The Best Collaboration Tools for Small Groups and Teams
We talk a lot about personal productivity tools at Lifehacker, but sometimes you're not the only person who needs to get things done for a project or job to be a success. Whether you're trying to organize a home renovation, organize a little league team, plan a family vacation, or get everyone at the office working on the same projects and priorities, there are plenty of great tools to help.
We have some of our own, and we'll share them in the discussions below, but instead of just throwing a list of items together, we want you to share your own with us too, on the same terms. Here's how to format your favorite collaboration app or tool:
Include a picture! Show us what the tool looks like, or at least give us a logo. A little visual interest never hurt anyone.
One tool per comment please! Let's keep it simple and easy to read—if you have multiple apps or services, add them as separate comments!
Try not to repeat apps! If you see someone who's already shared your pick, click the star or reply to their comment to give it a boost!
Tell us how why it works for you. Herding cats is difficult—how did the app work for you, and what did you use it for? Do you pay for it, or is it free to use? Why do you like it?
So then, let's begin! We'll get you started with some of our favorite time-saving tricks in the discussions, but we're really interested in yours, so fire away.
Title photo by Laias (Shutterstock) and Kapreski (Shutterstock).
Asana is one of our favorite personal project management tools, and for good reason. It works well if you're just keeping track of your own to-dos and pet projects, and you need to keep an eye on something from start to finish. However, Asana really shines when you get other people into the mix, and start sharing projects, workspaces, and other ideas with them for their feedback and support. You can easily assign specific to-dos to other people, keep track of everyone's progress using the web or the mobile apps, add and manage tasks on the go, add comments and have conversations about specific tasks on those tasks (which keeps them where they need to be but also gives everyone room to talk), and so on.
Everyone who uses Asana can even customize the layout and view so it works for them, and people who prefer smartphones or tablets can work on those devices, while people who prefer desktops and laptops can use the webapp. Setting deadlines and milestones is also easy, so if you want your general contractor to know they need to get the countertops finished by the weekend, you have a clear and easy way to communicate that to them with no confusion.
Cozi was one of your favorite group project management tools the last time we asked you about them, and for good reason. The nice thing about Cozi is that while many other tools are aimed at office workers and professional teams, Cozi is squarely aimed at organizing family members (and friends) to do things that matter outside the office. Family reunions, renovations, picnics, vacations, you'll find tools to help you organize those types of things, as opposed to project management tricks designed to help you build charts and reports.
The service also helps you build schedules and calendars for your family, so you know when everyone is in practice or when the kids are in class or have an activity; that way you don't try to schedule something on top of that. You can even organize grocery lists and give everyone in your household input over what goes into the pantry on a given week. It's remarkably powerful, and it's directly aimed at home users and individuals, something a lot of other tools just aren't.
Teambox is a project management and to-do app for small groups that supports document sharing, to-dos and sub-tasks, milestones, and more. It even supports Gantt charts and project calendars for those folks who are project management fans. You can manage to-dos and messages by email, set specific permissions for individuals on your team, have conversations over to-dos and events in the app, and more. Teambox is ideal for people who are generally digital workers or who all have access to the same service, so everyone can see the same charts and get on the same page.
If you and your team all work on the same documents, you can create custom workspaces for each project, complete with charts with milestones and timelines, attached and associated documents, and chats. You can even use the service for HD video conferencing with your teammates or co-collaborators. If you do need to leave your desk, you can keep track of your projects using the Teambox mobile apps.
CatchApp is a collaboration app for the iPhone (sadly, iPhone only) designed to help people keep tabs on where their documents and workflows are going. It's developed by the same folks behind Hojoki, a service we've mentioned before, that sends you updates whenever documents you've shared or networks you're a part of update, like Dropbox, Basecamp, and so on. CatchApp takes the idea to the next level by making the whole thing mobile, giving you a constantly updating dashboard of updates and notifications when someone opens documents you're working on, modifies them, posts comments or updates, sends a relevant message to you, and so on.
The app integrates with all of your favorite apps and services, including Google Calendar, Basecamp, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, Github, and others—and when any of those files are changed, uploaded, updated, or otherwise changed, you'll see it in your CatchApp stream for that application. They're even working on connecting with Asana and SkyDrive. You don't use CatchApp to actually organize projects so much as you use it to keep track of your team's activities, and any associated files and folders.
