Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: storing your community's documents on-line

[Ruth (ruthcaswellsmith]

At Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm we store everything on Google Drive.
We've created a folder structure and assign permissions based on folders,
i.e. each team in the community has its own folder and team members have
edit privileges on that folder but everyone else has just view permissions.
  We have an admin user id who owns all the folders and is the only one
with edit privileges on the main folder.  This keeps the structure nice and
tidy.

Permissions sometimes cause problems but generally things work pretty
well.  We have written custom scripts to assign permissions.  This makes
things easier when someone joins or leaves the neighborhood or a team.

When writing meeting minutes, the minute take opens up a Google Doc in the
appropriate folder and types the minutes right there.  They are immediately
available for others to view and/or edit.  We use a naming convention for
files so that things are easily searchable, e.g. "TeamName Meeting Minutes
YYYYMMDD" or similar.

We try to have docs and spreadsheets in the Google format, although
sometimes we upload other formats such as pdf's for maps.

The biggest problem we have (and have not entirely solved) is changing
ownership of documents when someone leaves the community.  We are trying to
move to a system where that person goes through documents they own and
reassigns ownership to the admin id.  However we haven't done that
historically and we still have lots of files that are owned by ex-neighbors
and even deceased neighbors.

Ruth Smith

On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 7:32 AM, Mary Vallier-Kaplan <marycvk [at] gmail.com>
wrote:

> If you so wish to reply on our behalf.
>
> Mary
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu>
> Date: Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 11:49 PM
> Subject: [C-L]_ storing your community's documents on-line
> To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
>
>
>
> This topic came up a few months ago, but I saw only two replies to the
> initial query in the archives. One community was using Google Docs and
> Sharon Villines was advocating for group.io. This is now a live question
> for us too.
>
> Our members' website currently serves two main functions: the e-calendar,
> which isn't perfect but works pretty well, and a document library which is
> even less perfect. One of our members created the website a number of years
> ago using a specialized software known to professional web developers; that
> effort was so time-consuming and exasperating that he isn't willing to
> develop it any further, although he does maintain it.
>
> A team is now looking at whether to keep using this website's document
> library (after reorganizing it) or move to another solution. So to all of
> you cohousers who keep your various official documents, minutes, site map,
> consensus log, new-member orientation materials, etc. on-line - what
> software or product are you using, and how well does it work for you? I
> would really appreciate seeing your replies.
>   Muriel at Shadowlake Village, Blacksburg, VA
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