An entrepreneur who has just got on to DeskAway pinged me the other day and asked me a rather rudimentary question “How do I add people into my Project?”  So here is how:

If you are the Account Owner or Super User, you can ADD / MODIFY / DELETE teammates from the TEAM tab on DA.

Here is where you’ll find the Team option

Under the TEAM tab, there is an option to Add Team Member. Here you can add a new team members to your account.While adding a team member, you can define the User Type for each member. User Type defines the extent of permissions / rights / access that user will have in the DA account. There are 3 user types:

Limited User: You can add people you are collaborating with, who are from outside your company as Limited Users. Limited Users can also be those who are working on specific parts of a particular project. Say, a team member of a UI design team or the free lance designer.

Regular User: Team leads, people who have a coordination role to play in a particular project, those who need to manage a small team or a particular project - all these guys can get Regular User access. Like the Team Lead of a UI design team. He can not only monitor the UI team, but can also add tasks / assign tasks, create events, share his thoughts on the project via the blog to motivate the team, etc.

Super User: A Super User can do all the things the other two users can do and more. This user can create and manage projects by adding milestones, tasks, etc.; assign people to the projects, manage and monitor the team mate’s progress within the project. An Account Owner / another Super User can give this user permission to add other users to the account and modify the account settings on DeskAway. However, these two permissions should be given to team members who are high up in the responsibility chart of the organization. Managers and CXOs in an organization are ideal people to be assigned permissions of Super Users. Team mates who are owners of a particular project, who are required to analyze data and progress of a set of projects, etc.

At MVP, the partners have Super User access. Each company we work with has a Project in their name and only team mates of that particular company has access to their project on MVP, as Regular Users. Anyone outside of that company, who is a part timer, free lancer, consultant - all these guys are Limited Users.  I have added all the various entrepreneurs I work with as team mates to my MVP account, globally. This makes it easy for me to add specific users to specific projects.

Adding users to specific projects:

Within a project, there is another Team option; from here you can manage team member access to that particular project. Here all the members that are a part of the account are listed and you can give them permission to access that particular project by changing the permission button from Red to Green. Only an Account Owner or a Super User with permission can add users to specific projects.

As an Account Owner on DeskAway, assigning permissions to users is a great responsibility.  Think about the level of involvement of the person you are adding into the account and assign them permissions accordingly.

I have been using Deskaway (DA) for the last 6 months. Having used Base Camp and Zoho for a while in the past, I migrated to DA and the experience has been better than the other two.

As part of my professional work, I not only use DA to collaborate and coordinate within my company (MVP), but I also have the responsibility of getting all the companies as part of our Portfolio on DA. This is a huge challenge, especially because various teams or individuals have their own methods of dealing with projects, tasks and their work in all.

Here’s a technique I used to get a portfolio company- a startup onto DA, very recently:

The CEO, lets call him Mike, is someone who believes that making lists on paper is a good way of tracking his personal tasks, meeting deadlines and achieving milestones. And this method is loosely followed by others in his team. I believe that it’s a great start (considering that I have met many people in responsible positions in large companies, who do not use even physical lists). This method worked really well for Mike and his team, when they were starting off their company. Today, the business has grown considerably and Mike has to manage a total of 2 teams and 10 people with different tasks, different clients, varied work times and multiple locations. Soon, I noticed that a few important tasks were being forgotten and deadlines were slipping.

I had spoken to Mike about DA in the past and had casually tried to get him and his team onto DA, but in vain. This time, I employed a different method.

Everyone who has worked on a project/ assignment individually or in groups understands the following:

- Tasks: Things to do
- Milestones: Things to achieve before a particular date / Important Dates

With this as the basis, I explained to Mike the importance of having a tool to track the things he needs to do that will help him achieve his milestones and progress in his projects. I used the below representation to explain and get Mike on DA

The premise here is that when you have any project ( Any activity that has a definitive business outcome. It can be anything from what a team is working on internally to a client assignment) to execute at hand, there are a few important dates attached to it. This can be release of a new website, launch of a new product, publishing the next magazine edition, etc. These are Milestones.  Attached to these Milestones are various tasks. These are things-to-do that help achieve the important dates. All these tasks collectively make a Task List.

So basically you can create a New Project on DA, let’s call it “Marketing Website”. One important Milestone attached to this is “Beta Launch on 1 Jan, 2009″. There are a set of tasks that are required to be done to achieve this milestone, these make for Task Lists (TL) - Product Development TL, Technology Development TL, Marketing TL. Each of these TL has a set of tasks listed below it.

It’s very simple. You could add more details to each task by attaching a start date/ end date, how long the task will take, assigning it to a team member, adding comments and sending yourself email reminders for the same.

Mike and his teammates have now started using DA to plan and manage their tasks. It has organized their work to a large extent. They are taking on more initiatives as a company now, since they have a tool that helps them plan and execute.

Mike now has better visibility on what is happening across teams in the company, as he gets a snapshot view of what everyone is working on and can monitor the Project’s health on a daily basis on DA. Mike now has enabled the “Automatic Email Reminder” option - this generates daily email updates to him and his team about their approaching deadlines and over due tasks.

Now, Mike and his team look at the My Tasks Tab on their DA dashboard to see what they have to do, instead of looking into their handwritten lists, depending upon their memories or waiting on their manager or teammate to assign them a task!

So, getting started on DA is as easy as listing your tasks on an excel sheet or on paper! Only, DA has many more advantages in helping you deal with multiple and complex projects.

Have you been successful in getting your team to use DA regularly? Please share your adoption techniques. Are you one of those who have repeatedly tried but have not been able to get your team to use DA? Do let us know what the reasons are or common complaints are.