BP9 - Teambox

The Teambox site logo

For my third Web Discovery Assignment I have decided to focus on Teambox. Teambox is a collaborative software tool that turns your office communication into a social media website, but in a good way. You no longer have to have to keep track of a gazillion emails all you need is Teambox. The software is mainly meant for Project Managers, but I think it would be fantastically helpful for my work in Office of Classroom Management (OCM) at the University of Minnesota. 

OCM is made up of five different departments, which include Classroom Technical Services, Facilities, Scheduling, Support, as well as Projects & Planning. I work in the support department as a Hotline Operator. The Classroom Support Hotline is the one stop to report any classroom issue at the U, and while my colleagues and I are able to answer most questions callers have over the phone there are simply some questions and issues that need to be escalated to the responsible department for resolution.  The inherent problem with this is that for various reasons my department does not have access to the software programs that the other departments use to keep track of the tickets they have created to resolve the issues we escalated to them. This affects my ability to follow up with the callers and let them know that their issue has been resolved. 

An example from the Teambox.com website

 

Teambox would eradicate this problem because like Twitter it gives you real time updates of what is going on with specific tasks as well as see what tasks are assigned to you. It also would mean that people would only need to update one place to let everyone know where they are. In addition because it is a web based application we would not have to worry about interoperability.  Teambox really is an awesome product.