Posted by Dana Larson on July 27, 2010
If you’ve been reading our blog over the last few months, you’ve heard us talk about the benefits of team collaboration, and how businesses can effectively engage others in online collaboration. And if you’ve taken a look at our website, you’ve seen that we offer a (fantastic) business collaboration solution to do just the things we preach.
But today, I’m going to go over a few different ways to use OnePlace. Because, well, it’s not all about the business and the collaboration. It can be used for a great many things!
If you’ve been a fan of OnePlace for a while, you are well-aware that OnePlace is not only a business solution, but a personal solution as well. OnePlace can be used for many things not relating to work, and still be an effective tool. Here are a few examples of how OnePlace can benefit your personal organization and collaboration.
Posted by Denis Ahearn on June 11, 2010
We rolled a new feature into production last night - the ability to import tasks from a CSV file. This is something that combined with the "Export Tasks" feature can provide a powerful way to quickly and easily edit multiple tasks at one time.
Posted by Dana Larson on June 08, 2010
OnePlace is pleased to announce another partner in our Giving Back program - The Green Lifestyle Film Festival!
The Green Lifestyle Film Festival is a weekend long event that presents international, independent filmmakers commenting on issues in the environment and media. Their intention is to create a film festival that offers a very courageous and in depth approach to examining and suggesting lifestyles that are compatible with the Laws of Nature, and that teach the world to live from a place of rawness, openness and transformation. The GLFF is a new type of green event, meant to be uplifting and solutions based, full of inspirational and educational films, real food and diverse dialogue to produce a window for changing ourselves.
Posted by Dana Larson on April 27, 2010
We all need more time in our day, right? This is the solution that Buying Time, LLC is solving for their clients. Servicing the Southern California communities of Los Angeles, Buying Time provides services to give their clients more time, such as picking up dry cleaning, walking a dog or creating a PowerPoint presentation.
Buying Time needed help managing all the client tasks in one system, and managing which contractor would take which task. By utilizing OnePlace, client tasks can be input into the system right away, and contractors can pick up tasks when they need to be done and when they fit into their schedules.
Posted by Dana Larson on April 20, 2010
In many business settings, especially small businesses, every single person on the team matters. There is not one person without whom the business could succeed. This type of dependence comes from hiring the right people - the lynch pins - to bring your business successfully into the future.
Unfortunately there are instances when the people you hire in your business aren’t doing their best. And just like the saying goes, a business is only as strong as its weakest link. They may not be doing their best for a multitude of reasons, and before it can affect your business, try to figure out why there is a downturn in their efficiency and productivity.
Here are a few reasons why a team member may not be performing at the high standards you need in your business.
Posted by Dana Larson on March 17, 2010
It’s time to share another OnePlace case study, and what better way to honor St. Patrick’s Day than to share the success story of a local brewery?
Lift Bridge Beer Company, based in Stillwater, MN, started as a hobby business, and needed some help organizing their distributed workforce. Because most people still had day jobs, the tasks associated with getting the brewery up and running were sent via email. This process led to lost tasks and forgotten notes.
Posted by Dana Larson on February 15, 2010
Last week was a busy week for project management with hundreds of blog posts being written about the topic. This is a key indicator to how important a good online project management solution can be.
Here is an overview of some of the more popular project management posts that came out last week.
Posted by Dana Larson on February 12, 2010
In honor of Valentine’s Day coming up this Sunday, the OnePlace team wanted to share how much we love and care about our customers and their success. We thrive off of your feedback to keep making OnePlace better and better.
And OnePlace users love us too - below is a list of the Top 5 most loved OnePlace features that keep our customers successful in their personal and professional lives.
Posted by Dana Larson on February 09, 2010
When you think about it, there aren’t many companies that couldn’t benefit from any type of project and task management system. There are certain small businesses that don’t need this type of solution yet, but if they have any hope of being successful in the future, finalizing processes and getting organized now will definitely help.
Task management software like OnePlace can keep individuals organized, as well as business teams. And for a growing business, strong organization is necessary.
Imagine how you would handle Annie’s situation without a project management system. Annie is a young accounting professional that, after getting her first taste of the corporate world, decided to go out on her own and start a financial virtual assistant company. Annie helps small businesses with their financial needs including accounts payable and receivable and financial forecasting.
Posted by Dana Larson on February 04, 2010
When we developed OnePlace a few years ago, we wanted to ensure our solution met the needs of small businesses to increase their business success. One need we saw over and over again was the need for project management within the business.
Online project management allows you and your business team to organize and manage projects and tasks in an efficient and effective way. Keeping track of projects across multiple team members can be a bit challenging without the aid of an online solution. We kept all this in mind when developing OnePlace.
