Programs are turning to online project management systems to improve collaboration and keep their work more organized. Tools such as Basecamp and Central Desktop offer effective, cloud-based project management to subscribers. While both are useful applications - LSNTAP has happily used Basecamp for close to three years - these services charge monthly fees that cash-strapped nonprofits may have trouble affording.
Thankfully, there is a free and effective project management tool emerging for non-profits. You may already be familiar with it: Google Apps.
Google Apps is already a popular online productivity suite for nonprofits. The main appeal of Google Apps is that it provides eligible 501(c)(3) organizations high-quality email, calendaring, and intranet services setup through their domain at no charge.
But how effective is project management in Google Apps? That really depends upon the sophistication of your current project management approach.
The Inbox Collaborators
Many organizations still rely primarily on their email inboxes to collaborate and stay on top of work. If that accurately describes your organization, then clearly Google Apps is an upgrade.
Google Apps allows for easy collaboartion via Google Docs and Sites. In most cases, some form of content - whether that's documents, presentations, spreadsheets, or website materials - is the ultimate output for a project team. Consequently, content collaboration is essential to any project management solution. We'll start there.
Google Docs: In Google Docs, users can build all sorts of content using Google's online applications, which work pretty well for most uses. Individuals who would prefer to stick wtih Office or WordPerfect for creating documents can utilize Google Docs as centralized storage place where material can be shared with a project team.
Docs also has decent revision history features that allow collaborators to monitor changes to a document and revert back to an earlier version if necessary. Unfortunately, this feature is currently not available in Docs for files uploaded in other formats - though you can get a revision history for unconverted documents using Google Sites.
Google Sites: Google Sites allows programs to go much further with online project management. In some ways, content collaboration works better in Google Sites. Revision control exists for both files created and converted with Google's tools and unconverted files from Office and WordPerfect.
In addition, Sites allows project teams to easily incorporate many of the features found in tools like Basecamp, Central Desktop or SharePoint. These features include task lists, calendars, announcement pages, and team directories. Pages within Sites can also be setup to creates project dashboards that provide a high-level snapshot of the project's status.
Veteran Project Managers
Organizations that already use advanced project management tools are likely already familiar with online collaboration spaces, version control, and other basic features. Can Google Apps provide simple, robust project management out of the box? No, but the addition of third-party apps through the recently launched Google Apps Marketplace can provide effective project management tools that integrate with the existing Apps productivity suite.
(More info coming soon.)
Online Resources for Google Apps
Google publishes a range of blogs related to their Apps platform. In addition to those, there are a number of bloggers devoted to examining and critiquing their services. Here is a list of official and unofficial sites covering Google Apps:
More LSNTAP resources on Google Apps:
Google provides three different editions for organizations: Standard, Educational, and Premium. Standard and Educational are free. Premium runs at $50 per user account per year.
Standard: This contains the Google products you're already familiar with: Gmail, GCal, Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Talk, and a Google Start page. These products function the same as their consumer counterparts, but Google Apps provides an administrator control panel for creating users and managing their accounts. Administrators can reset passwords, create default security settings, and limit sharing of organization documents outside their organization.
Even this most basic version of Google Apps can be integrated with a new or existing domain (e.g. http://www.yourorganization.org) - making it a great option for small nonprofits operating on a tiny budget.
Education (Nonprofit): Although officially targeted at schools, the Education edition of Google Apps offers a full suite of office productivity applications at an unbeatable price. For organizations using an email server, the Educational edition gives you access to extra email, calendar, and site features. It also provides a useful email migration tool for moving existing email from your mail server to Google Apps at designated intervals so they do not overwhelm your IT infrastructure. For calendars, Google provides conference room and resource scheduling. Also, you receive the same support as premium users with 24/7 assistance and phone support for critical issues.
Premium: This Google offering has everything the Educational version has, but with some nice additions. Email storage is raised to 25 GB. There is a policy management system that lets administrators track messages, route them for review, or block if desired. More details can be found here. Support is the same as that given to nonprofits and educational institutions, but this is the alternative for anyone without 501(c)(3) status from the IRS.
Information security is important to every organization. Before having Google host your email and documents, there are several things prospective users should consider.
