Keep Business Teams Organized With JuggleMyStuff

Does your business need help getting more organized? JuggleMyStuff is an interesting Web based service that offers simple project management, collaborative file sharing, and a calendar and event planner. Other Web-based services, such as Basecamp, have similar capabilities, but JuggleMyStuff adds depth and increases flexibility.

If you need this mix of features, you can check out JuggleMyStuff at no cost--but the free plan's capacity is too limited for most businesses. Paid plans offering greater capacity range in price from $5 to $139 per month.

Signing up for the free online account is easy. And unlike many online services, JuggleMyStuff populates a demo area with sample data, so you can play with some information without having to enter it. This helps you quickly get a feel for how the service works.

JuggleMyStuff's dashboard keeps track of your appointments, projects, documents, and to-do's. Once you sign in to your account, the My Dashboard view presents you with summaries of important events and activities. You can see your appointments for the day along with your to-dos, categorized as late, due today, or upcoming. The dashboard also displays recently changed lists, projects and online documents.

Menu options across the top of My Dashboard let you drill down into the calendar to enter new appointments or to see weekly or monthly views. Other main menu items let you manage your to-dos, online documents, users, and preferences.

I particularly like JuggleMyStuff's task-based flexibility. To track a simple task you can use a straightforward to-do as a reminder. For more-involved tasks that will take several steps to complete and may involve other contributors, you can use the service's project capabilities.

You can view documents that you upload to your online storage in several different ways, too--grouping them by owner or by date last modified, for example. JuggleMyStuff provides a basic online text editor, so you can create simple documents online.

You can designate a document as private or as accessible to others for reading or for collaborative modification. Other users may post comments about a shared document.

To keep on track during a busy day, you can have JuggleMyStuff send you appointment reminders via e-mail, mobile text message, or both, from 45 to 5 minutes before an event. Another reminder option is week-at-a-glance notification of your appointments over the next seven days. Similarly, you can opt to be notified of new comments related to your work.

While JuggleMyStuff possesses simple project management capabilities, it doesn't support Gantt charts or detailed management reports suitable for managing complex or long-term projects (typically ones that last longer than a year).

JuggleMyStuff's to-dos and projects should suffice for light-duty organizing. The document-sharing capabilities can help a geographically dispersed team collaborate on projects more effectively. The flexible reminder system keeps a mobile work force apprised of new developments, even when team members are out of the office.

JuggleMyStuff could appeal to Basecamp users who want more reminder options, greater in-depth reporting, and a more capable calendar than that service delivers.

JuggleMyStuff's free plan permits up to three users, three projects, three documents, 3MB of online storage, 30 to-dos, and an unlimited number of calendar events. The Personal Plan ($5 per month) supports an unlimited number of users, 500MB of storage, ten projects, ten documents, and 100 to-dos. Other plans offer progressively greater capacities at prices that top out at $139 per month (for 50GB of online storage and unlimited everything else). The company offers 30-day free trials for its paid plans and a 25 percent discount for those who pre-pay for a year's subscription.

Richard Morochove is an IT consultant and writer. Send him questions about using technology in your connected small to midsize business via e-mail. PC World may edit your query and cannot guarantee that all questions will be answered.