Manymoon Provides Enhanced Collaboration Capabilities and Greater Google Apps Integration
by Bill Ives
I first wrote about Manymoon at the beginning of the year (see Enterprise 2.0 Task Management and More from Manymoon). It is an enterprise tool designed for the typical business person who is juggling ten to fifteen things at once.
They have two customer case success stories published that highlight how Manymoon benefits businesses:
- A publishing company has reduced their workflow by 50% from the point of receiving their first article.
- A non-profit legal services firm saves thousands of dollars a month by allowing a distributed set of staff to securely access and organize information within Manymoon.
Last week I spoke again with Amit Kulkarni their Co-Founder and CEO about three updates they have implemented since we last spoke.
First, Amit said they have completely revised their user interface to better support new features requested by their customers – it makes it easier for users to contribute, share and track information. These features take them beyond task management to offer broader collaboration support. For example, now you can easily share content with project team members. Amit said they have conducted a series of usability studies and talked with both power users and new users. We looked at that new interface and it combines simplicity with consistency but still offers a robust set of collaboration features.
On the user’s home page (see below) you can update your status through a Twitter-like field, post links, assign tasks, create project, add documents, and schedule events. Each of these functions are accessible through tabs and there is a similar work field as the one below (the Bulletin) with an input field followed by relevant activity updates from others, as well as your own. For event scheduling, Manymoon integrated Doodle, a leading online event scheduling tool. It allows the organizer to poll people on the best times for an event and collect comments, then broker the actual time. People avoid going back and forth in email to select a meeting time. If you look at the left column, you can see links to your tasks, your projects, your documents, your links, your events, and your connections. I like the consistency as you go from tab to tab.
Next, they have extended their partnership with Google. Many of their new capabilities leverage the Google Apps platform. Amit said that about half of their customers are Google Apps users. Over a million businesses are now using Google Apps and the number is growing. Google is also encouraging third party developers such as Manymoom to build with their platform and Manymoon is working closely with them.
Manymoon is using the recently announced Google Apps support for (OpenID). This allows for single sign on across applications. You can see how easy it is to get started with Manymoon with your existing Google Apps ID in the screen shot below. Businesses can now securely use Manymoon without sharing or creating additional credentials. Just enter your Google Apps email address, allow access and you can immediately begin using Manymoon. They also integrate with Google Docs (attach them to tasks, projects and events) and Google Calendar (to provide a shared project calendar).
Manymoon can also automatically create, share, display and synchronize a Google Calendar with a project as seen below. As project tasks, events or milestones are changed they are automatically updated in the shared Google Calendar. This saves users time by providing a simple, graphical interface with the latest project information while leveraging Google Calendar’s powerful capabilities (e.g., reminders, views, notifications, etc).
Manymoon has also implemented tagging to help categorize tasks and projects, as well as associate people with tags. As you do work related to a tag, you get credit for experience with this tag topic. This helps people find those in their network with the right skills to complete tasks. You can see in the profile page below, this user, Briar Rose, has a quite a bit of experience with, ‘forecasting’ since size matters in the tag cloud on the right. This is based on tasks she has completed. Briar’s Manymoon profile becomes a living resume that reflects her acquired knowledge and skills.
Amit said that they have thousands businesses using Manymoon since we talked in January. This is across a wide variety of sizes and markets. A number of clients are using Manymoon for collaboration with clients outside the firewall because of the strong security it offers. There is a free version, as well as two subscription versions. Manymoon Pro adds extra storage and encryption. Manymoon Team adds the ability to create your own branding, as well as enhanced administration capabilities. I like these additions and look forward to see what is coming out next.
