Collaborative Tools Project

I had an interesting meeting with the Law & Management team about the possibility of using a Collaborative Inbox ( which is a kind of Google Group ) rather than our current in-house issue management system. We went through what they wanted to do when people report problems and they came up with a heap of great questions. With almost all their questions, my answer was, "Ooh, I'll have to look that up and get back tomorrow". Here are the answers. For the purposes of trying to answer the questions, I am using a Google Collaborative Index Group called "Silly Questions" which has been set up to allow people to email it ( without being a member ) and has two members ( Mike and I ). I will be mailing the group from a test account called "Not Tom". Q1. Can an issue be automatically given an ID? This was an based on someone having mailed in an issue, then later calling in and being able to refer easily to the particular issue. An ID can be the quic...

Google Groups' different types of groups ( Web Forum, Email List and Collaborative Inbox and the other one ) do more to muddy the waters of understanding Google Groups than actually describe what it is they actually do. Anyway...  I previously have blogged here that Collaborative Inboxes didn't work because in order to receive a reply to an enquiry - it meant that you had to be a member of a group - and therefore able to see everyone else's enquiries. This is the equivalent of group therapy for a clap clinic, in that as a question asker, you get to see everyone else's questions. I was only now, just showing someone interested in using Collaborative Inboxes, that particular quirk when I discovered a "cc The original sender" checkbox which is by default checked. Yay! This means you could now use Collaborative Inboxes for private issues, that get responses from the experts who are members in that group. AND fellow experts can see your response. AND the pers...

Google Groups have added a few new flavours of group recently. As well as a regular Email List, you can now make a Web Forum, a Q&A Forum and a Collaborative Inbox - all slightly different takes on the same thing. As part of the move to Google, one of the biggest challenges are  what we call "non personal email accounts", for those accounts like chemistry-enquiries@york.ac.uk . Traditionally the handling of these accounts was done by a number of people, all sharing the log in details. In a Google-ized world, having accounts that can't be audited is "not the done thing". Our first trawl for non personal accounts found thousands of them. This included accounts for projects, conferences, departments, etc. With many of them, nobody knew who was replying ( or not ) to any enquiries. Gmail has the ability to delegate access to your account to someone else, but this still doesn't solve the  chemistry-enquiries@york.ac.uk problem . Essentially we need som...