Copyright:
While information throughout your Google Apps domain is scanned and indexed for the embedded search engine, Google has no claim to your information.
Third Party Access to Data:
Except as noted in their privacy policy, they will not deliver email or other data to any third parties. When users send data through their system, all functions are automated, which means no Google employees have any need to examine your information, leaving your documents safe for your use only. The one exception is that they do use words indexed in Gmail to designate which advertisements best apply to you, but like their other services, this one is also automated.
Further Reading:
Would you like to manage your own email accounts without the headaches of setting up and maintaining software or a server? Gmail provides one of the best email interfaces for any organization’s needs – spell check, virus scanning, POP and IMAP capability, and rich text formatting being some of the essential tools at a user’s disposal. Gmail offers plenty of storage space, with approximately 6GB being the standard for those not using the Premium edition.
Already have your personal mail server? Google makes the transition to their system easy and without requiring a degree in networking. For organizations with a few users (under 20), Mail Fetcher may be the best approach. This is also useful for organizations where employees use their personal account scattered across different services. Here are the two alternatives to moving existing email:
Mail Fetcher: This service uses POP to take email once an hour from outside email accounts. If you want to move old email to your new accounts, years of messages can be moved in a matter of days. MailFetcher does not preserve labels from other Gmail accounts, but you can put email from specific accounts into a folder by using a filter, or give all incoming email a label from that email address.
Email Migration Tool: For those who host their own mail server, Google offers a tool specially designed for email migration. You can set up this feature to spread the move over days or weeks in case you don’t want to overburden your server. Google’s Email Migration Tool uses IMAP and works with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Cyrus IMAP Server, Courier-IMAP, or Dovecot.
More Features with Gmail
Links
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/
http://lifehacker.com/search/gmail/
Need calendar software to operate inside and outside your organization? Google Calendar is a wonderful solution. It provides users with the ability to share their personal calendar with business associates, friends, family, and the rest of their organization, but there is more potential. Advertise your events by publicly showcasing your organization’s calendar. Google lets you search their online calendar database so you can track national events, whether they are for conferences or other announcements. See what LSNTAP is doing and when by copying and pasting the LSNTAP Training iCal feed.
By using Google’s package, you are given the power to set the default privacy controls inside your organization. When someone joins your staff, they don’t need to request individually from every staff member to share their calendar with them. They can simply copy and paste their iCal links for whomever they need, and those calendars are now listed in their account. Having one person do the labor is much easier than getting dozens of people to send you their calendar. If you would prefer that others didn’t see your entire schedule, Google allows events to be labeled private. These will show times when you are busy, but no other details, unless you make them public.
Events from other calendar software may be imported to a Google calendar. Any calendar program that can export events into a CSV file (Outlook Express, Weboffice) can be moved to a Google calendar. ICal may also be used to do this.
Google Calendar Offline
What do you do when you don’t have internet access? The biggest issue in the past with Google’s Calendar software is that it requires online access. Not any more. Using either an open-source calendar client or a proprietary one, most can be synchronized with Google Calendar through a useful hack.
Syncing with Microsoft Outlook
The only calendar client that Google provides the ability to synchronize with your Google Calendar is Microsoft’s Outlook. They offer 2-way and 1-way syncing so you can have the choice to either edit through Outlook or online with Google Calendar. The current issue with doing this is that you can only sync your account’s master calendar to outlook, so your other calendars will not appear. Read more about it here: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=89955
Syncing with Other Clients
For users interested in using one of the open-source calendars with Google’s program, there is a special add-on just for you. GCalDaemon is an open-source project designed to do this very feat. It can be IT heavy to implement, but once done, is a very welcome addition. It works with Mozilla Sunbird and Lightning. You can now make changes offline, and they will take effect when your internet connection returns. This will also let your client give you time and date notifications without always being connected to Google Apps.
Features in Google Calendar
Links
Needing that project management boost in your organization? Google Docs provides the perfect tool for group collaboration. The usual suspects are here: word documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Upload your existing office documents and edit them online. Document owners have the ability to give users outside their organization permission to view documents, or make changes. Documents made with proprietary software such as WordPerfect or Microsoft can be uploaded to Google and modified on site. For formatting with Google Docs you can now place content with CSS, but, while nice, does not give as much control as their desktop counterparts.
