Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Posting web page, logo, and ad mockups for reviews and approvals

Just as a note: if you create a message and attach an image file it will show up in the message as a thumbnail which you can then click on to to expand. It’s probably not as sophisticated as what you want but sometimes simple is good.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Moving Project from One Account to Another

I agree, this would be a nice feature. I’ve a large project that needs to be transferred. Exporting a project is no problem but I can’t import it.

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Easier way to upload files from email attachments

• I save the attachment to a temporary folder
• Typically I’ll Winzip and encrypt the file
• I then create a message in BC, browse for and attach the file and then upload it
• I then go back and delete the file from the temp folder

I doesn’t sound that bad but frankly its a pain because I constantly having to browse for the appropriate folder.

Does anyone have a quicker way to do this?

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Posting ScreenSteps Lessons into Basecamp Messages

Very cool, thanks!

Topic: Feature Requests / Posting comments to a message by replying

I’m excited! This is the number one issue that keeps people at my company from fully adopting BC. Way to go 37S!

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / What do you folks use to visually collablorate online?

We use Microsoft Live Meeting. It works very well and it’s secure.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / How do i import data into a newly created project?

I’d like to see this too. It would also be nice to be able to migrate data from one project to another. I know you can export data in an XML format but not sure you can import in back in again. This might be a nice little 3rd party app for someone to develop.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Prioritising one clients projects... How?

I think you will need to change your work flow methodology. It looks like your current work flow method is based on a filing system. With BC you setup projects (sort of like folders) which keep all of your files separated. So there is no need to file your covers in separate file folders – store each set of covers in separate as separate projects on BC instead. To keep track of the various phases of your project. I suggest you set up milestones and ToDo task templates.
Chris in Canada

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Require responses to email notifications in 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.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / What do you typically use writeboards for?

They’re also useful for drafting letters to customers and suppliers where you want input from various people.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Company policies regarding webapps

Either there are not many companies with sensitive data using BC or everyone’s afraid to address your question. I agree with you that it’s a problem. Every large company worth a grain of salt has spent years building a fortress for its data storage using firewalls, encryption, secure login etc. With Basecamp sensitive data could end up being saved outside of this walled fortress which raises questions for security.

Another problem is user management: when someone leaves the company all their accesses are revoked. With Basecamp there’s no way for IT to centrally control user administration since anyone can setup an account on Basecamp. If an employee leaves and the administrator forgets to delete them from BC the ex-employee could have assess to all sorts of sensitive information. It’s for these reasons that most larger enterprises will end up using an internally hosted app like Microsoft Sharepoint (which is inferior to BC in many ways).

I would be great to hear if anyone has found solutions for these kinds of challenges.

Topic: System Announcements / Basecamp interruption of service

Another lesson: Make sure your service provider doesn’t have any other single points of failure waiting in the wings. Go over their architecture with a fine-toothed comb. These types of hard outages are really detrimental to 37 Signals becoming an enterprise-class service provider.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Employee Adoption

Joakim, I’m not quite following you: Can’t you just assign a ToDo associated with a milestone?

Garryr – I agree, for example, milestones that are 30 days late probably means that project isn’t progressing (due lack of resources etc.)! With emails I probably would have just forgotten the request!

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / How to save notes and info for tasks?

I’d say there are a couple of ways of doing what you want:

First of all, create a ToDo for the organizer that includes an “Update contact info in Highrise” or similar task. You can create ToDo templates to make creation of multitask ToDos easy. Then have the organizer store the applicable contact info using one of two methods:

1. The hightech way would be to use Highrise to store your contact info.
2. A lowtech way would be to have everyone update an Excel spreadsheet with contact info and store the spreadsheet on Basecamp.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Employee Adoption

1. Basecamp (and other collaboration software) really works best on projects rather than daily activities.
2. The sooner you get all of your projects into Basecamp the better
3. Everyone with a significant role on a project needs to use Basecamp (this is a bit of a challenge in my organization since not everyone wants to use the application and they don’t all report to me)
4. Management derives the most immediate benefit from Basecamp because all the projects are nicely tracked in one place.
5. Staff with minimal project activity view collaboration software as ‘just another tool they have to use’.

I came across what I thought was a nice discussion on team collaboration at http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=2263.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Employee Adoption

Great idea but here’s the thing: my company is standardized on IE6 and forces the Homepage to be the company Intranet. I know there are work arounds though…

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Employee Adoption

Adam, Joakim, thanks for the perspective. An evaluation session is definitely in order. And yes, despite the simplicity of the system you do need to spend a lot of time with the users.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Employee Adoption

Thanks Nick for the input. I think the root cause of my adoption problem is that these folks are not use to working in a structured project-based environment. This is my 6th week in this role and I feel like my staff is running around like chickens with missing heads, jumping from one priority to the next. It’s got to stop. I think that Basecamp can bring some structure to what we’re doing. I’d love a serum but I think I think I’m going to have to do some good old people managing to get the proper work flow and discipline in place.

Does anyone else have some adoption war stories they are willing to share?

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Employee Adoption

I’m having trouble convincing my staff to use Basecamp. I manage a geographically dispersed department within a large corporation that has number of cost reduction projects underway. My motivation behind using Basecamp was to use the Messages forum to reduce the amount of email and provide a record of discussions, to introduce some simple project management, to provide a central place to store our files and to use the Writeboard to collaborate on important documents. After having implemented Basecamp for 1 month I find that staff are not logging in or participating in the discussions. While some of my staff sees the potential for the application others complain that Basecamp adds to their workload and that email is a good enough tool to use for doing their job.

I’m wondering if others have experienced the adoption challenge and have any advice on how to overcome it?