A team forum organises exchange into topic areas instead of letting it drift past in the chat stream. In teamspace, teams discuss in forums with their own permissions, vote on options and publish company news. Part of Teamwork, the light foundation of teamspace, included in every edition.
Starting point
Day to day
Three things a team forum has to carry day to day. All three run through the same forums and the same permissions.
Structure
A single forum that everyone writes everything into quickly becomes cluttered. teamspace therefore organises exchange into levels: a topic area groups several forums, a forum holds the individual topics and polls.
The "Current topics" page collects the most recent posts by Today, Yesterday and Past. That keeps the overview intact, even when many forums run in parallel.
Polls
A poll in the forum is more than a thumbs-up. It runs through a clear process, and its winner becomes a real record in the system.
Optionen, Stichtag und Abstimmungsart festlegen
jeder Berechtigte ergänzt eigene Optionen
einfach, mehrfach oder als Bewertung
Zwischenergebnis bleibt erhalten
“Staff in both support and project planning can see orders and invoices. That was not possible before.”
Company blog
Alongside discussion, the forum runs an internal company blog. In the editorial team a small group writes the posts, and the whole company reads them. So a news tile replaces the group mail that no one finds twice anyway.
That gives the summer party, the new policy or the quarterly review a fixed place where everyone finds it again, instead of sinking into the inbox.
Intro call
Where do you discuss and decide today?
In 20 minutes we look at where your discussions, votes and company news sit today and how a forum bundles them in one place. You get honest initial feedback on whether teamspace fits.
Process
In the system configuration, topic areas come into being, and beneath them the forums, for example one per team or department. The read and write permissions sit per forum.
An opening post defines the topic. Alternatively you create a poll with options and a deadline. When it is created, the permission decides who takes part.
Posts accumulate in the topic. With a poll, voting is single, multiple choice or as a rating, public, secret or anonymous.
Whoever watches a topic gets a message in the system on every new post. That way you stay on it without constantly checking.
The Current topics page sorts by Today, Yesterday and Past. Filters bring older discussions back too.
Discussion
A topic begins with an opening post that sets the question or the proposal. Beneath it the participants' posts accumulate, and unlike in the chat the entire history stays in one place.
That turns exchange into something that stays: a question of method from today is still readable in three months, along with everything that was said about it. The quick stays in the team chat, the lasting in the forum.
Permissions
Forum content is often delicate: internal criticism, strategic questions, HR matters. In teamspace the permission per forum decides who reads along and who writes, governed through the same user groups as in the rest of the system.
Because the structure inherits hierarchically, the permission of an area applies to the forums beneath it, as long as nothing narrower is set. So confidential matters stay separate, without anyone having to think about it for each individual post.
More from Teamwork
The forum is one building block of Teamwork. These areas border on it and tap the same user groups.
Quick exchange 1:1 or in a group, when it does not belong in the forum.
Learn moreA clarified question becomes a versioned wiki page that stays.
Learn moreOpen items with an owner and a due date, also as a poll type in the forum.
Learn moreTasks as cards that travel through status columns from Waiting to Done.
Learn moreAppointments for the whole team, such as the winner of an appointment poll.
Learn moreStore documents versioned, on the board, project and customer.
Learn moreWhat it is
A team forum is an internal platform for structured exchange: discussions, polls and notices, organised into topic areas and forums with their own permissions. Unlike a chat, it holds topics in place instead of letting them drift past.
The need becomes tangible as soon as more than a dozen people work together. Then a shout across the room no longer suffices, and the chat becomes a stream in which yesterday's decision has already disappeared today. A question of method, a best-practice exchange, a vote on the next step: all things that concern several people and still count weeks later.
In teamspace the forum belongs to the light edition and therefore to every account. It shares user groups and permissions with the rest of the system, so a poll can file its winner as an appointment in the team calendar or a forum can be attached to a project.
At a glance
Discussion, voting and news are one part of how a team coordinates its day. How teamspace bundles boards, team calendar, wiki, forum and chat in one application, every board with its own wiki, forum and file drawer, is shown by the Teamwork overview.
