The idea of “creative collaboration” conjures up images of artistic, free-thinking right-brainers working together in a loosely defined environment to produce stunning and original creative ideas. Giving a team of highly creative people a clear project path, but freedom to define their roles on a project seems like a sensible approach, and the one most likely to produce the best results.
However, research by HBR Blog Network contributor Tammy Erickson shows that the opposite may be true. Her article The Biggest Mistake You “Probably” Make with Teams explains why setting clear roles for creative teams actually improves collaboration and creative thinking.
Setting clear roles helps team members collaborate quickly without wasting time negotiating roles or on “turf wars”. If a project goal is defined ambiguously, a creative team will be more likely to collaborate closely to define and reach the goal together. She gives the example of a medical team in a hospital dealing with a trauma patient. If the team had to negotiate roles e.g. anaesthetist, surgeon, in advance of starting work on the patient, time would be wasted and the patient would be put at risk. With clearly defined roles the team can get to work immediately and focus on the needs of the patient.
Another example given was the structure of creative teams at the BBC. The research showed that BBC staff had very clear perceptions of their individual roles, whilst the creative objectives of the projects they worked on were often quite ambiguous. Clarity on roles reduced friction and allowed the teams to work creatively.
The benefits of establishing clear roles apply to online proofing teams as much as any other creative group.
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We have released a new video tutorial showing How to add a new user to ProofHQ.
You can see all the video tutorials here.
You can also watch the tutorial on ProofHQ’s YouTube channel.
We sometimes get questions about email notifications not being received by our customersor their clients! We know for certain that these email notification are sent, however, they are not always accepted by the recipient’s mail server because their mail server doesn’t recognise (or trust) the sender. The recipient therefore thinks that the email was never sent in the first place.
This article will help you ensure that all your email notifications are always received, by you and your clients.
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ProofHQ has always insisted that account names in the application be unique. The decision was made for good reasons at the time, as we wanted to automate the creation of sub-domains. Sub-domains are the words in a web address that replace “www” and is one of the branding options that you have in ProofHQ e.g. https://my-agency.proofhq.com.
Over time, this decision has created real problems for our customers. Firstly, we often have people in different departments or regions of the same company wanting separate ProofHQ accounts. It is very frustrating for the second group to sign-up, only to find out that someone else has used the company name. Secondly, agencies often set-up ProofHQ Satellite Accounts to share content with clients securely. The agency will use the client’s name for the account, but when another agency wants to set up a Satellite Account, or the clients itself wants a ProofHQ account, the account name is already in use. Frustration all round.
We are now allowing accounts names in ProofHQ to be duplicated. This means that multiple teams in the same company, or multiple agencies working for the same clients, can create ProofHQ accounts with the same name.
We are also planning to change the way users are managed, so that a user can be added to multiple accounts. More on that soon.
It’s amazing how seemingly simple functions can create a serious headache for developers and customers. Take changing an email address for example.
Each user in ProofHQ registers a primary email address when they sign up or are added as a user. This email address is used to log in and also as the “reply-to” address on email notifications sent from the system on behalf of the user. Email is therefore important as a way of identifying a person, which is why we ask people to validate an email address when it is added to a user’s profile.
However, users sometimes want to change their primary email address, and this is where we let things get slightly too complicated.
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A successful roll-out of ProofHQ includes introducing your wider review team to your new way of working.
Reviewing a proof using ProofHQ is simple and intuitive, and to help show your team just how simple it is we have created a number of tools for you.
Welcome Screen
The first thing a new reviewer sees when they open a proof for the first time is a helpful welcome screen that explains the simple 3-step process of reviewing and approving a proof. Underneath this 3-step guide are links to “See a demo movie” and also to view our “online help” section.
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We post quite a bit of useful and interesting information on our blog, from feature release overviews to service-level notices. If you’d like to learn how to receive notifications when we post something here, keep reading! Learn more »
Agencies are a significant part of the ProofHQ community, with more joining each day. One of the main support requests that we get from agencies is advice on how to explain the benefits of ProofHQ to their clients.
We thought that you would find it helpful if we provided a short fact sheet giving a summary of ProofHQ for the benefit of agency clients.
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The Contacts feature lets you organise your contacts in ProofHQ.
Types of Contact are:
* Colleagues: People in your own organisation. These are added using the New User function.
* Members: ProofHQ users in another Organisation.
* Contacts: People who are not signed up with ProofHQ.
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