Online platform for virtual team (of volunteers)?

[cjm1982]

Hi all,
Looking for some suggestions for an simple platform for communicating with a team of contributors to one of our sites/magazines. Most of them are volunteers and not employed so encouraging people to use unfamiliar project management software is tricky and ideally I want something that's free or very easy to use, so things like Basecamp or Huddle are a bit too involved or expensive. We tried using a Facebook group but it didn't really work, mainly because of the amount of spam etc that flies around Facebook, people weren't keeping on to of it.

I use Producteev for my own task management and this has a teams option but again, it's another unfamiliar thing that you're asking people to get to grips with.

Another idea is setting up a Google + Community, this seems very accessible and easy for people to login to or get updates from and Google at least is something everyone would be familiar with.
Anyone used Google + or Google Groups for anything similar and did you find it effective?

Main tasks I want the platform to achieve are, sending out updates for what products etc are available to review, with users allowed to comment below to keep track of who wants it and who's interested in it, same for events to cover, and also I want to be able to forward press releases as emails for writers to pick up and turn into articles.

At the moment I use mailing lists and email out updates, but tracking the responses is a nightmare.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Thanks

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I would set up a forum and block it completely from the search engines, and make all members manual approved. This would be real easy to du and free.

 

[cjm1982]

I would set up a forum and block it completely from the search engines, and make all members manual approved. This would be real easy to du and free.

Thanks, that's a good idea and something I'd considered, creating a private area on the website itself for contributors to login (which I will do anyway so they've got access to some other resources) but I'm not sure if a forum is flexible enough.

One of the key functions I want is getting things out of my inbox and into the community, so ideally I want a platform where I can forward an email into the community and that's turned into a new post, similar to the way task management apps let you forward an email and this creates a new task.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

yep you can do this. How many tasks are we talking about?

Very often people overcomplicate things, spending more time searching for an answer than handling it manually would take.

E.g. you can set up groups on a forum and forward to that group, also, how long does it take to manually make a post?

you could even hack it together by using a message to post plugin

 

[cjm1982]

Yes, you're right, I'm very guilty of that sometimes, spending hours searching for the perfect virtual solution when it would be easier to just do something manually. And I'm a sucker for nice looking, elegant solutions too, so perfect fodder for all those online app companies!

The email to task thing is quite a crucial one, as I want to be able to make that as streamlined as possible, especially as I'm on the move or reading them on my phone etc a lot. It can sometimes be 15 press releases a day which are worthy of being turned into articles, but on the simpler scale products for review would just be a weekly update.

 

[RemoteTechs]

A little tricky as you seem to be asking for some advanced functionality from a collaboration solution like an audit trail, email updates and email to lists, however most of those features are only found in premium solutions.

For example Microsoft SharePoint can do all of the above, however its not a free solution.
Its a available in two flavors, either as an application that you install on to your own server, or as a hosted solution on Microsoft's servers.
Its really easy to use, because it follows the standard Microsoft Office and Operating System standards, most people are very familiar with it, however it takes a bit of knowledge to get it set up.

I guess you'll need to weigh up which is the most criteria that needs to be met, as from your spec, I think you'll only cover those requirements with a paid solution.