Using Google Sites to create a useful small-business intranet
I own Western Ascent Inc. - a small web-developement company located in Fort Collins, CO.
Today I read the news that JotSpot had been relaunched under Google Sites and saw that the Google Apps and Docs were able to be embedded into the web pages.
I have already switched our email to gmail via Google Apps, and wondered what useful tool I could cobble together using Google Sites. When I saw the fact that you can embed forms from Google Docs into pages on Google Sites, and limit site access to members of your domain, I thought I would put together a little time-tracking application to test an idea I had.
I have been using Base Camp for quite a while now to manage projects and track time for our small team of developers and designers. It is generally useful, but I am not in love with it - meaning that if I find an adequate replacement for less money (or free) I will happily move on.
So far, I think my time-tracker is working well and I can see how the sites and access control can allow me to create "extranets" for client projects that will allow us to share files and ideas with clients - which, along with time tracking - is our primary use for Base Camp.
I will try and put together a quick tutorial of how I created our little intranet and how I made a form that all our employees are already using to track time on projects.
Today I read the news that JotSpot had been relaunched under Google Sites and saw that the Google Apps and Docs were able to be embedded into the web pages.
I have already switched our email to gmail via Google Apps, and wondered what useful tool I could cobble together using Google Sites. When I saw the fact that you can embed forms from Google Docs into pages on Google Sites, and limit site access to members of your domain, I thought I would put together a little time-tracking application to test an idea I had.
I have been using Base Camp for quite a while now to manage projects and track time for our small team of developers and designers. It is generally useful, but I am not in love with it - meaning that if I find an adequate replacement for less money (or free) I will happily move on.
So far, I think my time-tracker is working well and I can see how the sites and access control can allow me to create "extranets" for client projects that will allow us to share files and ideas with clients - which, along with time tracking - is our primary use for Base Camp.
I will try and put together a quick tutorial of how I created our little intranet and how I made a form that all our employees are already using to track time on projects.
Labels: Base Camp, collaboration, diy, Google, Google Apps, Google Sites, productivity, time sheet
posted by John Daharsh at 5:10 PM
3 Comments:
So did you use google sites in the end? did it work? if yes/no why?
@ryan it is ironic that you commented today. I had a call with a client earlier about whether or not they should use BaseCamp or Google Sites.
We did ditch BaseCamp and are using Google Sites. We have an intranet for our time tracking, with various internal information on the different pages, but we also create client extranets that have specific information and tools for their particular projects.
If you use and love BaseCamp and it meets your needs, I'd say stay with it. If you want something more flexible and don't already have a process, try Google Sites first.
Individual users can subscribe to changes only on pages that pertain to them, then the list of items they have to deal with is limited to what they actually need. Basecamp has a stream-of-consciousness listing on the project home pages that for me got very overwhelming very fast.
I am actually looking at incorporating ZOHO Creator apps into my google sites, the power of these apps exceeds even what Google offers and as long as you don't need too many apps it is free as well.
You should take a look at ClockingIT (http://www.clockingit.com). It's still in beta, but it has some useful features.
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