Idealware…A Few Good tools series
Idealware has come up with another good article on - A Few Good Tools for Sharing Files with Distributed Groups. I was happy to help Laura out with this article and provide some examples from my experience working with coalitions and geographically distant teams of consultants. We are often faced with how to collaborate effectively over long distances and produce a high quality product with input from the widest range of participants possible. The technology we use is just one variable in the equation but getting it right can help get us over big social and cultural collaboration hurdles.
Read the full text here. A key excerpt appears after the jump…
You’ve finally hired two new staff members to join your successful nonprofit. The trouble is, your new colleagues are in Chicago and your headquarters is in San Francisco. How will you share documents? Is there a better solution than constantly emailing attachments?
Or perhaps you’ve teamed up with eight partner organizations on a project to recommend sector best practices. It’s an exciting initiative, but what will you do with all of those documents that everyone needs to see and even edit?
Emailing documents will certainly work in a pinch, especially when one person takes primarily responsibility for creating and updating the document. However, this method doesn’t scale very well if you’re collaborating with a number of people on a file, or if you have a lot of reference files that you need to share. If multiple people are editing the document, it’s difficult to keep track of which version is which and whose changes are included where via email. Constantly emailing large files also puts a burden on email servers and inboxes to store all those attachments, not to mention adding to the clutter in your colleagues’ inboxes.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, shared folders and VPNs can be a great way to share files among long-term group members — but this route requires an investment of several thousand dollars up front, and some substantial setup time for each new group member. For instance, you could create a shared folder on a central network drive, and make it available to remote personnel through a VPN (a method that allows users secure access to your network from their home computers). File shares and VPNs are commonly used and reliable, but because they depend on a centralized network structure, they are most effective when used by a group of employees in a central location, with only a few who require remote access.
So what if you’re looking for something in between — something that’s more robust than email, but more accommodating to amorphous and ever-changing groups than a file-share and VPN? Thankfully, there are a number of solid options in this realm. Idealware asked six nonprofit technology professionals about their favorite remote file-sharing tools, and we combined their insights to come up with a set of solid options that might also work for you.
Tags: collaboration, idealware, tools