Review: Huddle online collaboration software

The concept of organising a team is nothing new, but online tools such as Huddle make it far easier for smaller teams, especially if they are not all based in the same office or building.

Huddle is different from the heavyweights of Microsoft Project, because it is more intuitive and you can be working on a project as soon as registration is complete.

An account has three workspaces and 1GB of storage, along with unlimited users and whiteboards. More workspaces and storage can bought with the Essential, Plus and Premium packages ranging from £10 to £50 a month; this also removes the online advertising.

Projects exist in their own workspaces with tasks, discussions and relevant files. Teams are created via email invitation; email is also used for alerting due tasks and updates to discussions.

Files can simply be uploaded to the file storage area and then checked out for editing. However, more convenient are the Zoho Office online editors for Word and Excel documents. These are very capable and avoid problems of team members not having the right software. These documents can also be edited offline in local applications.

Tasks are shown on a calendar view. They can be assigned to team members, but cannot depend on each other, so there are no fancy Gantt chart views.

One annoyance is that there’s no link to return to the main Task screen after creating a task, apart from the main tab heading. We’d also like to see a percentage of completion for tasks to give a better picture of the project’s status.

For smaller projects and teams, Huddle is an excellent way of managing projects and will benefit many organisations that might not previously have considered project management tools. The comprehensive version histories and audit trails also provide proper accountability.