Posted by Dana Larson on February 01, 2010
A main component of our small business organization solution is online project management. We are all very organized people, and like to help others stay organized as well.
Because of Post-It Notes, calendar updates and reminders on your cell phone, there are just as many ways to manage tasks as there are tasks to complete. And while we love it when stuff gets done, we want to make sure the people in your business are remembering what to do, and getting the right things done.
Here are 5 ways to manage tasks more effectively to ensure greater efficiency:
Posted by Dana Larson on January 25, 2010
The OnePlace team is dedicated to using OnePlace to help organize our professional and personal lives. And if we weren’t, what kind of advocates would we be for our small business solution?
Since joining the team, I have become increasingly aware of the intricacies of OnePlace and all the cool features that make this solution great. I want to take this time to point out some of these great features in OnePlace to aid some of our current customers in using OnePlace to its fullest extent.
Posted by Dana Larson on January 22, 2010
I recently came across an article published in October 2009 from Web Worker Daily entitled The Pomodoro Technique: A GTD Alternative?” After reading the article, I found myself relating to the issues that the Pomodoro Technique claims to alleviate.
If you’re not familiar with it, the Pomodoro Technique is a way to manage time and projects to get the most accomplished. It targets those people who are easily distracted by outside factors when trying to get work done, and those who have anxiety over looming deadlines and the “ticking clock.”
Posted by Dana Larson on January 20, 2010
At OnePlace, we take any chance we can to make small businesses more efficient and effective. There are hundreds of available tools to keep the individual productive, and we like to think we bridge the gap between personal productivity and small business productivity tools with OnePlace.
We also know that in order to be successful, sometimes all it takes is a cheerleader in our corner encouraging us to be the best we can be. That is why we wanted to highlight some of our favorite productivity blogs here - to share with you a few more resources to help you manage tasks.
Posted by Dana Larson on January 18, 2010
Even in today’s economy, there are new small businesses starting up left and right. Once an idea is formed, a multitude of meetings have to occur to plan for success, such as making sure the business strategy is secure, identifying the sales and marketing plan and key messaging, and targeting the right prospects.
It’s a true fact that there are too many meetings in business. On the flip side, it is true that meetings do need to exist. The trick is making meetings as efficient and effective as possible.
When working with OnePlace as your online collaboration solution, discussions play an important role in eliminating the need for multiple meetings, and can impact the major decisions that make a business successful.
Posted by Dana Larson on January 15, 2010
Do you ever have those days where you were really busy, but didn’t end up getting anything accomplished? Or when you can’t overlook the amount of work you have to complete, so you just don’t do anything?
The team at OnePlace knows how important it is to keep on top of your goals to get work accomplished. Heck, that is why OnePlace was created! We believe that task management and team collaboration can improve the efficiency of any small business team and make them more productive.
Here are some easy to follow tips for improving your business productivity:
- Schedule Your Work - Outlining exactly what you have to accomplish each day and managing your tasks gives you a nice visual of all your work, and allows you to choose which to work on next. And nothing beats the feeling of checking things off your to do list! (read a blog post on scheduling here)
- Take Notes - Have you ever left a meeting and forgotten your next steps? Take notes when in meetings, on the phone or anytime they pop into your mind. This saves time by not having to revisit the conversations later.
- Organize Your Workspace - A chaotic workspace can distract you from the work at hand. Make sure your desk and computer desktop are neat and organized prior to beginning your work.
- Open the Doors of Collaboration - Brainstorming with team members is a powerful tool. So is the opportunity to run an idea by a coworker to see if you’re on the right track. Team collaboration tools help to open the doors and keep team members connected all day.
- Love Your Job - If you don’t like your job, you are automatically going to suck at it. Make sure that you are doing the best for your boss and yourself by finding the right job for you. If it helps, take a career assessment to find out what skills match your personality best.
- Know When to Procrastinate - Procrastination is one of the worst time-sucks in the workplace - but there is a time and place to procrastinate. By managing your tasks, you can complete what you feel like completing, and move the other items out to another time.
- Attack the Big Rocks - There are some tasks, however, that need to be worked on right away. Start working on those “big rocks” first thing in the morning. Once you get them done, you’ll feel more accomplished for the day.
- Delegate to Team Members - If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the work in front of you, ask a coworker for a bit of help. Taking 5 minutes to reassign a task and explain it to someone else will free up a lot of task time for you to accomplish everything else.
- Exercise - A mid-day heart rate boost can increase productivity for the afternoon. If you can’t do jumping jacks in your office, a lunchtime walk works just as well.
