Work Together, Apart!

Most of the people I work for, I never see. In fact, some of the people I work for, I've never really even spoken to. How is this possible? We work together in cyberspace.

Sure, I miss the frequent-flyer miles, but on the Internet I can hash out ideas with an editor in the UK, correspond with an author in Boston, kibitz with a lab researcher in Silicon Valley. Simultaneously, we can view test results, discuss their importance, and make quick decisions.

Of course, networked teams in big companies do this all the time. But there are advantages to bypassing your company's local area network (LAN) and working together on the Internet, the biggest network of all. The new generation of Internet "collaboration" software programs enables you to review product specs online with vendors who don't have access to your company's LAN, or to fine-tune a sales presentation from your hotel room without having to dial into the network. Best of all, you can avoid the timesink of trying to get the senior vice president of MIS to let you put the software on the LAN. Just upload it to the Internet and get to work.

Scheduling Need: Set up a meeting with people who aren't on your company's LAN.

Power Tool: Sidekick 97 ($50)

Before you collaborate, you've got to coordinate. Trouble is, when your customers are spread across time zones, scheduling a meeting through email can quickly dissolve into online Ping-Pong. Starfish Software's Sidekick 97 smoothes over the scheduling snafus.

From within the program you pick a meeting time, select the people who should attend, and email invitations. Sidekick users who receive meeting missives can quickly accept, decline, or request a new time, and then automatically send the message back. (Even if your invitees don't use Sidekick, they can still accept or decline.) As people respond, Sidekick generates a list of attendees for the virtual meeting.

Because it's designed to run solely on the Net, Sidekick can't share calendar and contact information over your company's network. But it does give people an efficient way to stay close to the customer. Adding an appointment is as easy as clicking on a client's name and dragging it over to the appropriate day and time. Click on the name later, and up pops the client's phone number.

Coordinates: Starfish Software Inc., http://www.starfishsoftware.com

Scheduling Need: Stay in sync with your teammates.

Power Tool: GoldMine 3.2 ($180)

Your work centers on people, not things. GoldMine 3.2 ties people together. Better yet, this latest release works smoothly with the online world.

This multifaceted contact manager includes built-in email for trading memos with other GoldMiners on your company's network. It can also be set up to log incoming and outgoing emails, providing a kind of electronic cover-your-ass function. Another benefit: it gives you pertinent information on every contact, ready at your fingertips for any meeting. So when someone suggests firing off an email to the head of marketing, you can send it while the meeting is still in progress.

Niftiest of all, one of GoldMine's calendar views is a planner that synchronizes with other GoldMiners' calendars. Select your teammates for a meeting, and the networked copy of the program highlights (in colored blocks) who's busy and who's free. The downside: GoldMine's steep learning curve. Its arcane interface and menus make finding some of the program's features difficult. You'll need the manual for this one. Also, to take full advantage of GoldMine, you need to set up a central copy on your company's server.

Coordinates: GoldMine Software Corp., http://www.goldminesw.com

Scheduling Need: Share the flow of information among team members.

Power Tool: ECCO Pro 4.01 ($139)

If you're in an infocentric business where knowledge counts more than bodies, ECCO Pro is the way to go. Its strength lies in its expandable outlines for storing information in folders, which in turn are linked to a detailed electronic Rolodex and scheduler. As your team works through a project, you can assign priority levels to different tasks and automatically link those tasks to the right person's contact information.

ECCO's "shooter" feature keeps information like email addresses current. At the click of an icon, the shooter grabs highlighted data in ECCO and puts it into a spreadsheet or memo that you're working on elsewhere. On the minus side, although ECCO Pro lets you synchronize calendars remotely when you're out of the office, that maneuver requires some practice.

Coordinates: NetManage Inc., http://www.netmanage.com

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