Chapter 10. Collaborating on Projects via Facebook
Expensive groupware, workflow management tools, and other collaboration programs have been around for quite a while. With its open-door policy and privacy concerns (see Chapter 13), Facebook is certainly no replacement for a dedicated, bulletproof collaboration program like Lotus Domino or Novell Groupwise. But you might find that some of Facebook’s tools are a handy—and free—way to help your team get work done quickly. This chapter gives Facebook’s messaging and subscription tools (which Chapter 4 through Chapter 7 introduced you to) a decidedly business spin. You’ll see how to use them to keep team members, co-workers, and clients in the loop—and projects on track.
Keeping in Touch
The same Facebook features that let you and your friends “talk” online—messaging(Sending Messages), events (Chapter 7), groups (Chapter 6), and notes (Creating Notes (Blogs))—can help you keep up-to-date with co-workers, clients, and customers.
Note
A recent study reported by CNET.com found that nearly half of all employers block access to social networking sites such as Facebook. The top two reasons? Loss of productivity and security concerns such as those explained in Chapter 13. If your employer won’t let you use Facebook at work, you can probably skip this chapter—unless you want to collaborate on non-work projects using Facebook.
The features themselves work the same way whether you’re interacting with your old college roommate or your boss. But there are a few things you need to keep in mind when you’re using these features for work:
Professionalism. Email did more to lower professional communication standards than casual Friday ever did. And now that everyone’s finally adjusted to emoticons, here comes Facebook, a site so hip, hot, and happening—and so easy to use—that it doesn’t just encourage you to be informal; it practically orders you. The thing is, you never know who might view your Facebook exploits, even if you’re scrupulous about privacy (see Chapter 13). So, instead of thinking of Facebook as an employee lunchroom, think of it as a meeting that the big brass might drop in on at any time. Keep personal information, off-color jokes, and “just for fun” applications (Finding Applications) to a bare minimum.
Privacy. If you’re using Facebook for business, you’ll want to scale back on the notifications Facebook sends out about your activities. That way your boss won’t get barraged with details of, say, your love life. In particular, you want to adjust your poke, message, friend request, news feed, and mini-feed privacy settings (Hiding from Facebook and Web Searches and Preventing People from Subscribing to Your Status Updates, respectively). You may even want to pare down your profile to create a limited profile (Creating a Stripped-down Profile) suitable for business contacts.
Security. Be careful not to discuss anything mission-critical on Facebook, and don’t post confidential company documents of any kind. And because you can’t be sure that information you give the site won’t get out, you may even want to keep mum about things like your work phone number and travel itinerary.
Sending Messages
Whether you’re an employee working in a cubicle farm or a freelancer working from home, you’ve probably already got an email program. So, why use Facebook to send and receive messages? Two reasons:
It’s super easy. If your co-workers and clients are on Facebook, sending them message takes only one click—whether you want to invite them to an impromptu meeting, comment on a document or Web site one of them posted, or share a video clip. (Thank the Message All Members, “Send [somebody] a Message”, Share, and other click-to-contact links scattered around the site.)
Note
If some of your co-workers and clients aren’t on Facebook, check out Finding People Who Aren’t Facebook Members for an easy way to invite them to join.
It helps you organize your correspondence. If your team uses Facebook to collaborate on a project, Facebook’s messaging feature helps you keep project-specific correspondence separate from your other work-related email.
Setting up Meetings
Intranets (private Web sites that only company employees can access) are great for lining up in-house meetings, but Facebook events are a handy way to organize get-togethers that involve a mix of co-workers and “civilians” such as clients, potential clients, suppliers, and former employees.
Note
For the full scoop on Facebook events, flip to Chapter 7.
The thing you want to pay attention to when organizing an event is the level of access that you grant other people (see The Three Different Kinds of Events). So after you choose Events from the Applications menu and then click “Create an Event” to display the “Create an Event: Step 1: Event Info” page, do the following:
Restrict your event to your company’s network. Choose the correct network from the Network drop-down list (hint: it’s probably not the Global network).
