This wiki-thread is for collecting and reviewing software tools for team communication and collaboration. These tools are primarily supposed to be used for specific project work by the teams working on them, in order to make project related work more manageable. Using these tools would be additional to using the baseline forum, wiki, and blog that we can use in any case.
Here is a relevant Wikipedia page out of which we could select interesting tools:
ProjectOpen (enterprise project management system – probably quite useful for startups)
Rizzoma (is based on the “email 2.0” system Google Wave that has been abandoned by Google due to insufficient popularity, even though it was rather amazing software)
Slack (this seems to be a much hyped communication and collaboration tool)
Trello (Card based. Cards are supposed to be moved to indicate progress. Seem a bit Getting Things Done inspired.)
Waffle (Free issue dashboard for GitHub projects – of course requires having a project on GitHub)
Please add more…
Reviews are best added as normal replies. Users with user group level 2 or higher can edit the top post directly and add new tools and comments to the list above.
Finally, there’s also a Wikipedia page that does a bit into categorizing different kinds of collaboration software tools:
Btw, I used to update this document with several interesting projects and ideas I found, including several for collaboration. I don’t update it now, as the amount of stuff I find is too much to make it useful to do so, and curating it better would take time. Anyway here it is: Ideosphere - Google Documenten
Hi! Another example of collaborative software: Comindware Team Network. This program allows you keep all your work discussions in the very same place where actual work gets done.
Thanks for joining in here, @Gregvilson. The Comindware Team Network seems to be doing about that same things that Slack does. However, Slack does have a free plan and the Comindware site feels kinda cluttered, and they are not transparent about pricing. They do seem to have free trial versions, though. If you have more information about Comindware and whether their software is really useful, it would be really appreciated. Do you use any specific team collaboration software at the moment?
I wonder whether Gobby or Etherpad could be used for a wiki in some way or another. There seem to be some Etherpad services around. Do you think we should experiment with one of them? Alternatively, I could try hosting something on my own. Or you could try to go ahead with that if you think your “hacker” skills are good enough for that
Gobby is perfect for programming or web related collaboration, it is great for collaboration on many projects like the ones mentioned in this forum. My skills are just starting so I plan on experimenting on IRCs first, but with Gobby it might be a lecturing experience, and fun.
So, you say we should try out Gobby? Will do that, but I first want to test out the Etherpad that is supported my Wikimedia. I could quickly create a Fractal Future Network Pad. Not sure how exactly it works, but I’m about to find out
I hope you can join that pad.
Edit: I’ve tried embedding the pad in this post, but it doesn’t work.
Edit2: Ok, now I’ve checked out Gobby, and it kinda feels like Etherpad for hackers. Without a dedicated server you can connect to, it doesn’t even seem to work! So, do you think I should set up a Gobby server on the Fractal Future Network VPS?
Good, noted. This may have to wait a few days, because I’m juggling a couple of different more or less urgent and important projects at the moment. When I’ll have some spare time and energy I’ll create a Gobby server.
I would recommend adding Fluxes to the list. It’s a free web based team collaboration tool. They have very simple interface. So you don’t need to learn anything to use it. The tool is still free even you have a large team. I happy to see all the common features such as adding tasks by team members, general search, deadline, marking tasks as complete, creating multiple cards inside a project board, live chat, adding notes and attachment, etc.
I suggest checking MyChat. The program is still under active development but has a lot of useful tools for collaborations already (remote control, screen sharing, voice and video calls, task management, intranet forum, etc.).
P.S. It also works reliably in slow Internet connections and LAN.