To the Teamwork areaFeature set
The features, grouped by area. All governed through the same user groups.
Background
The difference between a mail and a forum post rarely shows on the day it is written. It shows weeks later, when someone asks: "How did we decide that back then?" The mail is then sitting in five different inboxes, each with a different state of the reply-to-all chain.
A forum turns that around. The discussion sits in one place, the history stays complete, and whoever watches the topic has kept up with the status without searching for it. A vote produces not only votes, but a decision that lives on as an appointment or record in the system. And a piece of company news stays a page that is found again, not an attachment that disappears with the inbox.
That is the quiet gain: not the loud today, but the calm later. Whoever joins in six months reads up on what happened, instead of asking the people who happened to be there. So communication becomes knowledge that belongs to the company, not to individual inboxes.
Related modules
Whoever discusses and votes in a team almost always has something to do with the project, the customer and the booked hour. Here are the shortest routes there.
Every project has a forum tab for the exchange about the undertaking.
Exchange and notes hang on the customer record, not in the inbox.
If a topic hangs on the project, the contribution becomes the booked hour.
Intro call
You describe to us how your team exchanges, votes and distributes news today. We show how teamspace turns that into orderly forums that everyone can see at a glance.
A team forum is an internal platform for structured exchange: discussions, polls and notices, organised into topic areas and forums. In teamspace it belongs to Teamwork, the light foundation, and shares user groups and permissions with the rest of the system.
Unlike the team chat, in which quick messages drift past, the forum holds in place what counts longer. An architecture decision, a best-practice exchange, a vote on the next step: all topics that concern several people and stay relevant even after weeks. Whoever joins later reads the complete history, instead of clicking back through a thousand chat lines.
For a forum to stay clear, teamspace organises exchange into three levels:
In the structure view you create topic areas and forums, move them and sort the order. The “Current topics” page shows the most recent posts by Today, Yesterday and Past, with filters for older discussions.
Alongside discussion, the forum offers a full poll feature. A poll has a voting type (single choice, multiple choice or a rating on a scale), a mode (public, secret or anonymous) and a type.
It runs through a clear process: from the draft through an optional collection mode, in which everyone authorised adds their own options, up to the voting with a deadline. A running poll can be stopped, the interim result is preserved.
The special part lies in the type. If a poll is set to Appointment, Project, File or Open Item, the winner is saved as a real element in the system after the voting. Voting on a shared appointment therefore means having it stand directly in the team calendar afterwards.
The editorial team and the news together form an internal company blog, a digital staff magazine. In the editorial team a small group writes the articles, with a title, teaser and a publication period, and assigns them to a forum.
The news shows the published articles. Staff without editorial access read them through the news tile on their home page and can add a post of their own beneath them. So a notice becomes an exchange, and the summer party, the new policy or the quarterly review gets a fixed place instead of a group mail.
A forum thrives on no one missing anything without constantly checking. For that there is watching: one click on the eye next to a topic is enough, and on every new post a message arrives in the system.
So you stay on the topics that count, without having to read along with the others. Whoever rarely opens a forum anyway is still informed as soon as something happens in a watched discussion.
Forum content is often sensitive: internal criticism, strategic questions, HR matters. teamspace governs access through the same user groups as in the whole system, and the permission sits per forum.
Everyone reads an open forum, only the team in charge writes in an internal one, an admin forum stays reserved for management. For individual forums and topics, moderators can be appointed. An external partner is given access to exactly one forum, without insight into the rest. Because the structure inherits hierarchically, the permission of an area applies to the forums beneath it, as long as nothing narrower is set.
teamspace runs in two geo-redundant data centres in Frankfurt am Main, exclusively in the EU. The data centre is ISO 27001 certified; teamspace itself does not hold this certification. teamspace is Made in Germany and GDPR compliant, with a data processing agreement as standard. On the go, the forum runs as an installable web app.
The contracting party is 5 POINT AG, a German public limited company based in Darmstadt, which has been developing teamspace since 1999. In the intro call we show the team forum with example topics and a running poll.
