Michael Sampson on Collaboration

Confluence - Team Calendars 1.8

Atlassian released version 1.8 of Team Calendars, with the new ability to integrate Confluence team calendars with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook.

"This release allows you to consolidate your Team Calendars and your personal calendar. With an already strapped personal calendar loaded with the day’s responsibilities, the idea of tracking the schedule of your coworkers is as farfetched as an airborne pig. But subscribing to your People and Events Calendars affords a new lens to your personal planning.

You might be planning a team lunch the week the majority of your team is on leave – viewing your People Calendars alongside your personal schedule keeps you from scheduling a meeting no one can attend in the first place."

This is a basic requirement for calendaring when team-specific calendars are moved to team-specific areas. See Pillar 4 in the 7 Pillars framework for more.

Atlassian Updates Team Calendars for Confluence

Atlassian released another update to its Team Calendars application for Confluence, with improved integration in this latest edition with Jira:

"Since Team Calendars 1.0, you’ve been able to map default date fields in JIRA – issue and version due dates – on a JIRA Calendar for everyone to see in Confluence. This was really helpful for Product and Project Managers to visualize the schedule of a project. However, you’ve since told us that these are not the only dates that are important to your team. We listened and with the release of Team Calendars 1.6 we’ve extended the JIRA Calendar type to support your custom date fields in JIRA"

I believe calendaring is really important for coordinating action between people, and when meetings and events are spread across multiple places, better tools are needed for bringing it all back together. For more, see Pillar 4 in the 7 Pillars.

Read more: Team Calendars 1.6 Released – Share Your Custom Date Fields from JIRA

Atlassian Adds Team Calendars to Confluence

Atlassian announced the addition of team calendars to Confluence, its enterprise wiki software:

"Atlassian has introduced Team Calendars, a new add-on to Atlassian Confluence that helps product and project teams stay in sync. Available today, Team Calendars helps teams track and report project releases as well as understand how the schedules of your team members impacts projects.

With Team Calendars, users can share calendars with their team and embed calendars in pages to keep everyone up-to-date. Users can use the search feature to find and subscribe to calendars that are relevant to their work. Some other key features include:
- Schedule team leave: Get an at-a-glance view of which team members are on-duty and on vacation
- Link to contextual information: Link calendar events to Confluence pages for release notes, launch plans, specifications, etc.
- Connect with Outlook: Integration with the email and calendar client lets users keep calendars in sync."

My Comments
1. In the 7 Pillars model of team collaboration, "Team-Aware Calendaring" is vitally important. Few vendors get this right, and it's great to see Atlassian having a go.

2. There are three key requirements for team-aware calendaring - and Atlassian clearly meets the first: the ability to create a team specific calendar. What's unclear is whether they meet the second two: integration with free-busy (would require proper integration with Outlook so Exchange can see the meetings), and synchronization to mobile devices (again, would require proper integration with Outlook so the mobile device could see the calendar). The use of the phrase "Import and Export" in relation to "Integration with your favorite email and calendar clients" leads me to conclude the integration is not done correctly. But - I'd be delighted to be shown otherwise. Atlassian?

2(a). Update on June 30. Atlassian confirmed that calendars have to be exported in iCal format, and imported into Outlook or other desktop clients. See Exporting Team Calendars Content to Other Calendars. "Better" integration, such as CalDAV, may come in the future. Thanks to Matt from Atlassian for the insight.

3. Note that Microsoft does not get team-aware calendaring right in either SharePoint 2007 nor SharePoint 2010. Yes it's possible to create team-specific calendars, but the integration with Outlook is to a separate PST file, so (a) Exchange can't see them for free-busy search, and (b) mobile devices can't see the SharePoint calendared events.

Defining Collaboration - 5. Collaboration Scenarios as a Way of Classifying Collaboration Technology

This is the fifth post in a series about defining collaboration. Previously:
- Post 1 looked at the three P's of collaboration (potential, process, and practice).
- Post 2 talked about four types of work.
- Post 3 examined the ceiling of opportunity and value.
- Post 4 was concerned with mapping people, work, and outcomes to technology capabilities.

This post extends the previous one, and looks at the concept of collaboration scenarios as a way of classifying different types of technology to support collaboration. And by implication, it provides a framework for thinking about the collaboration technology needs of a specific group or team within your organization.

Posts 1-3 talked about the theory of collaboration - the potential, value, and opportunity that could be gained by people working together toward a common outcome. Post 4 started the translation of the theory into more practical matters. One way of thinking about it that Posts 1-3 dealt with the "what/why" of collaboration, and Post 4 and 5 deal with the "how" of collaboration - or "every WHAT has to be carried out via some HOW."

What's a Collaboration Scenario
A collaboration scenario describes a work activity that people do together - either directly and at the same time (and either in person or remotely), or indirectly because there are time delayed hand-offs involved (and because it's indirect and involves time delayed hand-offs, it can't be done in person at the same time).

