Help » Manage and Work » Team Room
Team Room
Loading
- What's the team room?
- How do I know what my team is working on?
- How do I get in touch with my team?
- How do I add someone to my team?
- Can I add my team members to multiple teams?
- How do I remove someone from my team?
- How do I move someone to a different team?
- How do I create another team room?
- What's Bugzilla?
- What's Subversion (SVN)?
The team room is your virtual office - the control center for your workteam. Go there to see all your team members at a glance. You can see who's working and what they're working on and what time it is in their time zone right now. Send a message or visit a work diary with just one click. The drop-down menu will take you to a provider profile, the TimeAnalyze report or the end assignment form. Filter who you see, sort your team members or do a Quick Search. See who's been logging time lately in the activity meter. Your entire workteam is at your fingertips!
While team members are logged in with oDesk Team application, their latest screenshot is shown here in the team room (along with their memo and the active window info). So you can quite literally see what they're working on. To learn more, click through to their work diaries or check out a TimeAnalyze report of everyone's activity.
Work diaries and reports are both important for good management, but nothing can replace actually talking to your team members. No matter how you choose to communicate (the oDesk Message Center, email, chat, phone) do it regularly. Open communication is vital to a successful work relationship.
There are three ways to get in touch with team members in the team room:
- Send a Message: Sends the user a message through the oDesk Message Center.
- Compose Mail: Opens an email addressed to the user in your default email client.
- Email Your Team: Opens an email addressed to the whole team (via the team mailing list) in your default email client.
The team mailing list will send an email to every current member of the team. When a user leaves the team, they automatically stop receiving the mailing list messages. If you plan to use the team mailing list, we recommend having everyone add it to their email address books (this should keep your messages out of their spam folders).
There are two ways to add someone two your team: hire and invite. You'll need to be a hiring manager to hire and a team admin to invite. But how do know which one to do?
- You hire a user to work (and be paid for) an assignment. (Learn more about hiring.)
- You invite a user to join your team when they just need team room access or other team privileges. (Learn more about inviting users.)
Bob posted a job. Sue applies and interviews for the job. Bob hires her to join the team and start working on the assignment.
Bob has several providers working on assignments in his team and more job openings to fill. Bob invites his colleagues at the corporate headquarters to join and help manage the growing team.
So what's the big difference? When you hire someone, they have an assignment and you pay them for their work here on oDesk. If it's an hourly assignment, their time is included in your reports. An invitation just gives the user team room access or other team privileges. They'll have access, but you can't pay them on oDesk and their time is not included in your reports.
To take advantage of our full task-tracking and reporting capabilities, you'll need to hire all your team members for hourly assignments on oDesk.
Provider companies should add affiliated contractors using the invite to team option.
You can hire a user then give them access to multiple teams. Then they'll be able to log hours in any of them; the hours will be from combined across the multiple work diaries and all billed to the original assignment.
Bob hires Sue for an Assignment in Team A. He wants her to do some sensitive work that other Team A members should't see. So he creates a Team B and invites her to that team. Now she can log hours in either team and they'll all be billed to her assignment.
You can also hire the provider into multiple teams to have multiple, simultaneous assignments (useful for hiring for work at different rates).
Bob hired Sue for an assignment in Team A. He wants her to do two, very different, type of work. They agree to two different rates, depending on what Sue is working on. Bob hires Sue again into Team B. She can now log hours in Team A for one rate and in Team B at another rate.
There are three ways to remove someone from your team:
- Ending a provider's assignment (here or in Assignments)
- Taking away team room access (in Team Admin)
- Removing from the team roster entirely (in Team Admin)
Hiring managers and admins can end assignments (as the buyer) from the menu in the team member's box in the team room. Taking away someone's team room access won't change their other privileges. Removing someone from the team roster will remove all privileges (including team room access). You can't remove someone from the roster if they have an active assignment; you will have to first end the assignment and only then remove them from the team.
An admin can remove an affiliated contractor from your provider company's team room the same as any other user who doesn't have an assignment there. If you completely remove an affiliated contractor from your team, they keep their provider profile and become independent.
You'll need to add the user to the new team and remove them from old team (if desired - they can be in multiple teams).
You can't remove someone from the team they were hired in without ending the assignment. To completely move a provider from one team to another, you'll have to rehire them into the other team. In most cases, just adding the provider to another team is enough.
Admins can add as many teams to their company as they want. Just go to Manage & Work > Team Room and click the Create new team link at the right. (Read more about creating another team.)
Bugzilla is server software available for free in the team room which is designed to help you manage software development. Read more on the Bugzilla website and on Wikipedia. It can be used as an advanced task-tracking system (for any type of work). Generally, only our most technical users have a need for Bugzilla. We also offer a simplified task codes system.
No one on your team can access the Bugzilla system until a manager or admin sets it up (follow the link on the right side of your team room to get started).
Subversion is an open source version control system available for free in the team room. Read more on the Subversion website and on Wikipedia. It can be used as central server where all team files are kept. Most teams simply email documents back and forth or use their favorite online dropbox. Generally, only our more technical users have a need for SVN. We've also partnered with CVSDude and Assembla to offer additional, advanced SVN functionality.
No one on your team can access the SVN repository until a manager or admin enables it (just follow the link on the right side of your team room).
Those who are not familiar with SVN are encouraged to learn more using the links above. However, here are the basics for using the oDesk SVN repository.
- Download and install TortoiseSVN for your OS (or your preferred SVN client).
- Create a folder for the project files on your desktop.
- Right-click the Checkout folder.
- Enter the repository URL in the following format: https://secure.odesk.com/svn/teamid Then click OK.
- If a message displays that the certificate issuer is unknown, click Accept Permanently.
- Enter your user name and password, and click OK. The SVN will download all the project files that were not in the folder you have created, or the files that were updated since your latest checkout.
- If you have any new files or changes to the existing files, right-click the folder and use the Commit option to send the files from your computer to the server.
- Select the files you want to be uploaded or updated. Then click OK.
Your SVN repository has two different URLs:
- https://secure.odesk.com/wsvn/teamid/ is for browser access.
- https://secure.odesk.com/svn/teamid/ is for SVN clients.
