A huge part of Harvest’s successful distributed team is our use of Co-op, a free online collaboration tool built by the Harvest team. Co-op is a private status update stream that is seamlessly integrated with Harvest (naturally!). The original intent was to create a water cooler that was less invasive than group chat. However it has become absolutely vital to the operations of this business as well as to the culture.

The reason Co-op works is that it enables one-to-many communication in addition to one-to-one communication. As a marketer, I shouldn’t be surprised that communication should vary if speaking to many people versus one person. It just never occurred to me that successful distributed teams need tools that enable multiple types of communications. It’s quite obvious now.

I’ll admit, when I first got here I was a bit overwhelmed by Co-op – it just seemed like one more continuous stream of chatter that I needed to pay attention to. I have now come to love it. In addition to keeping me up to date on what everyone is working on it has helped me build relationships with my co-workers both in and out of New York. Personalities come through in Co-op in a way that they don’t on email. It has helped create and maintain the sense of culture in the office.

If you have a distributed team, or even if you don’t, I recommend you check it out here.

You can now install Harvest and Co-op (our team communication app which we live by everyday) for your Google Chrome browser via the new Web Store — it’s available at no additional charge for existing Harvesters. Once installed, the apps will appear when you load Chrome. This makes accessing our apps from Chrome on any machine even easier.

Additionally, we’ve started to add some HTML5 goodness starting with @reply notifications in Co-op, so you can take advantage of great desktop-like features right from your web browser.

Head over to the Chrome Web Store via your Chrome browser to install them today!

• Install Harvest for Chrome
• Install Co-op for Chrome

Post GitHub Commits to Co-op

Robert May of Core Web Design has put together an integration between GitHub and Co-op, Harvest’s team communication application. This GitHub service posts GitHub commits from any project of your choosing directly to Co-op. It’s a fantastic way to keep your team up-to-date on the latest development activity.

To set up the integration, visit the source GitHub repository and go to Admin > Service Hooks. Choose Co-op and fill in the necessary information.

The next commit to this repository on GitHub will be shared on Co-op.

Thanks to Robert for taking the time to make this hook available for all Co-op users.

Fluid Reminder to Track Time in Harvest

Mike Green put together a Fluid userscript which pops a Growl notification when you’ve forgotten to turn on a timer in Harvest. To install, visit the userscripts menu item (it looks like an open scroll) in your Fluid instance of Harvest. Choose Browse Userscripts.org… and search for “Harvest Growl”. Click into the “Harvest Timer Growl Reminder” userscript (direct link) and click the big green Install button to get going. Thanks, Mike!

Java Client for Harvest API

In October, Harvest customer Mauricio Offermann released a Java client for working with the Harvest API. This is the first open source Java API client for Harvest. Thank you for sharing your work, Mauricio!

Feel free to let us know if you’ve come up with your own integrations using the Harvest API!

It would not be particularly efficient for everyone on the team to watch the flow of tweets about Harvest. So, for those of us who have the task of watching Twitter, we like to favorite interesting tweets about Harvest, and we also like to share them with the rest of the team. This is a perfect task for automation by Cobot, your friendly Co-op robot.

We created a Ruby script that runs every 30 minutes looking for the latest favorited tweets on our Harvest Twitter account. It also looks at the Harvest stream to pull in anything we’ve said on Twitter. These tweets get inserted into our Co-op stream and provide a nice bit of motivation from our wonderful customers.

If you are curious to see the script, it can be found on GitHub. And here it is in action:

Enjoy using Cobot to enhance your Co-op workstreams, we’re excited to know if you find this feature useful!

For the past couple weeks we have been refining an API technique to programmatically add system status, and anything else, to a Co-op workstream. We are pleased with the results, and would like to introduce you to Cobot:

Cobot posts may be created via the Co-op API.

Along for the ride are a couple of new formatting features now enabled for Co-op statuses. First, statuses now accept <br /> tags to force new lines, which is essential for posting things like deployment of multiple code commits.

Co-op also now supports code pastes. If you paste anything in your Co-op message box with two or more new lines, the code paste view will take effect:

Feel free to share what kinds of system messages you will be looking to bring into your Co-op workstreams, we’re excited to know if you find this feature useful!