Turn on the “This event is secret” radio button. Doing so keeps details of your event out of non-attendees’ searches and news feeds.
Decide how much access to grant attendees. If you expect meeting materials to flow just one way—for example, if you plan to post documents or multimedia files for attendees to review, but don’t see a need for them to post stuff—turn off the Enable checkboxes. (Doing so helps prevent confusion, as well as the more serious threat of breached confidentiality in cases where, for example, you want to make sure nobody uploads confidential company documents.) If you don’t want anyone to know who’s attending the meeting—say it’s a sales meeting and you don’t want your attendees to get together without you before you’ve had a chance to give your official pitch—turn off the “Show the guest list” checkbox.
Exchanging Ideas
Facebook groups (Chapter 6) are terrific for:
User groups and other customer-oriented information exchanges. You get to combine your company logo with Facebook’s groovy collaboration features (such as a moderated discussion board, the ability to exchange files, and one-click messaging to all group members) to build or maintain interest in your company and products—for free!
Note
Technically, Facebook is for non-commercial use only—but gobs of people are using groups for marketing, and Facebook’s SWAT team doesn’t seem to mind (at least, not yet). See Chapter 11 for more on using Facebook for commercial purposes.
Team discussions. If your company doesn’t have an intranet and is relying instead on email for team discussions, you’re going to love Facebook groups. Using groups is a lot easier than dealing with mile-long “me too” replies and CC lists—and groups give people a single place to go for updates and file exchanges. Just be sure you restrict your group to your company’s network and make your group secret (Creating a Group). This keeps group details out of the hands of riffraff (meaning anybody who’s not a confirmed team member).
Chapter 6 has all the details about setting up and using groups.
Creating and Subscribing to Notes
Facebook notes (Creating Notes (Blogs)) are basically blog entries people can subscribe to. You could use plain old email to send your team multimedia documents like project milestones, ongoing customer service requests, or meeting minutes. But using Facebook notes instead gives team members the best of both worlds: Web feeds (Subscriptions) that alert them every time you post a new document, and a single, easily-accessible archive of everything you’ve posted.
To use notes:
Make sure all your team members are on your Friend List. See Viewing a Friend List.
Adjust your notes settings. On the “Privacy Settings for Notes” page (Restricting Access to Your Notes), restrict access to “Only my friends”, and then zip to the Syndication section and make sure the “Anyone who can see my notes can subscribe to my notes” radio button is turned on. If it’s not, turn it on.
Have your team members subscribe to your notes. Have each of them go to any of your notes and scroll to the “Subscribe to these Notes” section on the right side of the page, and then click the “[Your Name]’s Notes” link. On the page that appears, each person needs to click “Subscribe to this feed”. (See Subscriptions for more on subscribing to feeds.)
Exchanging Files
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking team meetings, sales conferences, or product launches: All business interactions generate documents. Brochures, diagrams, attendee lists, action items, reports, recommendations, flow charts—the list goes on and on. Fortunately, one of the things Facebook excels at is letting you exchange documents painlessly and privately.
Note
Privacy, of course, is relative. No free site will ever guard your data as carefully as you would. See Chapter 13 for the whole scoop on Facebook privacy. The bottom line: Don’t use Facebook to send confidential info.
Facebook’s built-in Photos application lets you upload and share image files with your co-workers. And the built-in Posted Items application lets you share just about anything else, from audio and video clips to files and documents stored on the Web. Read on to learn how, or see Facebook Applications: An Overview to learn about applications.
Sharing Pictures
You can use Facebook’s Photos application to upload and share picture files. The files you upload have to be in one of these three Internet-friendly formats: .jpg; .png (with some restrictions—Creating and Filling a Picture Album); and .gif (but not animated .gifs).
Tip
If you’re not sure what format a picture file is in, here’s how to find out: Locate the file on your computer and right-click it (Ctrl-click on a Mac); then select Properties (Get Info) from the pop-up menu that appears. The info box you see lists the file’s format.
