I don’t know if it is just me but it seems that every new cloud computing service that gets flagged up these days is an online collaboration cum project management tool! The latest offering to trigger my radar is Teambox, a flash-based package that is open source and has the advantage that it is totally free to use. There are no limitations on the number of projects you can manage without having to start clambering up a price plan as your projects or project team grows. That said if you want to tweak and personalise your interface there is a charge of 90 Euros a month and a few more pay-for-tweaks options.
Initially there’s not a lot about Teambox to make it stand out from other similar packages. The interface is clean and attractive and navigation is pretty intuitive. Once you have created your project there are the usual modules such as tasks, a section for a people directory, a pages option so you can leave notes and an uploads section where files relevant to the project can be stored for all to access.
Where Teambox stands out is that it has an IM module so project members can chat online and the fact that the interface can be modified by drag n drop functionality and modules edited by simply double clicking and changing options. Messages is another useful module which allows you to send, um, messages to project workers and they can reply by email or by logging in,. The good factor here is that all messages are threaded and stored for future reference.
If you don’t want to run Teambox on its own servers there is nothing to stop you firing it up on your own and being open source you can make some “permissive changes” for your own benefits.
Okay, by playing with it for a few hours isn’t going to let you really get to grips with Teambox but I found the service very fast and very intuitive and will be dropping by on a regular basis to see how the Teambox team are getting on.
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