Webs Wonders

Got a lot of stuff done today. I like going home feeling that I've made a difference. The new lab is looking really sweet, and it looks as if it will be ready in time. It is so posh that we've decided to call it a "Computer Suite" rather than a lab! It has been a bit nerve wracking getting it all sorted, but everyone pulled together and it looks like we are heading for a happy ending.

To help manage the project I did something which has worked quite well. I built a private web site for all the people who were involved in the development. I then posted all the contact details, notes of the meetings, plans of the lab and timetables on this site so that everyone involved is able to quickly find out the status of the project. I didn't use anything particularly clever, just IIS on my office machine and the Frontpage project web site wizard, but I think that it helped quite a bit. As we added new people to the project I just gave them the password to the site and they could quickly bring themselves up to speed on things. I'll have to go thorough the site logs to find out just how many people used the pages, but if nothing else it helped me a lot! The only thing that was rather quiet was the forum part where people could raise issues, but I think that this is because we had regular meetings and there was no need to use forums to discuss things.

Microsoft reckon that the next big push is on group working, and that their new Office tools are geared to making this all easier. I'm very inclined to agree - and the next big project I'm involved with I'll definitely do the same again.