On Facebook, you organize your picture files by grouping them into albums. You can limit access to each album so that only certain team members can see it, and you can even tag individual pictures. (Tagging is a way of associating one or more team members with the picture, which is useful for establishing and tracking accountability. For example, you can tag a picture of a features list so that each list item is associated with the person responsible for developing it.)
Note
Albums aren’t the only way to share pictures. In addition to your profile picture (Adding Pictures of Yourself), Facebook lets you add pictures to groups, events, and notes. But using the Photos application’s albums is your best bet when you want to keep project- or team-related photos, drawings, sketches, or screenshots in one place.
Creating and Filling a Picture Album
Before you can upload and share a group of picture files, you need to create an album. Here’s how to do both:
From the Applications menu, choose Photos.
Note
Because Photos is an application, you can delete it (see Deleting Applications). If you deleted it by accident, turn to Adding Applications to learn how to find and reinstall it.
On the Photos page that appears, click the “Create a Photo Album” button.
Describe your photo album, and then click “Create Album”. Whatever you type in for the Name, Location, and Description fields will be visible to everyone who can see your album, so keep it clean. From the “Visible to” drop-down list, choose “Only my friends” to restrict album access to your team members.
Decide whether you need to upload lots of pictures at once. On the Upload Photos page that appears, Facebook gives you two options:
Let Facebook install a little software module called an ActiveX component (sometimes referred to as an ActiveX control) on your computer that you can use to upload lots of .jpg or .gif files—but not .png files—all at once (but which, like all ActiveX components, represents a slight security risk). You can think of an ActiveX component as a special kind of plug-in that works inside Microsoft programs such as Internet Explorer.
The ActiveX component really is slick. Unless you’re hyper security-conscious or plan to only ever upload two or three picture files to Facebook, install it! It lets you preview each photo, turn on checkboxes to select pictures, and even rotate individual pictures before uploading them.
Note
Attention Mac fans: The batch uploading tool you get is delivered via a Java add-in rather than ActiveX; the behind-the-scenes differences are details only a programmer would want to know. The good news for you: Java provides all the same tricks as ActiveX but with an even more minuscule security risk.
Go with a bare bones, one-at-a-time uploading feature that doesn’t require you to download a potentially dangerous mini-program and lets you upload .png files.
To install the ActiveX component, click either the Download button you see on the pop-up window or (if you’ve got pop-ups turned off in your browser) the “click here to install the ActiveX control” bar at the top of your browser. To install the other, slower uploading feature, click the “Try the Simple Uploader” link.
Tell Facebook which picture files you want to upload. The Upload Photos page you see depends on the uploading feature you chose in step 4. If you went with the ActiveX photo upload tool, you can click to browse your computer for picture files and select a bunch of them all at once. If you chose the Simple Uploader, the page lets you browse your computer and select files one at a time. After you choose the files you want to upload, click either the Upload or Upload Photos button.
Note
The picture files you choose need to weigh in at less than 5 megabytes each. See the Tip in Sharing Pictures with details about checking a photo’s file format; the info box that appears also shows you file size.
Note
The ActiveX photo upload tool’s page requires you to turn on an “I certify that I have the right to distribute these photos” checkbox before you can post your photos. But even though you don’t have to turn on any special checkboxes on the Simple Uploader’s Upload Photos page, by uploading picture files using either page, you’re guaranteeing that the files you’re uploading are yours to share.
Note
Facebook allows you to stuff up to 60 pictures in a single album, which you’ll probably find is more than enough. But if you need to share more, no problem: Simply create another album. Facebook doesn’t place a limit on the number of albums you can create (which is why, according to some accounts, Facebook stores more photos than any other photo-sharing site).
Editing Your Album
After you create an album, you can change practically anything about it. From the Edit Album page (which you get to by heading to the Photos section of your profile, clicking the name of your album, and then clicking the “Edit Photos” link), you can:
Note
You can also edit your album by following these steps: From the Applications menu, choose Photos. In the page that appears, click the My Photos link. Then, from the list of albums you see, scroll down to the album you want to change and click the Edit Album link that appears below the album’s name.
