One great aspect of TrueShare that I don’t think gets talked about enough is team collaboration.

That is what the TrueShare Unlimited Users feature is all about – Go TEAM!

As far as I know TrueShare is the only online file system that offers unlimited users – which is essential for doing business without constraints!

However, in this blog I’m talking about two other features that make teamwork so smooth in the TrueShare system – Workgroups and Forums.  These features work great as stand alone tools, or can be combined for seamless collaboration across your organization.

I’ll give you a brief explanation of each feature and then show you how to enhance your team collaboration with both features working together (check out our spotlight features or features page for a more in-depth look).

The Workgroups Advantage

Workgroups really takes advantage of the unlimited users feature of TrueShare.  A business that offers each employee, client, or all of the above a user account can easily use Workgroups to organize and delegate.   In fact, when you add a user to your TrueShare account, it automatically offers the option to include them in a workgroup from the start.

So why bother with Workgroups?  Like User Groups, which allows you to manage groups of user’s permissions as a single user, Workgroups allows you to manage user’s folder permissions just as effortlessly.  Once you add users to a workgroup, they then have access to workgroup specific folders with only the permissions you assign.  These specific folders can consist of both workgroup only folders which are only visible to users in the group, and public folders which are visible to all of your TrueShare users if assigned.  These folders allow for workgroups to collaborate on files away from other users or in conjunction with them, which is great for security and general organization.

Enhanced Communication via Forums

When conducting business across the country or even across the world, communication between teammates can get lost.  Emails get buried and phone calls get forgotten.  The easiest way to communicate about specific projects or files is through forums, which have been dominating web communication for over a decade.

The TrueShare forums act like any other forum site or application.  Users can create new forums, topics and posts, and utilize standard html text editing for custom formats.  The shining feature of forums, however, is the permissions and management system.  Within the forum editor you can assign forums to specific users, folders, workgroups, or user groups; you can manage active, inactive and locked forums, and monitor all posts and topics within each forum.

Now lets look at using Workgroups and Forums together for ultimate team collaboration.

Workgroups and Forums Team Up for Collaboration

With Workgroup organization and Forum communication used together in the TrueShare system, teams can collaborate more effectively than before.  When assigning users to a forum, one of the options is to assign a workgroup.  This allows users who are already collaborating on projects and files within their workgroup folders to communicate in their very own dedicated forums.  How could collaboration be any easier and well organized?

Even without the addition of other team facilitating features such as file versioning and folder syncing, Workgroups and Forums provide a superior collaboration experience for big and small businesses, and even students or families, one you can’t get with other file sharing and storing services.  So if you’re trying to organize groups online and are finding it difficult, or are just looking for a service that is dedicated to quality and a superior customer experience, check out the Forums and Workgroups features in the TrueShare online file system.  And look out for more blog topics on team collaboration in the future.

I find that when I am working on a file that follows me through the years or a piece of writing in general, I either end up losing original versions to the black hole on my hard drive, or a folder full of the same file with a different name.  I was recently working on my budget spreadsheet at home and realized that I had about 8 tabs in it with various versions of the data. A few examples of tab titles include old, current, 6/30/09, and others.  Sound familiar?  I think most people find themselves in this same type of situation but are at a loss of how to fix it. So the question is, how does someone go about organizing different versions of the same file, and what tools do they use?

In IT circles, file versioning has been around for quite awhile. Managing the various versions of code during development is a core challenge, one that forced companies early on to come up with a way to easily keep track of changing data.  The solution, of course, was file versioning.  So what is it? In short, every time you save a file that has been versioned, the previous version isn’t overwritten but moved to some other location and archived automatically. Any document or file that changes over time can benefit from versioning, and it saves people from doing the manual version of renaming original files with dates and numbers or using Save As features.

Tools for Quick and Easy File Versioning

Although it’s not as popular in a home or non-tech business setting, file versioning tools have found their way into the mainstream.  Many new operating systems now come with built in technology that provides a type of file versioning. TrueShare also provides versioning, allowing you to set the online file system to monitor any folders you choose. Whenever you upload a file to a folder in your TrueShare account with file versioning turned on, if that file has already been uploaded, the old version is archived and the newest is put in its place. And if you ever need to access an old version of the file, you can just click on the File Action Menu of the file in question and select Version History. All old versions of the file will be made available for you to download.

With TrueShare’s file versioning you can easily keep track of changing data while keeping your online and offline storage clean and organized.  You can even sync up folders between your hard drive and your TrueShare account with our Auto Tran feature.  Auto Tran will monitor changes in one folder and upload them to the other.  If the changes are a revised version of an already saved file then TrueShare file versioning kicks in and organizes it appropriately.  Using this method on the budget spreadsheet I mentioned earlier, I can now delete all of my extra tabs and extra file saves making my computer and TrueShare online file system clean and tidy while securing all of the data I care about.

If you are suffering from a similar situation of messy folders and lost file versions, give file versioning a shot.  And with TrueShare’s file versioning plus Auto Tran, you can store your files and all of their previous versions safely in “the cloud” automatically.  I especially recommend TrueShare file versioning to writers like me who need instant access to their hordes of rough drafts and revisions.

Tell us how you take advantage of TrueShare’s file versioning feature: