Happy Earth Day!

I don’t know about where you are but it just turned tee-and-jeans warm here. Thank the sun.

(No, I’m not being witchy. Well, I may not be the best judge of that and it was just the full moon… Moving on.)

My Monday feature might be paused for the moment but I wanted to say hello. I’ve been in my natural form, behind the scenes and/or under the covers, for most of the week.

Haven’t made much progress on the house but definitely getting somewhere with the blog move–the web design class helped–and there are exciting, top-secret plans forming for Best Life Collaborative. I’m thrilled to be part of the action.

In working with that crew, I’m getting the hang of Microsoft Teams.

It’s quite useful for group conversations once everyone gets the hang of how channels, conversations, files, and notifications work. My best advice:

• When you first join a team, turn on all notifications and get caught up (if possible).
• Mute conversations as necessary until channels are set and it’s easy to see which areas need your attention.
• Google a way to mute me because I talk too much. (Actually, if a conversation can be taken to a place that only blows up one or two devices, move it.)
• Check in and respond, even a like here and there lets everyone know their message is out.

All of these are probably wrong. My colleagues may have other ideas…

I’m worried about the comment section on this one but we’re learning as we go, right?

Downsides: Teams naturally works best with Office 365, which not everyone has. You’re also likely to get too few or many notifications until your team works it out–including who wants to be included in which conversations. I’d recommend setting up guidelines and a tutorial for new groups/members.

We have also connected Evernote and Trello, both new to me as well.

I haven’t had much time to work with Evernote, but the templates available, web-clipping, embedding capabilities, etc. make me contemplate going digital with bullet journaling. You can make just about any kind of spread with active digital content. I’m hoping to use it for collecting Mind-Melding Monday data* as well.

It’s neat guys. Check it out.

Sorry no pics, too many spoilers.

Biggest Pitfall I see: *The free version allows only 60MB worth of uploads per month, which could go by quickly in a team setting, or on big projects. I haven’t seen how storage is distributed with team input.

 

Trello is great for simplicity but also allows checklists, attachments, comments, and goodness knows what else. Oh, it connects to Evernote too! It’s a fantastic tool for tracking progress on team and personal goals.

 

Background Photo Credit

 

The Trello blog-work list is far from complete but I’m happy to have the fonts, colors, and even logos pretty well finished. Since I just made this last note night, I didn’t bother adding other things I’ve done. Sure, it’d look good but tick tock.

 

Speaking of time, there’s plenty to do before bed.

 

How are things going in your part of the world? How do you keep in contact and coordinate projects? Do you have an app or system for organization you love?