Add more pictures. Click Add More Photos and then, on the Upload Photos page that appears, follow the same steps you used to upload your first batch of picture files (Creating and Filling a Picture Album).
Delete pictures. Scroll to the picture you want to delete and turn on the “Delete this photo” checkbox below it. (To delete multiple pictures, turn on each picture’s checkbox.) Then head to the bottom of the page and click the Save Changes button.
Note
To delete a whole album, click the Delete Album link.
Reorder your pictures. Click Organize Photos and, on the page that appears, either drag the pictures into the order you want them, or click the Reverse Order button (which moves pictures A, B, and C so C shows up first, then B, then A). When you finish, click the Save Changes button.
Add captions to pictures. Head to a picture and type your caption text in the Caption field. Don’t forget to click Save Changes when you’re done.
Note
Your caption text pops up when people mouse over a picture in your album.
Choose a picture to use as the album’s “cover.” Facebook assumes you want the first picture you uploaded to be your album’s cover, but you can tell it differently. To pick your own cover, scroll to the picture you want to appear as a thumbnail (a tiny image) on your profile page (and wherever else Facebook displays your album, such as in your mini-feed when you update your album, or in an email message you’ve attached your album to). Click the “This is the album cover” radio button next to the photo, and then head to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.
Change the name or description of your album. Click the Edit Info tab, make your changes, and then click Save Changes.
Tip
Clicking the Edit Info tab displays a link you can use to share your album with people who aren’t Facebook members. Simply copy and paste the link into an email.
Viewing Your Album
After you create an album, Facebook displays a thumbnail of the album’s cover (Editing Your Album) on the Photos section of your profile. When someone clicks on the album’s name, Facebook displays album info along with links to each picture in the album.
Note
Everyone who can see your full profile can see your photos, but folks who can see your photos can’t necessarily see your profile. That’s because Facebook lets you set access to your profile and to your albums separately—Controlling Who Sees Your Profile and Contact Info.
Restricting Access to Your Albums
Facebook gives you a couple different ways to control who can see your albums:
Specify who can see you albums. You did this when you created your album, but you can change this setting at any time: From the Edit Album page (Editing Your Album), click Edit Album Info, and then choose one of the following from the “Visible to” drop-down list:
Everyone
All my networks and all my friends
Some of my networks and all my friends
Only my friends
If you createlimited profiles (Creating a Stripped-down Profile) for certain people on your team, you can hide one or more albums from them. For example, say you set up a limited profile for team members who are contract workers instead of company employees. You can put employee-only pictures into an album and hide that album from anyone viewing your limited profile. To do so: At the top right of any Facebook page, click the “privacy” link. Then scroll down to the Limited Profile section of the page that appears and click Edit Settings. On the Limited Profile Settings page, scroll down to the Photo Albums section, turn off the checkbox next to the album (or albums) you want to hide, and then click Save.
Tagging (Labeling) Your Pictures
Tagging is a nifty way to add a virtual label to your images. You can use tags to identify individuals in group pictures, but tagging is also a handy way to indicate who’s responsible for creating or working on something shown in a picture. For example, tagging each section of a flow chart or schematic with a co-worker’s name lets everyone know who’s responsible for what, quickly and easily.
Every time someone looks at your photo album (Viewing Your Album), he sees a list of all the people tagged in that album. Clicking the “photos” link next to a name lets you see all the pictures in all the albums that are associated with that person.
Then, when he mouses over the tagged portion of a picture, up pops the tagee’s name.
To tag a picture:
From the Edit Album page (Editing Your Album), mouse over the picture you’re interested in. Your cursor turns into crosshairs.
When you’re right over the spot you want to tag, click. Facebook draws a white square on the picture and pops up a box you can use to associate that section of the picture with yourself or anyone on your Friend List.
Note
In addition to tagging a picture from the Edit Album page, you can also tag (as well as edit, rotate, and add a caption to) a picture from an individual picture’s page. To do so: From the Applications menu, choose Photos, and then click the My Photos link. Scroll down and click the picture you want to tag, and then click it again. When you scroll to the bottom of the picture’s page, you see a Tag This Photo link. Click it, and then follow step 2 above.
