impressions of Webcom. While I was more inclined to summarize what was being said, others we adding context and reference links. The result is a rather complete document of the talks. It was more than a wiki (no coding required) and it was more than simple collaboration (everyone is in the same document and […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-22T22:54:00-04:002009-10-22|

Teaching project management with AceProject

Last month, Melinda Cline gave a presentation about using AceProject to teach her students about management information systems and project management systems.

Here are her conclusions:

“Using AceProject, students have an effective tool to increase their understanding of planning, organizing, controlling, and monitoring projects in a global environment. It is a cost effective way for instructors of project management and other IT management topics to introduce students to project management software without having to buy Microsoft Project licenses, which may be very expensive. It also has the advantage of being a web based tool with 24/7 access by students and instructors.”

You can download her PowerPoint presentation here.

By Daniel Raymond|2008-12-10T15:56:00-05:002008-12-10|

The cool tools your never used again

We see them all the time on the web: cool tools. Websites that offer a service that is original, technically advanced, or just fun. If you read a lot of blogs, you probably check out at least one of those cool tools every week. How many of those make the move from cool new tool to tools you use regularly?

There are three reasons why you won’t keep using a cool tool:

1. It’s not usable enough
2. It’s not fitted for what you do

Not usable enough: I want Sandy

I wanted to use this service. It’s really cool. It’s an automated assistant that you can email back and forth with, to build lists, keep track of appointments and receive reminders. Somehow I never could master the Sandy’s syntax. I tried a few times, couldn’t get Sandy to do what I wanted, and I gave up.

Not fitted to what I do: Cymbolism

This is another very cool service. You search for a word, like powerful, and cymbolism returns a chart with the colors people […]

By Daniel Raymond|2008-08-27T13:45:00-04:002008-08-27|