General remarks and advice

General Advice on Using Online Collaboration Tools

Just to make things clear right from the beginning: we often hear the criticism/complaint "why do we need so many tools??? it's confusing". Well, the thing is, there is unfortunately no single tool that has the combined functions of all the various tools. We searched, it simply does not exist. And as an organisation operating worldwide and working online, these tools are crucial to make our work EASIER and to provide the transparency we need to function efficiently. And, just for a few seconds, imagine the too-free alternative... it's chaos : you wouldn't know when people are available cos there would be no shared agenda. f you wanted a document, you would have to email the entire team to figure out who has it on his/her laptop. If you wanted to take a decision you'd have to start a long email chain and receives tons of emails with everyone's thoughts/answers.... Convinced yet that tools are useful? ;-P

1. Use each tool for its defined purpose

In the following chapter, you can read exactly how the euforia team has defined the purpose of each collaboration tool. To avoid being overwhelmed by many tools, a new one is only added if it has a clear purpose that can be differentiated from the already existing tools.

Summary of our tools and their purposes:

• Trello

  • Management of tasks and discussions directly related to these tasks. Each circle has its own trello board.

  • Sometimes for information that is shared with the whole team (e.g. yearly priorities; strategies etc.)

• Google Hangout: for remote meetings

• Google Drive: for File Storage & Working on files

• Google Calendar: for scheduling meetings & having our agendas accessible for others

• Toggl: to keep track of how much we work (mostly used for corporate projects)

• Glassfrog: to have our governance always clear & to hold governance meetings

• Loomio: for collective decision making

• Slack: for internal communication within euforia staff / inters / trainees as well as within the circles and between people

• Leapsome: for sharing feedback with other staff /interns/ trainees; for 360° yearly evaluation; for checking our progress on our quarterly objectives

• Telegram: it is our channel to communicate with our wider community

• WhatsApp

  • FUN group: informal discussions (non-work related)

  • GOSSIP group: informal chat with our community of staff and interns alumni

2. 'Ping' relevant people

Across all tools we are using, you can use the 'ping' to get the attention of individuals that you would like to see your message. You can do that by adding an@before the user name of the person, which will send them a notification.

Example: @alessia will send a notification to Alessia.

3. Manage your notifications!

Look for the settings in each tool where you can mute notifications.