- Keep Team Members in the Loop - By sharing your to do list with coworkers, you are instantly held accountable for completing that work. Ensure you are using a team collaboration solution that offers transparency and allows team members to see other’s work easily to manage that accountability.
- Eliminate Distractions - Get rid of email, Twitter, Facebook, and other distractions on your computer and get to work. Without the distractions of questions, tweets and status updates, you will find yourself working harder on your task list.
- Work When You’re Productive - There are always going to be times in the day when you are more productive than others. For me, it’s first thing in the morning. Identify these times for yourself, and plan your work accordingly.
- Just Do It - Sometimes the best way to get stuff done is to start working. Get to work and see how much you can do :-)
Being aware of what you have to accomplish can help push you get more done. Learn what tools help you work more efficiently and continue to use them to wow your boss and feel good about your work.
What other tools do you use to keep productive?
Posted by Steve Kickert on September 29, 2009
We are getting close. We have been working on a major upgrade for OnePlace for over two months now, and we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are hoping it is not a train. :-)
Back in July, we met with many of you to get your feedback on how OnePlace was working for your team, and to hear what you would like to change about OnePlace. Thanks again for taking the time to do that. We listened carefully, and have made some big changes and a mountain of little ones to OnePlace as a result. We can hardly wait to let you move into your new OnePlace. We are excited to use it ourselves.
Here is an abbreviated list of the changes that are coming:
Posted by Denis Ahearn on January 20, 2009
Once in a while someone will ask us why we decided to create OnePlace, especially when you consider the number of other online tools that are available today for helping manage your projects and tasks and for collaborating with others. We have a pretty standard response to that question that I thought would be fun to share in this blog.
Posted by Denis Ahearn on December 31, 2008
2008 was a very busy year at Riverock Technologies. Our sole mission during this entire year was to prepare for successfully launching OnePlace into the market. Every day was spent focusing on this goal, which we achieved back in September when we released OnePlace for general use, and officially opened the proverbial doors for business.
So, before we close the books on 2008 and turn our attention towards the year to come, we thought it would be fun to take one last look in the rear view mirror to see what happened to OnePlace during this past year.
Posted by Mark Peterson on November 21, 2008
When working with your data in OnePlace, you may have noticed a piece of data labelled 'id' in many places and wondered “What the heck is that?” Well, maybe not, but while ID's might be boring, they can make using OnePlace a whole lot quicker and easier.
All of the main data objects (projects, lists, tasks, notes, etc.) in OnePlace have a numeric ID associated with them. This ID is unique for the type of object it is associated with. So, for example, both a discussion and a note can have the ID 49, but two discussions cannot both have the ID 49.
Posted by Mark Peterson on October 29, 2008
We've blogged before about private workplaces, one of the key features of OnePlace. (See “Just give me a little privacy” by Steve Kickert) We here at Riverock use our private workplaces to manage our personal lives every day, so I thought I'd share some of our favorite uses of this powerful tool for managing your private life.
The OnePlace private workplace lets you unleash the full power of a top of the line project management tool on your private life. You can build projects and tasks for managing your personal todo's and you can store files, lists, and notes to track information that is valuable to you. All the information stored in your private workplace is visible only to you.
I, personally, get a lot of use out of the lists feature of my private workplace. For example, I have running lists for items I need at the home improvement store and static lists of items that I'll need at the next boy scout camp. The information in your private workplace is available on your mobile device, so I maintain my lists on my Mac and use my iPhone to check off the items as I shop.
Posted by Denis Ahearn on October 08, 2008
In an earlier article on this blog, we discussed how using the scheduling capabilities within OnePlace to determine what you should work on today is a powerful way to help you focus and gain increased productivity. Another way to focus within OnePlace, which ties in nicely with scheduling your work, are contexts.
Contexts is a concept that has been popularized by the "Getting Things Done" philosophy from David Allen. The main idea behind them is to identify the things you can do now, given your current location and situation, and filter out the things you can't do now. Maximizing your productivity relies on your ability to focus.
Posted by Steve Kickert on September 06, 2008
Scheduling your work is something that seems so obvious to me now that I am surprised that every productivity application does not do this. The concept is so simple that it is often overlooked. This feature is crucial in helping me manage the chaos in my entire life.
Most people already use a calendar to schedule all their appointments. Some even go so far as to schedule blocks of time for getting their own work done. However, I have yet to meet anyone (other than other OnePlace users of course) who actually plans "when" they are going to do each task on their list. There are countless side effects of not scheduling your work. Here are just a few:
Posted by Steve Kickert on August 28, 2008
One of the features that was on our MUST HAVE list since the very beginning of OnePlace was that it had to work in our personal life as well as at work.