Posting Items on Your Profile
If you can find a link to something on the Web, you can add it to your Facebook profile. Think company documents from your corporate site, video clips from your marketing department, or relevant research you’ve collected from all over the Web that you want your team to see. The items you post appear in the Posted Items and Mini-Feed sections of your profile.
Unless you’ve blocked their access (see Fighting Back), team members can add their comments after they’ve checked out each item, and they can share them with others (even non-Facebook members) quickly and easily by clicking the Share button that appears alongside each posted item.
Best of all, multimedia links appear complete with controls so the people browsing your posted items can listen to music, watch a video clip, or check out other content you’ve posted—all without leaving your Posted Items page.
To post something:
From the Applications menu, choose Posted Items. You may have to click (or hover over) “more” to see the Posted Items link.
Tell Facebook where to find the item you want to post. On the Posted Items page that appears, head to the “Post a link” field, type or copy and paste the URL (Web address) of the item you want to post, and then click the Post button.
On the “Post to My Profile” page that appears, click in the Comment field and type a note explaining why you want your team to see this item. From the URL you specify, Facebook automatically pulls in the title of the item, a description, and any pictures the Web page contains. The title and description are usually pretty useful, but if you don’t like one or both, simply click either one and start typing to write your own. Then flip through the thumbnail pictures Facebook copied from the site you linked to and either choose an image you want to appear next to your posted link or turn on the No Picture checkbox.
Click Post. The item appears on the Posted Items section of your profile. In addition, depending on your privacy settings (see Viewing and Changing Your Notes and Controlling Automatic Feeds), news of your newly posted item may also appear in your mini-feed and in your friends’ news feeds.
Note
To delete an item you’ve posted, head to your Posted Items page (from the Applications menu, choose Posted Items, and then click the My Posted Items link) and click the X next to the item’s Share button.
Keeping Up-to-date with Feeds
One of the best arguments for using Facebook on the job is notifications (Customizing Your Mini-feed). When one of your team members updates a report, you get a notification. When another one weighs in on a discussion, you get a notification. And so on. Notifications make your life easier by automating one of the hardest things about keeping projects on track: keeping team members apprised of each others’ actions and of project milestones. And you can customize these automated messages to an amazing degree. Here’s how to make sure you’re notified of just the important stuff:
Note
Facebook doesn’t let you completely control the notification process. Stuff you’re not interested in is bound to get through occasionally.
Decide which team member activities you want Facebook to share with the group (for example, “Post on a Discussion Board” or “Add a Friend”). To change your settings, at the top right of any Facebook page, click the “privacy” link. Then click the “News Feed and Mini-Feed” link to display the “News Feed and Mini-Feed Privacy Settings” page. Adjust your settings (to control which of your activities your team members get notified about—see Preventing People from Subscribing to Your Status Updates), and then, to ensure consistent notifications among team members, tell your team members how to adjust their settings.
Note
For more on the “News Feed and Mini-Feed Privacy Settings” page, see Controlling Automatic Feeds.
Tell Facebook what kinds of activities you’re most interested in and which team members you want to keep the closest eye on. Facebook has the last word on which stories (newsy tidbits) appear on the News Feed section of your home page, but you can influence its selections. To do so: From your home page (click the “home” link at the top of any page to get to it), click the Preferences link to the right of the News Feed section heading. See Customizing Your News Feed for details on setting story preferences.
Tell Facebook which activities involving you you want to be notified about. Facebook can keep track of just about anything anybody does on the site that involves you. For example, you can tell Facebook to email you when a team member replies to one of your posts on a discussion board or comments on a note or photo you’ve posted. At the top of any Facebook page, click the “account” link, and then click the Notifications tab. (See Choosing Which Notifications You Want to See for more about notification settings.)
Note
Notifications are a great way to keep current with your project if you travel a lot and have email access but can’t log in to Facebook. (Facebook Mobile is another option.) For the skinny on notifications, flip to Customizing Your Mini-feed; for the full scoop on Facebook Mobile, see Chapter 14.