We have been working on a new systems platform for Harvest and Co-op recently, with the main objective being a manageable growth platform for the future. Part of this new systems setup involves moving our applications over to a new set of servers. In order to make the move, we need to perform systems maintenance to route data and traffic over to the new setup. We will be taking Harvest and Co-op offline between 2am – 5am EST on Sunday February 21st (see above update for new time) to perform this server migration.

As always, we thank you for your patience and support!

Follow @harvest on Twitter to receive updates on Harvest status, and general Harvest news in real time.

As a hosted software service we need to upgrade our server hardware from time to time. We’ll be taking Harvest and Co-op offline between 1am – 2am EST on Saturday January 30th (what time is this for you?) to upgrade storage on our database systems. Generally this type of maintenance can be planned weeks in advance, however in this case there is hardware which needs to be upgraded proactively to ensure smooth operation of the site.

The maintenance is not expected to last the full hour and is expected to be complete before 2am EST.  As always we appreciate your support and patience!

Follow @harvest on Twitter to get real time information about Harvest.

Use Declarative Statements Rather Than Questions

As a special New Year’s treat, I am giving you the most important tip first. When your team is dependent on asynchronous forms of communication like email or project management software, questions are deadly. Instead, state your planned course of action and finish with “please let me know if you have any concerns.”

A silent response is as good as an answer. If a colleague does have a concern with a small part of your plan, she can state it precisely and you can adjust quickly. The alternative includes lots of “What ifs” and “Do you thinks”; all questions that require the reader to load the entire problem into her head for analysis. Give her a story that shows her what is being done, and allows her to see the details and respond to only what she has questions about.

Be Concise (or bullet points are dead, long live bullet points)

Bulleted lists are death for presentations, but they turn out to be really useful for scanning action lists. List the steps you are going to take with bullets. Give a quick introduction before the list and add any details after the list.

Keep Up With the Firehose

You may be elbows deep in a difficult problem, but you still need to keep up with those upcoming projects. Keeping up with the discussion allows plans to solidify before the work needs to be done. This lets the discussion play out in the asynchronous world rather than a meeting black hole.

Chit-Chat Asynchronously

When we built Co-op, we were scratching our own itch. We needed a way to encourage team chemistry, and we often use Co-op to pass around interesting things we come across in our day, like great music, weird New Yorker articles, cool artwork, YouTube links and gadget comparisons. Co-op is a light communication tool that allows us to keep up with each other, see at a glance who is working on what, and ask questions of the team – all without the incessant interruptions of chat, or the intrusion of email.

We tried hanging out in a Campfire room for about six months, but it was too immediate for us. The pings drew us back around the campfire when we should have had our heads down, making things happen. When I asked a question, I expected an answer, so if someone else turned off the machine that goes ping, it would just leave me expectant and ultimately disappointed.  While we do use Campfire for group chat situations, Co-op provides a more background mode of communication.

When All Else Fails, Go Live

Some things just need to be communicated in real time, whether through Campfire chat, instant messaging, or a simple voice chat. Even here at Harvest we occasionally talk in realtime, be it our weekly 15-minute huddle, a problem solving meeting, or rubber ducking sessions.

We would love to hear any tips you may have for successfully communicating within your distributed team.

Thanks for your patience and continued support!

Note: Upgrade complete and everything is back online.

CrazedCoders, a development firm which uses Harvest & Co-op, have taken the liberty to develop an amazing iPhone application using Co-op’s RESTful API. Read below for more information or download iCo-op from the iTunes Apps store (FREE)! Note: requires a Co-op account which is free to sign up via the web.

iCo-op is a native iPhone application for Co-op, a lightweight web-based project management and team collaboration tool. By providing an easy way for team members to update each other on what they are working on, iCo-op enables teams to work more efficiently and enjoyably together. With an optional integration to the Harvest time tracking and invoicing app (http://getharvest.com), professional services teams can effortlessly track time and bill clients while keeping everyone on the same page.

With iCo-op for the iPhone, staying in touch with your teammates on-the-go has never been easier. Share ideas, ask questions, or coordinate groups from wherever you are. Whether you are part of a small team in a larger company or one of many freelancers working together, iCo-op keeps you and your teammates connected so you can get more work done together.

• Download iCo-op Team Communicator from iTunes App Store (FREE)
  
• Sign-up and use Co-op for your team collaboration (also, FREE)