Not being able to assign a single person to multiple teams is a fatal flaw within basecamp and one that I can’t for the life of me figure out why it hasn’t been fixed.

We are two copywriters who provide product to 6 different functional teams. We also act as the keepers of the projects, opening jobs and posting copy, documentation, etc. for various project teams.

When we open a job, we need to be able to assign it to a team more easily than hand-picking every member every time.

Here’s a little diagram that may help.

Copywriters

Joe
Jim

Others

Fred – project manager, Widgets
Barney – project manager, Doohickeys
Wilma – category manager over both Widgets and Doohickeys
Betty – packaging designer for Widegets and Doohickeys.

Teams

Widgets – Joe, Fred, Wilma and Betty
Doohickeys – Jim, Barney, Wilma and Betty

As it is, when we open a new job (2009 Holiday Widget) for the Widget team, we have to select each of the four people. Granting and denying Admin level access each time based on the role each will play.

The closest BaseCamp seem to come to delivering on this apparently revolutionary idea of Teams is through Company.

As I understand it, the database handles a person as a unique entity that can only be associated with a project. That person can also be (and is) assigned to multiple projects. However, that person can not exist within more than one Company.

So in order to kludge together a team, Wilma and Betty have to be entered in both the Widgets and Doohickeys “company,” requiring seperate, unique ids for each.

It’s a surprising and quite frankly inexplicable oversight on the part of BaseCamp that the ability to set up teams is missing.

Fixes suggested elsewhere on this board range from setting each person up in each company to setting up a single company and choosing members each time. The teams are fairly constant however, and taking the time to navigate through three screens to pick 6 out of 160 people is a lot of added work for the simple task of establishing a rallying point (sort of a main base, or camp or something) for a project. It makes what should be a two minute job turn into a five minute job. And as we open between 1 and 6 jobs per day, throughout the week, those 3 minutes add up.

Please figure out a way to add Teams. If you can’t, it will be the sole reason why our 160-person design/manufacture company was unable to accept this system and will eventually have to leave leave basecamp for something else.

Thanks,

Web Webster

We have and use teams every day in Basecamp with the same players on multiple teams. However the team is the “person” and you cannot see the people inside the team.

We create a new user “CAD Team” with the email “CAD@domain.com”. That group email has the members assigned in the mail server. When a deliverable pertains to the team we assign it that way and all on the team are notified. We also have them for Design Team, Operations Team, Management Team, etc.

With us controlling the email addresses, we can give the same individual several addresses depending on their role in the project. Their role is apparent in the overview showing the players and all their email can go to a project address, role address or map back to their employee address.

Don’t know if it will work for you but suits us fine.

I can’t help but agree with Mr. Crab, err…Web Webster on this. Teams are both persistent and flexible where I work. It would be nice if Basecamp allowed for that without the need for some convoluted workaround. While it’s not a deal breaker for us-yet-it sure is a pain in the posterior.

+1, teams

although you can use 1 team = 1 Basecamp person = 1 distribution / group email address, there are situations (like my current company) where IT doesn’t allow the creation of distribution lists

+1 for teams