OpenGoo - working with outsourcers
Hi guys, I thought I'd share a tip with you that has been helping me lately.
A few months ago I hired someone from the Philippines to help me with article submissions, link building and all that fun stuff. The first couple months we just communicated via email each day. I'd send tasks and then get a status report.
That started to get a bit old though, and one the readers on my blog mentioned she was using OpenGoo, which is opensource.
So I figured I would give it a shot. Set it up about 6 weeks ago.
So far I'm loving it. I've setup a workspace in there for each project I'm working on. I can assign tasks to each project, with deadlines. I can use it to keep track of my own to do list if I want, but more importantly, to keep track of my employees' work.
I can pre-load tons of tasks into there, and all they need to do is login and pick one. This eliminates the time delay that happened sometimes if I forgot to email some tasks for the next week (ie she'd start working Sunday evening my time, and if I hadn't sent anything already she'd be spinning her wheels. And I don't do email on Sunday.)
Another benefit is that I can go back and quickly see what's been accomplished, by viewing completed tasks. Gives me a better overall feel for where I'm at with the project.
Yet another benefit is that I can pull up time reports. I've instructed my employee to hit start on the task when she starts it, and complete when she's done. The system generates a log and I can pull reports from that. It's not perfect, but it at least gives me an indication that she's putting in somewhere in the region of the 8 hrs per day that I pay her for.
Hope that helps some of you. Do you have software or strategies that you're using to communicate and collaborate with overseas employees?
A few months ago I hired someone from the Philippines to help me with article submissions, link building and all that fun stuff. The first couple months we just communicated via email each day. I'd send tasks and then get a status report.
That started to get a bit old though, and one the readers on my blog mentioned she was using OpenGoo, which is opensource.
So I figured I would give it a shot. Set it up about 6 weeks ago.
So far I'm loving it. I've setup a workspace in there for each project I'm working on. I can assign tasks to each project, with deadlines. I can use it to keep track of my own to do list if I want, but more importantly, to keep track of my employees' work.
I can pre-load tons of tasks into there, and all they need to do is login and pick one. This eliminates the time delay that happened sometimes if I forgot to email some tasks for the next week (ie she'd start working Sunday evening my time, and if I hadn't sent anything already she'd be spinning her wheels. And I don't do email on Sunday.)
Another benefit is that I can go back and quickly see what's been accomplished, by viewing completed tasks. Gives me a better overall feel for where I'm at with the project.
Yet another benefit is that I can pull up time reports. I've instructed my employee to hit start on the task when she starts it, and complete when she's done. The system generates a log and I can pull reports from that. It's not perfect, but it at least gives me an indication that she's putting in somewhere in the region of the 8 hrs per day that I pay her for.
Hope that helps some of you. Do you have software or strategies that you're using to communicate and collaborate with overseas employees?
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