PluggedOut spent a recent weekend scouting around for a “groupware” application and decided to give Basecamp a looksee.
If you’re working in a “wide area network” on a project, it’s essential to have somewhere central that all news, updates, milestones, tasks and such like can be pooled. Basecamp provides everything you might need.Granted, Basecamp is not Microsoft Project, but then it doesn’t cost thousands of dollars either - for all but the biggest operations it’s going to cost a few dollars a month. So what do you get? Quite a lot as it happens.
A typical Basecamp site is centered around the organisation that creates it - this could either be you as a one-man-band, or your company. Within that organisation you can then create “Projects”, with each project having to-do lists, message boards, milestones on a calendar, “Writeboards” (simple wiki’s), File Upload areas, and even live chat if you pay for it.
As an organisation, you can then create user accounts for those participating on the projects - both your own project team, and any external clients you might want to give access to each project. This is all managed through a wonderfully intuitive address book system.
On top of the entire heap of projects, lists, milestones, users and so on, you can view a dashboard view across all projects.
I am impressed with Basecamp. It doesn’t do anything earth-shattering, but what it does, it does well. If you are looking for a collaborative online environment to assist in the running of a project, take a look - the costs start at zero, so there’s really no reason not to check it out.
