Newbie here, just created a new todo list in bascamp and for one of the todo list items I assigned a team member to be responsible for that task. I then enabled email notification so the task item was sent to the team member. So far so good.

The problem is that when the team member received it, he sent me a regular email with his comments. I thought that part of the purpose of using bascamp was to track all email communication within basecamp. So my question is, how do make sure that all communication is entered into basecamp?

You have to “slap-em around” if these reply via email. What I do is I post a message in Basecamp and relate it to the milestone. You can set up the message to post an email notification which provides a nice link for your team members that opens up Basecamp for them. Then they can post a response or provide updates in the message track. It sounds complicated but really isn’t. But you have to train your team members to stop using email.