Mass Uploading to Google Docs
For organizations or users who would like to make their old documents available online, there are several third party programs designed to perform mass uploads to Google.
See here for more information: http://groups.google.com/group/GoogleDocs/web/mass-upload-downlad-to-from-google-docs
Google Docs Offline: http://gears.google.com/
A wonderful new feature released in April 2008 for Google Docs is the ability to read and make changes offline to certain documents. Using the add-on Google Gears, users can now read their Google Spreadsheets and Presentations when they are not connected to the internet. For word documents they can even make changes.
Drawbacks:
The main issue with Google Docs is that it is not Microsoft Office. The functionality parallels open office, where many favorite Word and Excel features are not included at present. Google docs lets you examine past revisions, but more sophisticated tools such as tracking changes with color-coded text, determining document reading level, etcetera are not available at present.
General Features for Google Docs
Features for Documents
Features for Spreadsheets
Features for Presentations
Links
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/
As mentioned in this section's frontpage, Google’s response to online project management software is Google Sites.
Google Sites allows administrators to develop password restricted, specially designed web pages, limiting access throughout their organization. Google offers templates for creating dashboards, lists, file cabinets, and announcements. The main shortcoming with Google Sites when compared to proprietary project management software is that Google expects organizations to decide the layout and features. This leaves significant work at the program end to get things up, running, and looking nice. Also, scheduling tools such as milestones do not exist at this time. Google also limits the use of hard-coding in designing your personal websites. This means they turn off JavaScript, iframes, and the like. For most organizations this is not an issue, but it does put restraints on IT people who want to customize their sitel.
The real advantage with Google Sites comes when you are using Google Apps. Google Calendars and Google Documents can both be inserted into Google Sites pages. Unfortunately, organizations that do not use Google Apps as their primary calendar or project management software, do not receive these advantages.
Screencasts
Positive Reviews
Negative Reviews
Google Talk is a special chat feature which is integrated into Gmail. It is a built-in messenger that shares characteristics with both closed and open messengers, but is also available as an external client like Pidgeon or Trillian. It uses the eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), also known as Jabber. While it operates on servers hosted by Google, it can interact with Jabber users outside their system. Jabber clients such as PSI or Pigeon work with Google Talk and organizations can even receive their own organization Jabber ID. This is done simply by specifying their SRV records with their DNS host to point toward Google. This gets you a personal Jabber server without the headaches.
Some legal services organization would prefer their messages never be scanned at all by an outside company, so that remains a benefit to continuing with an in-house Jabber server. Nevertheless, both personal Jabber servers and Google Talk transmit information across countless servers over the internet, so the level of risk is approximately the same for both services.
Links
http://googletalk.blogspot.com/
Having Google handle your organization’s security does bring many benefits to your IT department. Since no server or software upkeep is necessary, all updates and security fixes are handled on Google’s side. For in-house content regulation, Google Apps administrators have the power to restrict access to their domain’s online services. Google provides domain settings where the admin control panel can prevent any document or calendar sharing outside the organization. This is especially useful with Google Docs where a large number of collaborators may need to edit a very secure document. Turning on the domain security settings can keep your organization’s vital information from being compromised.
Google's security isn't perfect, however: As of summer 2009 several security experts have noted that Gmail, Google docs and Google calendar are vulnerable to hijacking because they are not automatically encrypted (Security Fix, Top Security Minds Urge Google to Encrypt All Services, June 16, 2009).
Users can avoid this problem in Gmail by turning on an option that permanently keeps their email encrypted. A similar option is not available for Google docs and Google calendar, though users can access encrypted versions of these services by typing https://docs.google.com or https://www.google.com/calendar directly into their browser's location bar.
Links
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/
This section provides bullet points on various hurdles new Google Apps users should consider. It will be updated as Google makes improvements, and new criticisms come to light.
For that matter, if you have a Google Apps pet peeve, leave us a comment about it, and we'll add it to the list!
Concerning Google Apps
Concerning Gmail
Concerning Google Calendar
Concerning Google Docs