A List of Collaboration Scenarios
Here's a (partial) list of collaboration scenarios:

1. Managing a Project ... Working with other people to make something different come true - a specific outcome to achieve. Will usually involve multiple people, a timeframe of weeks-months-years, and the allocation of work among the involved parties, among other things.
2. Co-Authoring a Document ... Working with other people on a document - a press release, an RFP, a contract, or an article. The document needs to include the ideas of multiple people.
3. Managing a Collection of Know-How ... Developing written material to describe the know-how of a current process or product, and keeping this up-to-date via a group of experts.
4. Scheduling a Meeting ... Finding a time that multiple people can meet in person or remotely to discuss an idea, work through an issue, make a decision.
5. Tracking What's Going On ... Keeping informed about relevant events inside your organization that could impact on the priority of specific projects or activities. Learning about other people inside your firm, that could have insights to add to your work.
6. Finding Experts Inside the Firm ... Discovering people inside your firm with specific expertise to help resolve current issues.
7. Holding Conversations ... Discussing and debating ideas, evaluating alternatives, and coming to a conclusion about how to proceed.

How to Use Collaboration Scenarios
As the list above shows, there are many different types of work that have collaborative elements/aspects. To use these scenarios in planning your collaboration technology strategy, do the following:

1. Look at specific groups/teams and classify/count the different collaboration scenarios that happen as a regular part of their work.
- Eg., research firm: Co-Authoring a Document

2. For each scenario, understand and write down the current state used by the specific group/team.
- Eg., research firm: Using Microsoft Word, lead author drafts the document, sends it around by email for review and input, and then has to collect/collate the feedback sent back in multiple copies of the document.

3. For the most frequently used scenarios, investigate products/services from different vendors of collaboration technology. Choose a short-list of products that will meet your decision criteria for tools that can be used by your employees.
- Eg., research firm: Google Docs, PleaseReview, Agilewords, SharePoint Document Library, Confluence Wiki

4. For testing/evaluation purposes, develop an alternative way of carrying out the activity using the different technology options.
- Eg., Google Docs - one document, everyone is invited to work in the document, no multiple copies.
- Eg., PleaseReview - master document in Word, uploaded to PleaseReview, others invited to comment/edit, no multiple copies in existence.
- Eg., Agilewords - ditto, per PleaseReview
- Eg., SharePoint Document Library - one document, put into the document library, alerts trigger edit requests, check-out to edit, check-in to upload, no multiple copies
- Eg., Confluence Wiki - document drafted as a wiki page not a Word document, everyone is invited to work on the wiki page, etc.

5. If there is a sufficient benefit to be gained by carrying out the collaboration scenario in a different way (with different technology), go back and start working with the business group - explaining the benefit, demonstrating the new way of doing things, gathering support - in short, doing both engagement and user adoption.

Question: Which collaboration scenarios are common at your firm? Which ones are you focusing significant effort on during 2011?

Calendar Federation in Exchange 2010

I believe people need better calendaring capabilities for meeting scheduling - see Pillar 4 of the 7 Pillars, plus Calendaring: Are We There Yet?

So it is good news that Microsoft is enabling better calendaring in Exchange, meaning that the scheduling of meetings between people in different organizations will be easier (as long as they are all using Exchange):

"Exchange 2010 SP1 and Exchange Online (Office 365) incorporate federation to enable secure organization-to-organization free/busy and calendar sharing with other Exchange organizations. Also new is the ability for users to publish their calendar in iCal format to anyone, and for them to subscribe to internet calendars. With Exchange now providing options for how your users can share calendar data with others inside and outside your organization, we've received a number of common questions about the differences in setup and functionality between sharing methods. These questions and their responses below can provide clarity as you consider calendar sharing in your organization."

Now ... let's see the SharePoint team get on board too ... and make calendaring really work! (See the Summary of SharePoint 7 Pillars - while it talks about SharePoint 2007, it ain't no better in SharePoint 2010 folks).

Another approach is Tungle.me, although it does break the usual workflow - but then again that's partially the point of doing things differently.

Read more: Exchange 2010 SP1 and Exchange Online Calendaring FAQ

Virtual Meetings: Design for Worst-Case Scenarios for Best Outcomes

Nancy Settle-Murphy from Guided Insights writes a monthly newsletter about effective virtual teams. In her newsletter for February, she writes about being prepared for the bad things that can derail virtual meetings:

"Normally, I ascribe to the 80/20 rule when it comes to planning meetings or designing training. That is, I know I can't possibly predict every single situation that might arise, so I do my best to anticipate what I think will happen 80% of the time for 80% of the participants. As far as the other 20% of the time -- well, we just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

In the land of virtual meetings, we don't have very much time to cross that bridge before the entire meeting can go irredeemably off track. (The fact that we have no visual cues when things go awry makes it even harder to regroup and redirect the conversation.)"

