A Quick Guide To How We’ll Manage Things Together

There are a million ways to communicate.  We call.  We email. We send text and instant messages.  It can get a bit overwhelming.  With more people contributing more information about more ideas every day, it’s very easy for communication to get buried, sidetracked, or lost.

The Totera Project Intranet is a web site that’s designed to keep everything, files, communications, timelines and more, in one place.  Using this system will:

•    Keep all of our communication together over the length of the project
•    Organize each step of our process by topic
•    Archive all of our progress by date
•    Make our project accessible all the time, from any computer

Think of the Totera Project Intranet as our project’s office.  We use a system called Basecamp to run things, and it’s easy to use.  If you know how to go to a web site, send email, or use a mouse, you can use our Intranet .

The Totera Project Intranet has 6 different sections…

1. Overview
2. Messages
3. To-Do
4. Milestones
5. Writeboards
6. Files

You can move between sections easily by using the tabs near the top of the page. Each section has a different function, and together they cover all of the things we’ll have to communicate and share during our project.

Here’s a quick rundown of each sectio

Overview
The Overview shows everything that’s happening in our project.  Here’s what you can see:

•    The name of the project
•    Shortcuts to the other 5 sections
•    A timeline for the project, if one applies
•    All recent activity in every section, arranged with the most recent at the top
•    An RSS feed for the project, so you’ll know each time something is added
•    The names of everyone involved in our project

Messages
This is email for our project.  It works because everyone can share communication in one place (that way we don’t have to go digging around in your personal inbox).  To post a message:

•    Click “Post a new message”
•    Write something
•    Click “Post this message”
•    That was easy, wasn’t it?

To Do
The to-do list might be the easiest way to keep track of our project’s progress.  The Totera Project Intranet lets you add, cross off, and move around items in a way that, frankly, makes you want to get more done just to use the to-do features.  It’s easy to make lists with the Totera Project Intranet.

Milestones
This section is for keeping track of things that need to be done by a certain date.  It’s divided into 3 parts:  Past due, Upcoming, and Completed.  There’s a calendar in the margin of the Milestones section that’s color coded to reflect each list.

Writeboards
If there’s ever a need to create a document collaboratively, we’ll use a writeboard.  It’s an easy way to keep track of all the versions of a document that we might need.  Because we create content using different software, we don’t use writeboards for most projects.

Files
Here’s where we keep any and all files pertinent to our project.  Again, the big draw is that they can be accessed and updated by anyone in the project.  We keep all content for projects in the files section.

That’s all.  The way we’ll use the Totera Project Intranet is very intuitive.  It won’t take long for you to see how collaboration is simplified with this one tool.

We’re looking forward to getting started!