Thought leaders in the tech world today speculate that email is on the way out.  The Wall Street Journal reported that in its place will be social and collaboration platforms that will “…make communicating more frequent and informal—more like a blog comment or a throwaway aside, rather than a crafted email sent to one person.”

That is the premise behind many project management solutions like GroupCamp.  While these products are not exactly trying to eradicate email (since most of these applications depend on email to invite new members, etc.), developers do know that email is a clunky way to share out super-sized PowerPoints and other large files, not to mention long rambling messages that take up way too much of people’s valuable time.   Instead, why not collaborate via an online dashboard or workspace that allows for 24/7 document sharing, discussion and editing without your email inbox imploding?

GroupCamp is one such solution that does all that.

The Basics

If you think about it, GroupCamp is a funny name for a collaboration software program.  Depending on your childhood memories a camp might be a place where you and your friends went to “collaborate” on art projects and drama skits.  Never-the-less, the application lives up to its name – meaning it’s a shared workspace where you and your colleagues or clients can collaborate on projects, initiate discussions, edit documents, develop wikis and manage milestones and deadlines — without the worry of version control thanks to emails being sent to and fro.

GroupCamp offers companies, small and large, access to its solution with just an internet connection.  The idea is for smaller companies to have access to an affordable and easy platform to manage projects internally or externally (prices range from a free trial to $99 per month).  No longer will an SMB have to send large files over email to customers and co-workers, instead GroupCamp allows for people to post documents – even unruly PowerPointsand PDFs and offer colleagues and customers access to both your workspace and the files for editing purposes.

In addition to targeting SMBs, GroupCamp markets itself as a solution for smaller teams within larger companycollaborate on a project.

Whether you are a small to midsized business or just want to collaborate on a project with some team members, GroupCamp includes all of the necessary features to effectively collaborate and manage multiple projects and tasks. In addition the solution is easy to master as it cleverly helps users navigate through the interface with non-intrusive (I swear) pop-up directions at each stage.

Features:

Dashboard: Setting up an Account or Company

Once you sign up for an account with GroupCamp, you will get a company dashboard that displays all of your projects and milestones that will help you manage your workload. From the Dashboard, you can then navigate to several sections which are listed in a ribbon at the top:  Files, Tasks, Discussions, Milestones, Timelog and Wiki.

GroupCamp allows you to invite colleagues to collaborate with you on select projects.  At the right of the screen, there is a Create User button where you can create users and add in their email addresses.  These contacts are then stored in the program so you can easily send notifications out whenever you need your team’s input.  In addition, you can assign permissions to each user depending on how much access you wish each team member to have.

Once you add in your users, you can begin to create Projects and specific Tasks within those projects.  In addition, GroupCamp helps you designate milestones and deadlines.  

If you need to delegate the full management of a project to an outside company, that is also possible. In the project mode set up choose an outside company as the managing company and assign Manager privileges to one or more members of that company. This means you can virtually host a project for a partner company; they are free to add users and tweak.

Files:

GroupCamp allows you to upload documents from your computer in Files. You can then create folders and save the file in a designated folder.  This is recommended if you have multiple documents as it will help you keep track of all of your work.

In the Files section you can also contact colleagues or clients via email and offer them access to your files for editing purposes.

In addtion, as you create files,  GroupCamp allows you to stipulate which files are for public consumption and those you wish to remain private.  For example if you have multiple versions of a file you can mark them as private in the initial drafts. However, once you reach a version that can be shared with colleagues, you can “unmark” them as private, and it will be shared out to your team.

Managing Time

GroupCamp does a nice job of helping teams manage their time by setting milestones and deadlines as well as recording the number of hours it will take to complete a project (this is especially handy for those who are billing on an hourly basis).  To create milestones, navigate to the Milestones section and on the right hand side of the screen is a Create Milestone link where you can add in the name of the milestones for each project or task (e.g.: review press release or proof press release copy).

The Timelog section allows you and your team to enter in the number of hours it took to complete a task or project.  Timelog is also integrated with Tasks, so you can enter time from the Task section as well.  Timelog will help you keep track of the hours you and your team are putting against a project – both from a time management perspective as well as from a billing perspective.  GroupCamp also allows you to create Timelog reports so you have an accurate record of hours spent on a project for internal and external billing purposes.

GroupCamp does not have an invoicing tool however, but it will help your company keep an accurate account of the time spent on a project.

Discussions

One of the nifty tools that GroupCamp has developed is the ability to create Discussions around a project or task.  This is fairly simple to initiate.  First, click on the Discussions tab and once there, GroupCamp will help you navigate through the process.  You will first create a title and then you can write a short note to your team detailing the topic of the discussion.  Once you are finished creating your Discussion note, you can then email your “discussion” to colleagues, asking them  provide their ideas and thoughts.

For colleagues to respond to Discussions, all they need to do is reply to the email.  The discussion copy will also be captured on your GroupCamp site — and this view will allow you to see the entire thread of the discussion.

Wikis

Another collaborative feature of GroupCamp is Wikis. In this section, you can create project links that you can share out with members of your team.  Once a Wiki is created, GroupCamp will ask if you want to alert your colleagues via email.  Once your team receives the Wiki link, they can then access the information on the Wiki and respond accordingly.

An example of this might be to ask colleagues to edit a document.  You can create a Wiki for this document and then everyone you send the Wiki to will have access to the file (via the link) for editing purposes.

Google Docs

GroupCamp recently allowed those who work on Google Docs to integrate with the GroupCamp. You can choose among three types of files: document, spreadsheet or présentation.  Once you create the file in GroupCamp, the file is automatically created in your Google Apps account. By creating the file from within your GroupCamp project you can use all the project features from Google Docs such as adding comments, managing versions, and linking a file to an assigned task.

In addition, users of GroupCamp can add a GroupCamp Project to their Google Apps domain from the Google Apps Marketplace.

Is it For You:

Heck yeah! I really enjoyed using GroupCamp.  What I think is so attractive is its ease of use as well as the number of tools that enables a user to share out discussions, wikis and files.   The solution is good for both SMBs as well as smaller teams within a large company.  If you work for a midsized or large company, you might have to convince your IT team to allow you to have access to GroupCamp, but the solution actually offers “talking points” to help you make your case.  I found that both delicious and useful.