Working together can be hard work. People have different ways to work, they aren’t always together with their colleagues or are able to talk face to face, and sometimes they might not even work in the same location or timezone. For all these reasons and more, when working together it’s important that everyone knows what to do now, next and by when, to keep the ball rolling.
Successful projects start with collaboration and that’s why a project management tool can play an important role in bringing the team together. They provide a common place where team members can interact, plan and execute their tasks to accomplish common goals. There’s exactly where Outplanr steps in. 👋
Here are a few ideas of how Outplanr can be your team’s assistant and help you collaborate easily and achieve more together.
Track your team’s progress in real-time
When you’re part of a team, specially if it is a large one, it can be hard to keep track of who’s doing what and get all the updates in real time. Outplanr lets you track, monitor and stay up to date with your project’s and team’s progress in real time. How’s that, you ask?
The Track View works like a log where an entry appears every time someone starts, pauses or completes a task. On the top of the screen you can also filter to see only the activity of a specific project or a specific person.
The Work view Notifications Section will also let you know when someone assigns a task to you, or the status of the tasks you assigned or you follow. So no more “who’s doing this?” or “what’s the status of that?”
Stop overusing emails and say goodbye to follow up meetings
Does your inbox often surprises you with a record number of emails from your co-workers received or sent in one day? Or do you keep having meetings built around status updates and other operational activities?
Of course there are situations when an email is our only option to make a deal or a meeting is crucial to make important project decisions. But when it comes to team communication, it’s time to move on to team messengers, task managers and other teamwork tools that make collaboration fast, simple and engaging.
How can your team communicate using Outplanr?
Task Comments: If you need to talk to Joe about the Status Report he’s been working on you can use the Comments section 💬 on the task edit panel to do so. Simply open the edit panel and you’ll see the place to start typing your comment right on the bottom.
New Message in the Notifications Section: Now, let’s imagine you brought cupcakes 🧁 and need to let everyone know about it. Instead of sending a message to each person or start yelling at the entire office 📢 you can use the Notifications section to write your message (it will certainly be more quiet 😅).
Slack integration: Do you use Slack to collaborate with your team? Then we have great news! The Outplanr app for Slack links your Outplanr account to your Slack team. Your Slack Team will be able to stay on top of everything that is happening on your Project Manager with a log of all your Team tasks on directly into a Slack channel, as well as quickly create new tasks without having to leave Slack.
Share your documents (and make version control easier)
Did you ever receive five different versions of the same file and got confused with which one you really needed to use?
Outplanr allows you to share files, helping you manage your documents seamlessly. When you create a task, in its edit panel you can attach files related to that task and upload each new version of a document. You’ll spend less time tracking down files and digging through emails.
Work close together (even remotely)
If your team as the flexibility to work from the comfort of their homes or you work together across different office locations and time zones, then a project management tool is ideal to make sure everyone knows what tasks they are responsible for, and have all your tasks, projects and deadline in a single place.
In Outplanr you can assign and prioritise tasks and have a shared view of the working week. There will be a clear delegation of duties and responsibilities and since you’re able to access everything about your projects you’ll get a clear overview of where things stand. So although you’re not working under the same roof everyone will be one the same page.
Balance everyone’s workload
If you’re managing a team, you’re certainly in charge of assigning work to your team members, but perhaps there’s the case when you end up putting too much work on one or two shoulders. The Plan view is the perfect place to see who’s busy or not, this week or in the next few weeks.
If you see John is marking overtime you can quickly reassign some of his tasks to Lauren or Josh who are not so busy at the moment. With a simple drag and drop you can rebalance workloads and make sure no one is burnout.
When working in a team, everything from task deadlines to project status should all be clear in order to reduce possible misunderstandings. Effective team collaboration is essential in the overall success of a team. 🏆 With Outplanr you’ll organize and keep track of multiple projects, while making sure everyone knows what to do now and next, avoiding the stress of the team and keeping everyone motivated and on the right track. 🤩
