Moving on altogether from desktop office tools, there is at the moment an endless offering of online integrated collaboration suites, most providing file sharing, conversations, task management and similar tools to support project implementation among teams.

Last spring I did a concise market research within the context of two projects my team is supporting. Hereby the main commercial offerings I tried, in alphabetical order: Deskaway, Glasscubes, Huddle, Manymoon, Onehub, ProjectPlace, Teambox, Teamwork (http://www.twproject.com/ Teamwork PM (http://www.teamworkpm.net Thymer, Wizehive. I only provide the links that are not so obvious, for the rest adding .com should work.

I would note that though no holy grail was found, certain aspects did stand out in order to help us make a decision, at least within our specific context. Before sharing some of my conclusions, I'd be interested in reading others' experience on the issue.

Incidentally, Teambox new version (4) is now in beta; you can get early access via this link http://v4.teambox.com/?s=1PHN (and actually help me get earlier access by using it :-)

Also, it is worth noting the big money being put behind some of those solutions, older and new. Manymoon has been acquired by Saleforce, SAP has its own product called Streamworks (focused more on the decision making process) and, more recently, VMware has joined with Socialcast and announced Strides (strides.do) also in beta, focused on management of collaborative tasks.

Alexander,

I spent some time two years ago looking at a number of collaborative work environments, including many of the ones that you mentioned. Unfortunately, I did not find any that really inspired me in light of how I work. One, however, that did catch my eye was Smartsheet: http://www.smartsheet.com/ . I am a "spreadsheet guy", and I liked how they developed their service around it. They used to offer a free account, but now they are charging for all of their plans. Nonetheless, its an interesting tool. Have a look.

--Ken

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.

For those who like spreadsheets/spreadsheet-like organisational methods, it's worth taking a look at Simple Groupware (which has a built-in Simple Spreadsheet) or at the latest beta of Feng Office.

I like spreadsheets, provided they support folding and competent text handling. My favourite spreadsheet-a-like prog is TreeSheets (which is good at both of those things, although it took all us enthusiastic users some time to persuade the developer to include the folding feature!).

Cheers,
Bill

I should add to the list Asana http://asana.com/ , mentioned in its own thread here http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3349/0/asana-is-out--free-collaborative-task-manager

@Ken
Smartsheet stands out indeed; I had tried it out more than a year ago and at the time I was put off by the price. Now it seems to me quite reasonable; I'm not sure whether the price has dropped since, or my memory fails me. That said, I find the spreadsheet paradigm unnecessarily overloaded, especially for most collaborators who would only need to access specific areas. For myself it would be good though.

@Bill
I checked out soonr.com when you mentioned it in another thread. In the projects I am supporting we need to share material with a large number of people, so the pricing model is a deal breaker. But for small, tightly collaborating teams it seems ideal.

Hi Alexander - aha, I've found that the guys/gals at Soonr are more than happy to discuss pricing, and have considerable latitude in that regard. You could do worse than talk to the salesperson I've been dealing with (Debra Ainscow on debra

For reference, I add a link here to a thread started two years ago by Ken http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1133/

The thread initially ellaborated on collaborative webspaces, but soon focused on Google Wave which had then just been announced. That's why I find it more relevant to the thread on collaborative text development, rather this one on project management.

Trello.com is a new contender and one that I am not quite sure where to file: it is process-oriented, providing boards with lists of tasks. Each task can be assumed by team members and moved along the lists according to the stage of implementation --at least this is one way of using it. The introductory video makes a much better job of describing the concept.

I believe that Trello stands out in its approach; it's not for everyone, but if your work is process oriented it could be a very valuable tool.

Hi Alex
Thanks for the link to Trello - v intriguing

M