Backpack,the personal organization tool from 37 Signals, got a lot less, well, personal today. They have rolled out a new multiuser version that makes it easier for small teams to organize and exchange information. As stated on their product blog “Backpack brings the promise of the intranet back and delivers real value by keeping things simple”. Indeed!
Amongst the new features are:
* Multiuser – The ability for multiple people to log into a single Backpack account.
* Calendar – The calendar gets multiuser aware as well with the ability for users to share a single calendar and selectively allow access to calendar items to certain people in your group.
* Newsroom – The new Newsroom tab gives you a birds eye view of all of the recent activity in Backpack. Very handy in a multiuser environment.
* Messages – The new Messages feature allows people to post messages to the group and allow for comments. Great for general announcements.
* Reminders – Now, reminders can be sent to many people as well as just yourself, via e-mail or as a text message to a cell phone.
If you have a small team and are looking for simple and straight forward way to collaborate, share task lists, share appointments, etc., Backpack is now a fantastic solution.
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The changes in Backpack make it nothing short of phenomenal. I’ve been using the past week or so, largely as a result of your previous posts about using it for GTD. It rocks my world. And here I’d always thought it was a scaled-down version of Basecamp.
Two things to note: The Messages feature is available only for “Basic” and above, not for “Home” or for “Solo” packages; text entry in Backpack is still run through Textile (just like in Basecamp) so making links, e.g. in an actions list, is as simple as “Action text”:http://example.com/actionpage This is handy both for external resources and also when you have a gazillion project pages. For larger projects, I create a project page, copy the URL to clipboard, then add the project to my projects list as a link to the page.