Your Office on the Web! (Virtual Offices)

Chances are you work as part of a small team. It may be your whole office or just one department in a larger organization, or you may be part of a team that changes with each project. Regardless, your projects typically involve exchanging files back and forth, copious e-mail threads, and the need for viewing a shared group of contacts and calendar. Wouldn't it be great if you could have a central place to keep everything related to each project and the ability to access to it from anywhere? You can with a web-based virtual office.

You now have the perfect tool to keep everyone on the same page; all you need is a computer with Internet access. A web-based virtual office, or intranet, is an online communication tool catering to businesses, departments, groups, teams, and even families. These password protected websites serve as a secure, online central location to share documents and contacts, hold conferences, track appointments, and engage in both real time and asynchronous discussions.

There are many companies that offer these services. They all offer standard features but vary slightly from one to the next, so check them out and choose the one that's best suited to your needs.

Just what can you do with a virtual web-based office? Most virtual offices will include the following basic features:

- Announcements: Let everyone know the latest news or the next deadline. You can even link to your latest press release, new policy, or any other important information.

- Calendar: Use the calendar to organize, coordinate, and moderate projects and teams.

- Discussions: This electronic forum lets you and your teams conduct ongoing discussions on the web.

- Document Library: Collaborate while writing documents. Create folders for a library of materials important to your business such as personnel policies, sales brochures, project reports, form-letter templates, policy and procedures guides, graphics, and photographs.

- Contacts: This directory gives you a place to store contact information for customers, co-workers, clients, suppliers, vendors, and partners.

- Polls: You choose the questions and the answer choices and everyone can respond online. Results are automatically tallied and displayed.

It takes just minutes to create a virtual office online and it can improve communication and increase the productivity of your organization or team!

The best thing is that because the virtual office exists on a secure server on the Internet, all members of the team can access the project information from any PC that has Web access - whether they're at the office, at home, or on the road.