Podio’s solution is to give IT workers the ability to build their own apps. “If they build it themselves, they are going to use it,” Ahlers predicted, adding that there’s already a great precedent for end user-built apps: Excel. People do all kinds of crazy things with spreadsheets to customize them for their needs. Now it’s time to leverage that kind of creativity and make it available within an enterprise. “These things need to get out of the documents,” he said.

Podio’s enterprise social networking product is offering its customers the ability to easily build apps without complicated scripting languages that come with a steep learning curve, explained Ahlers. The company’s users have already built or customized 46,238 apps leveraging the company’s API, and Ahlers predicted that leveraging this kind of creativity will play a huge role for all kinds of enterprise IT solutions. “This is the future of the future of work,” he proclaimed.

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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Like many similar products, upon login, users are taken to a dashboard where they can see an overview of activity for projects with which they are associated. The “Comments and Messages” area is laid out in a Twitter-like fashion, and users can see more detail, or respond, by clicking an existing message. Oddly, it appears that one needs to go to a different screen to compose a new message.

Other features, such as schedules and tasks, should be appealing to those who prefer visual representations of project plans. Schedules can be changed by dragging the bars in the Gantt-style calendars (which Team Effect has implemented without Flash, thankfully). Team Effect includes some sophisticated reports that web workers should find useful, such as project status and schedules.

The documentation is OK, as far as it goes, but appears to be incomplete. I wasn’t able to find information on whether the product notifies users of changes by email, or whether it has any tools such as RSS feeds that would keep people up-to-date without logging into the web site constantly. Additionally, the web site times out after a fairly short period of inactivity. The system does allow you to export some data to Excel, and this ability is apparently being expanded.

Team Effect is priced depending on the number of users you need. It offers a 30-day free trial, after which the basic package is $15 per month for five users. Other packages are available, all at the same rate of $3 per login per month. For most packages, the fee is only charged if a user actually logs in. All packages include unlimited projects and storage. Team Effect also offers discounts or free service to nonprofit organizations.

Team Effect will appeal to those who like visual representations of their workflow. But people working on projects that change frequently may find logging into the Team Effect web site several times a day to be a hassle.

Have you used Team Effect? How do you manage projects?

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Once installed, Offisync adds a new toolbar to your Office apps. (Offisync works with Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations.)

The Offisync toolbar

First, you need to configure Offisync with your Google account details using the “Accounts” button. Offisync supports multiple accounts, so if you use both Google Docs and Google Apps, you can easily switch between them.

You can then use Google Docs as an online repository for your Office documents. Click on “Save As” in the Offisync toolbar and you get access to a file menu showing your Google Docs account. As well as being able to save files, you can add, rename and delete folders.

Once your document is saved, you can access it from any browser through Google Docs, or open it up again in Office. You can also use Offisync to edit your existing Google Docs files in Office.

One of  the best things about Google Docs is how easy it makes sharing your documents with others and collaborating on them. Offisync brings that power right inside Office. Click on “Collaborate” and you can choose to share your document with anyone else through Google Docs. If they also have Offisync isntalled, they’ll be able to work on the document in Office, too.

Offisync: A document in Office and Google Docs

Offisync’s not perfect, because Google Docs doesn’t have quite the same functionality as Office — it doesn’t support tracked changes and turns some objects into images, for example — but for most documents it works very well. The next version of Office will hopefully have cloud storage and collaboration functionality included, but until it’s released, Offisync is a great interim measure.

The Offisync beta is free to download and use, and works with Office 2003 and Office 2007 on XP, Vista and Windows 7. It also requires .NET Framework 3.5, so if you don’t have that already, it will be downloaded as part of the install. There’s a demo video available if you’d like to see it in action before trying it out.

Have you tried Offisync? What did you think?

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Back in July when I originally covered the beta of Smartsheet Task Manager and Project Collaboration service, I had some reservations about adopting it. While I thought it was a strong app, I also believed it was lacking some of the core features I would need.

With their official launch of V2 today, I wanted to give it another look to see how things have changed since I last looked. I also had an opportunity to chat about Smartsheet with founder and chairman Brent Frei who shared with me some of the design philosophy behind the service and productivity in general.

According to Frei, Smartsheet is built upon 5 Foundational characteristics that define and guide the user experience, and where in the process most applications fail. From the initial first impressions through to company wide adoption, Frei claims that Smartsheet is designed to address the needs of real users through each of these phases.

One of the most intriguing of these 5 Foundations to me is their “No Adoption Required” philosophy. If you have ever tried to incorporate a project management tool into a team or collaborative environment, you understand the challenges of trying to get everyone on board. Whatever the case for the resistance, the tool ceases to be effective if the team doesn’t use it. Smartsheet and the “No Adoption Required” philosophy tries to combat this by enabling folks to be a contributor without needing to ever create an account or log in.

Acknowledging that email is still the primary communication tool in most organizations, Smartsheet has really beefed up notification and participation options through email. Using live secure links, users can access the area of the project that is relevant to them and incorporate their updates directly in to the Smartsheet system. These live links are also used for access to attached files.

I really can’t stress how easy and seamlessly this is done. Say I need a status update from a particular user on the line items he is responsible for, I can send them a quick update request link to just those items. They can add updates or comments, change task status, add files etc…

Reporting options will allow these status update emails to be scheduled and automated making it really easy to create a nice consistent workflow process.

File attachments and threaded discussions can also be affiliated with each line item task which is really handy.

Another really thoughtful feature is full change management and recording. Track who completed what and when and highlight the changes over a particular time period.

Options for branding and customization are also nice and can be adjusted for each organization you work with. A new branded distribution program adds customized templates and workflow along with revenue sharing.

All together these improvements and refinements, along with some upcoming reporting options, make Smartsheet a much more compelling option for project and task management than it was when I reviewed them in beta. It is simple to use, easy to access, and affordable.

Even though I’m still not convinced the spreadsheet metaphor is the right one for me, there is a certain comfort and familiarity to Smartsheet that makes it easy to just jump in and start working.

Pricing for Smartsheet starts with a free 2 sheet Starter Account with additional sheets and reporting options available for the higher account levels. I really like that they don’t limit users with any of the accounts. I believe pricing models like that tend to inhibit the desire to bring folks on board. Smartsheet allows you to share with an unlimited number of people with any plan.

Are you ready to give up your spreadsheets for Smartsheet?

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