Nancy offers advice in five areas:
1. Technical difficulties, e.g., the passcode doesn't work.
2. Time zone misunderstandings (the bane of virtual meetings!).
3. Uninvited guests.
4. What to do when people come unprepared.
5. Making people feel included.

Read Nancy's advice at Anticipating Worst-Case Virtual Meeting Scenarios

(And if you don't subscribe, you know what to do)

Office:Mac 2011 - Three Interesting Collaboration Capabilities

Microsoft released the above video about upcoming capabilities in the next edition of Office for Mac. Three items stood out to me:

• De-siloing of Outlook ... Outlook for Mac is coming, with "Entourage" going away. One of the problems I have with Outlook (and most integrated mail clients for that matter), is that they treat email data, calendar data, and task data as three separate silos. Sure, you may be able to display some things side-by-side, but you can't correlate across different items and assemble them together for a "project," "matter," or "initiative" level view. From the little that is shown in the video, Outlook for Mac is starting to bring email and calendar together. I'm looking forward to learning more.
• PowerPoint Broadcast ... For many people, a subscription to a web conferencing service is about delivering presentations to remote participants. The process is to start a meeting, open the slide deck, and then present it. For people for whom this is the extend of their use, the new PowerPoint Broadcast feature is going to eliminate their need to have a web conferencing service subscription. The capability is built in to PowerPoint now.
• Co-Authoring and Co-Editing ... Office for Mac 2011 enables users to work on documents, slide decks, and Excel spreadsheets simultaneously, using either Microsoft SkyDrive or SharePoint (2010, with Web Apps). This provides a new way of working with others on documents, and is something I wrote about in the 7 Pillars a few years ago. I'm delighted to see Microsoft making progress in this space, and crossing the boundaries between Windows and Mac users. Very cool.

Update (October 1): According to ComputerWorld US, Office for Mac 2011 will be available on October 26.

Meeting Scheduling - Recent News (Tuesday, June 22)

Gina coaches us to practice defensive scheduling.
- Make commitments with yourself first, and put them on your calendar!
- Use your calendar to remind you when tasks need to be done.
- Make sure you always have your calendar with you.

Tuesday 3pm is a good time to schedule meetings, apparently.
- People are more likely to come prepared.
- People will be watching the clock, so will be more focused.
- Alternatively, try the Swiss trains approach - eg, a 10:12am to 10:26am meeting.
- To work out how much a meeting costs, see meetordie.com.

When Is Good is a new online meeting scheduling service.
- The meeting organizer selects the times they can meet, and sends a link to invitees.
- Invitees can choose times that work for them.
- No account is necessary.
- See videos about how it works.

Scheduling a Meeting - Recent News (April Monday 19)

Tungle announced the addition of Tungle.me to the Google Apps Marketplace.
- For Google Apps organizations, all employees can be automagically given Tungle.me too.

Mashable reviewed four Web-based meeting scheduling services.
- Doodle ... "pleasantly light, quick-and-dirty scheduler with the most intuitive interface"
- Tungle ... "a brand new feature allows groups to see overlapping availability"
- ScheduleOnce ... "more confusing than Tungle if the meeting goes over multiple days"
- TimeBridge ... "TimeBridge includes phone conferencing, online meetings, and to-do lists"

Virtosoftware released its calendar web part for SharePoint 2010.
- Virto Ajax Calendar brings multiple SharePoint calendars and Exchange calendars into a single calendar view.

Kevin Cavanaugh: Read Pillar 4 of the 7 Pillars!

Kevin Cavanaugh, a Vice President at IBM, was one of the keynote speakers at the recent Lotusphere 2010 conference. As part of his keynote speech on the first day, he said, and I quote:

"The problem that all of us deal with today is we have not one, but we have many calendars. Each keeps track of different parts of our lives, our work, our family, our social lives. And we also have many different task masters: bosses, colleagues, spouses, children, friends. We don't need more calendars; we need a way to consolidate and adjudicate between competing events."

I am delighted (!!) to hear Kevin say this publicly. I've been saying it for the past 5 years ... I look forward to seeing how IBM Lotus will resolve this challenge in the Vulcan-wave of offerings.

If you need some insight on what I see as being necessary, take a look at:
- Pillar 4 in the 7 Pillars framework (from 2005). It's free.
- Read the Summary Document for the SharePoint 2007 7 Pillars analysis. The summary document has Pillar 4 for free (SharePoint doesn't do too great).
- Calendaring: Are We There Yet?, in Messaging News (July 2009). This was an update the calendaring cover story from June 2006, which is no longer online (contact me if you want a copy).

Just to make it clear ... while I applaud the relationship between Tungle and IBM for calendaring in Lotus Notes, ... I want to see much tighter cross-product calendaring integration within the IBM Lotus suite of products, especially Notes and Quickr, with follow-through to BlackBerry, iPhone and Android.