Planning Admin Tools

In 202 Jeff Everingham prepared a document suggesting the objectives to be met by our administrative tools and a number of possibilities to meet them. This document will evolve as the EC (and other members with relevant experience) discusses them.

Please make your comments in the [Discussion] tab above.

Problems to solve

1. We need to be able to share our calendars
2. Resilience planning / knowledge retention (i.e. if people leave, we don’t lose everything)
3. We don’t have a good handle on our membership, and keeping data organized and accessible
4. We need a good and easy way to strategize
5. We need a way to allocate action items and follow up
6. Need a way to track and assist people setting up CAs and registering candidates (i.e. maybe some kind of dashboard?)
7. All roles and responsibilities need to be defined (some currently exist)

Concerns

1. Costs
2. Security / privacy
3. Ease of use
4. Ease of maintaining neutral subscription or transferring to another person

Potential New Tools

1. Google Suite
2. Microsoft Office / Teams
3. Slack
4. Trello
5. Lucidchart
6. Jira Software
7. Miro
8. Confluence
9. Synology - might be more useful when we grow much larger (server based system)
10. Azure Dev Ops (ADO) for huddle board - might be more useful in the future, overkill right now
11. Discord (used this for candidate communication during 2019 election)

Current Suite

1. Email - Zimbra (free, generally works but has occasional outages)
2. Website/email blasts/CRM: Nation Builder (annual fee paid end of August)
3. Payment processors: Stripe (previously used Paypal, Authorize.net (monthly fee of 39.95 paid by party credit card)
4. Domain names: Dreamhost (annual renewal in November)
5. Server: - Linode (https://www.linode.com/ - paid on party credit card)
6. Document Management: BaseCamp (paid monthly by Coreen for reimbursement by party)
7. Meetings: Zoom (switched in Aug 2020 from UberConference - annual fee paid by Coreen for reimbursement)
8. Trello - for activity planning

Google Suite

Option 1 - Free

■ Everyone gets this with a free gmail account

■ Gmail

■ Calendar

■ Meet

■ Drive

■ Docs

■ Sheets

■ Slides

■ Keep (i.e. to do app)

■ Meet/Hangouts (now free - allows video calls)

Option 2 - Paid

Business Starter - probably their cheapest plan

Pricing estimate for business starter: $7.80 x 10 users x 12 months = $936 annually ($93.60 per user annually)

More details on versions: https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html

Microsoft Office / Teams

Business plan:

Pricing estimate: $6.40 x 10 users x 12 months = $768 per year ($76.80 per user annually)

Business Basic Includes:

1. Teamwork and communication
   1. Host - online meetings and video calls for up to 300 people with Microsoft Teams
   2. Chat with your team from your desktop or on the go with Microsoft Teams
   3. Bring together all your team’s chats, meetings, files, and apps so you can easily connect and collaborate from one place with Microsoft Teams
   4. Create team sites to share information, content, and files throughout your intranet using SharePoint
2. Web and mobile versions of Office apps
   1. Web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook
   2. Mobile versions of above apps for iOS and Android
   3. Co-authoring
3. Email and calendaring
   1. Email hosting with 50 GB mailbox
   2. Use your own custom domain name (for example, [[1]])
   3. Business-class email on mobile devices, tablets, desktops, and the web with Exchange
   4. Manage your calendar, share available meeting times, schedule meetings, and get reminders
   5. Schedule meetings and respond to invitations with ease using shared calendars
   6. Set up new user emails, restore deleted accounts, create custom scripts, and more from anywhere
4. File storage and sharing
   1. 1 TB of OneDrive storage for file storage and sharing
   2. Work on a file and save it directly to OneDrive or SharePoint; your changes are updated across your synced devices
   3. Share files with external contacts by providing access or guest links
   4. Securely share documents and send emails so only those with the right permissions can access the information
   5. Access and sync files on PC or Mac and mobile devices
5. Security and compliance
   1. Protect your email against spam, malware, and known threats with Exchange Online Protection
   2. Meets key international, regional, and industry-specific standards and terms, with more than 1,000 security and privacy controls
   3. Control who and when someone has access to your business information with security groups and custom permissions
   4. Create password policies that require users to reset their passwords after a specified number of days.
6. Support and deployment
   1. Around the clock phone and online support
   2. 99.9 percent uptime guarantee
   3. Maximum number of users: 300
   4. Licensed for commercial use
7. Tools to build and manage your business
   1. Plan schedules and daily tasks with Microsoft Teams
   2. Track information and work that matters most to your team with Microsoft Lists

More details on versions --> Compare-all-microsoft-365-business-products

Teams Demo:

Slack

● Free version is probably sufficient for us to start

More details on versions: https://slack.com/intl/en-ca/pricing

Demo:

Trello

● Planning and tracking cloud app

● Free to use for basic features

Demo version: https://trello.com/b/Ga74KD8p/libertarian-party-of-canada-to-do-list

Lucidchart

● Great for building various charts (hierarchies, flow charts for processes, etc.)

● Free to use for basic features

○ Might be able to pay for a single or small number of logins and share amongst leadership team

Jira Software

● Another option for project planning / to do lists

● Software is intended for tech/engineering companies, but can be used for anything where project planning is required

● Much more robust software, can assign users, deadlines, and much more

● Free for up to 10 users

Demo: https://libertarian.atlassian.net/projects/M2/board

Miro

● Excellent online whiteboard app for collaboration

● Free for basic version

Demo video:

Confluence

● Free for up to 10 users

● Part of Atlassian suite (similar to Jira Software and Trello)

● Useful for knowledge retention / documentation (like a wiki)

Overview Demo:

Project Management

AHA Web Site