Teamwork Overview

At Any Old Task, we use a few tools on a daily basis to ensure we’re as organized, productive and efficient as possible. We love helping our readers work smarter (not harder!), and that’s why we’re sharing these tools with you in Overviews!

This week, we’re giving you an Overview of Teamwork: What it is, what you can do with it, and how you can use it to better manage your projects and tasks. Let’s get started.

What is Teamwork?

Teamwork is a suite of web and mobile-based project management, communication and customer support apps used by teams to create and manage projects and all the tasks that go with them.

Founded in 2007, Teamwork was designed to replace other project management solutions that were slow, clunky, badly designed and non-responsive to their clients’ ever-changing needs. Its mission: make the world’s most easy-to-use, fastest, and best project management system.

I tell people that if Asana, Trello, and Wrike had a genetically engineered super-baby, Teamwork would be it.

Teamwork Projects promises to get you organized, help your team become better collaborators and increase their productivity on a daily basis. You can also log time on (and get super-accurate billing reports from) the Teamwork Timer app, message your team members in real time on Teamwork Chat, and offer ticket support to your customers from Teamwork Desk.

For the purposes of this Overview we’ll focus on Teamwork Projects itself.

What can I do with it?

What can’t you do with it? Teamwork allows you to track projects from start to finish. Start by creating a project, add in any milestones you want to keep track of, identify the main areas that need to be worked on as task lists and then detail out all the tasks and sub-tasks that need to get done.

All tasks can be assigned to a specific person or more than one person if necessary. You can add full descriptions, start and due dates, attach files, set reminders, make the task recurring, set the task priority and even set dependencies so everyone knows what needs to be done first.

Once you have created a task you and your team can make comments on it, add sub-tasks to it, and even log any time you’ve spent working on it.

And that’s not all! You can create templates, assign roles, set detailed permissions, create internal messages, add notebooks, run reports, and view your project as a Gantt Chart.

I’ll leave off there but there is so much more you can do in Teamwork. It’s highly customizable and you can use all of the features on one project and just a few on another project. Okay…. I’m geeking out a bit. Taking a breath. 😉

Get Started

Wondering how to get started? Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Teamwork Projects. Once you’re set up and logged in, it’s time to get to work! Teamwork starts you off with a great little walk-through, or you can watch mine below.

No matter which you watch, it will cover these main features below.

1) Get familiar with your Dashboard

When you log in to your Teamwork Projects site, the the first tab you land on will be your Dashboard.

Under Activity, you’ll get a live stream of updates from all the projects you’re involved in. Here, you’ll see your tasks, milestones, notebooks, etc. being added, edited and completed. You can also find other activity like comments or messages.

Under Upcoming Events, you’ll see scheduled meetings and events, projects, availability and more.

2) Add Projects

This is where all your work will live, from tasks and milestones to messages, notebooks, files and more.

• Create a project by pressing the green Add Project button at the top right of your screen

• Add details like the Project Name, Description and Company.

You can also add or remove people on the project, enable specific features, and set a start and end date. Under Advanced, you can set up categories and tags, which help sort your projects, files, and notes.

Pro Tip: To see a list of your Projects, click the Projects tab. Toggle between the List and Chart view of your Active, Current and Archived Projects.

3) Add Task Lists and Tasks

No need to keep a running task list in your head or in a notepad that’s sure to go missing – this is now your task hub for today, tomorrow and the future.

• Within each project, create task lists to group your tasks together.

• In the tasks area, press the + Add Task List button

• Fill in the appropriate details

• Click the +Add a Task button under the task list to add new tasks. Name your task, assign it to people by adding tags, notify them by email and provide a description.

Pro Tip: If you have a list that you will be adding to continuously you can use the little pin on the right hand side of the Task List name to pin it open. This way, it won’t get closed when all the current tasks are done, allowing you to easily add more to the list as, and when, needed.

4) Quickly add Milestones, Tasks, Messages, Events and more

Clicking the Quick Add (+ Add) tab on the top right of your Dashboard will reveal options to add Milestones, Tasks, Messages, and Events. You can also Start a Timer and Log Time from here. Another helpful function in this menu is Add Shortcut, which you can create for easy access to any item or area within your Projects site.

Pro Tip: Click the Add button in the top nav and choose “Task” to add multiple tasks at a time. Or click the three dots beside the the Add Task List button to import a file of tasks.

5) See Everything at a Glance

Click the Everything tab to find out what’s happening across all your projects.

Here, you’ll see Active and Completed Tasks, Milestones, Messages, Comments, Files, Time (where the start and end times, billable, and hours spent on your projects are listed), Notebooks, Links and Workload.

6) Manage your Calendar

No more forgetting important project milestones, events, meetings or task due dates – you can plug them all into one Calendar for easy access.

• Click the Calendar tab and choose one of three privacy options:

  1) Only people in my company – Share an event with your colleagues
  2) Members of a project can see this – Share your event with members of a specific project. This will link your event to the appropriate project, so you can view it when you use the project filter in your calendar
  3) This is just for me (only you can see this event) – your event will be private and has the capability to show dedicated time blocked for you, but hide details from anyone else’s eyes.

Pro Tip: You can also include an iCal feed to connect your calendar to an external calendar (such as Google Calendar or Outlook), adding reminders for events and creating specific event types.

7) Add People

When you’re deep into a project, communicating status updates and sharing files across multiple platforms quickly gets confusing. Now, searching inboxes, hunting through notes for contact information and jumping on Messenger for conversations is a thing of the past.

From your People tab, you can view, edit and add new users or contacts (depending on your permissions), and manage the companies on your site.

In the top right of your screen on the People tab, you’ll see two buttons, including + Invite Users and + Add.

Invite Users lets you add people as users who will be able to log in to your site, and provide input on the projects assigned to them. Using this option, you can invite multiple users to your site at the same time, add them to a specific set of projects, and create a custom message they’ll see when they open their invite email.

Choose the +Add option to add a single user or contact and fill in their details.

Teamwork has a ton of other awesome features. Read more about them in Teamwork’s helpful Getting Started Guide.

If you’re looking for an amazing, easy-to-use, all in one tool to help you and your team get organized, be more productive and communicate better; Teamwork is the app for you.

The Goldilocks Test

Price – Just Right – Teamwork is free for up to 5 users and two projects which is great for small businesses looking to track their own projects. Then it’s only $9 a month billed annually for additional users.

Usability – Just Right – Teamwork as a ton of features and settings you can use and tweak but if you just want to get started you can easily ignore or turn-off anything you don’t need.

Visual Appeal – Just Right – Many of the other project management tools feel too cluttered, causing anxiety and unease when facing a large list of to-dos. Teamwork’s layout and user interface feels welcoming, easy, and spacious.

Features – Just Right – Like I said there are a ton of features. You will never find yourself saying “I wish Teamwork could…” because in all likelihood, it can.

Integrations – Too Cold – Don’t get me wrong, Teamwork has some great integrations with apps like Quickbooks and Freshbooks, Dropbox, Google Calendar, Email & Drive, Hubspot & Zendesk to name a few; and it connects with many more via Zapier, but I would love it to connect with Infusionsoft and Ontraport, Drip & Convertkit, & Slack. The Chrome extension almost makes up for it though.

Overall: Eat the Porridge – Teamwork is amazing. I geek out about it constantly. There are some many other reasons to love it beyond what I’ve noted above. Using Teamwork has been the best decision I have ever made for my business. Go ahead, eat the porridge. 🙂