Team Solutions #2: collaborative webspace for project management

Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 1, 2011 at 12:55 PM

Great list, Alexander - thanks! I’ll look into some of those. Something we’re experimenting with currently - with pretty good results - is a service called soonr.com, which synchronises files across multiple computers based on “Teams” and “Projects”. Teams = users, who can be assigned to Projects. Files (including folders) can then be uploaded/downloaded to the soonr.com website, and synchronised across using soonr-dedicated Windows File Manager/Mac Finder folders.

So far, so boring. More interesting are (a) the full-text search facility, which supports MS Office documents, PDFs - but not, weirdly enough, HTML files - and (b) the built-in editor under iOS, which allows you to rough-edit Word/Excel/PowerPoint files on an iPhone or iPad.

As a file management system, it’s actually pretty powerful. But what won me over was the local synchronisation - I have no wish to confine my valuable data to some entity’s web servers. I want them right here, on my own premises!

Oh, and they’ve got another sensible arrangement: you can have a certain number of “Members” (i.e. fully authorised/paid-for team members) plus a certain number of “Connections” (= outsiders with temporary access to a specific project/projects). Great for giving clients/suppliers temporary access to specific files.