Ubidesk Hits Beta, Boosting Collaboration for SMBs
Browser-based collaboration for anyone to use is the basis of Ubidesk, a new SaaS solution to the growing group-working conundrum.

Ubi for Everyone

Aiming to help the remote worker, Web 2.0-businesses and anyone with distributed teams, Ubidesk looks to keep collaboration practical and manageable for all users. Currently in beta testing, it offers Microsoft Office file editing online, in-browser preview and the following main tasks:

  • Project Creation
  • Document Collaboration
  • Task Management
  • Calendaring and Notifications
  • File Management
  • Sidebar Feature

Nothing too radical there, although the Sidebar is a useful twist, as it lets you edit a document in a pane while continuing to use other parts of the system.

Sign up is straightforward and you can start creating projects in seconds. Once started, you are encouraged to edit the announcement board that fronts each project, invite colleagues on board and start creating or loading documents for people to work on.

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Clean and practical, Ubidesk offers collaboration tools anyone can use
 

All About the Docs

Without documents, collaboration would be pretty pointless, Ubidesk can create documents with its own WYSIWYG editor which supports XHTML 1.0 or you can upload Microsoft Office documents and edit those within the browser. Versioning is listed as a coming soon feature which will bring this part of the package up to par.

Tasks can be created and assigned to all relevant users, meetings can be given times or assignments a deadline and all these can be viewed in hierarchical lists or project timeline views.

To keep information flowing there is also a discussion forum where people can keep passing messages to stay in the loop and offer advice.

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Keep an eye on those essential tasks
 

Collaborators Welcome

While the beta is free, there are several upgrade options users can subscribe to for additional features. The standard version offers unlimited users and projects plus 5GB of storage for US$ 49 a month. There are smaller and larger editions to suit the needs of most smaller or midsized businesses.

While there are lots of other project management and collaborations tools ranging from established services like Campfire, to other newcomers like Glasscubes, Ubidesk has a positive feel and can-do attitude to it.