MVP

Consolidated feed

• Similar to Facebook feed
• Ability to dynamically filter in two dimensions (by Contacts/Groups/Projects/Organisations and by type of update) by ticking/unticking checkboxes. 

Contacts

• People you’re connected to directly (not necessarily through a Project or Organisation)
• Analagous to Twitter/Facebook/G+/LinkedIn - i.e. you are connecting with them, choosing to allow them to include you in updates they publish.

Circles

• Exactly the same as G+ Circles – i.e. collections/groups of individual contacts
• Specific to an individual and private (maybe have option of making public?)
• Used for Feed filtering and deciding who to share things with.

Organisations

• Represents, for example, a company, department or team
• Like G+ Circles but owned and controlled by someone else
• Membership of an Organisation is controlled by an Owner/Administrator (can have multiple)
• Support for hierarchical organisations with delegated control (e.g. adding someone to “Support Team” also adds them to “IT Department” and “Entire Company”)

Projects

• Intended to be the main focus of the application.
• Represents a group of people working on a particular project – i.e. virtual project team.
• V.similar to an Organisation but likely to include people from multiple Organisations as well as individuals
• Membership of an Organisation is controlled by an Owner/Administrator (likely to have multiple – e.g. one per involved Organisation)
• Intersection of Organisations and Projects becomes useful if, for example, you want to share a document or discuss something internally with your colleagues before sharing it with your external partners/suppliers

Working Groups

• Separate groups within a Project.
• Can be private or “public” (within the Project).  

**Key Functionality**

Updates

• Manual

• “Business requirements have been signed off by Users X, Y and Z. Now with Management for final approval.”

• “Jack’s off sick today, won’t be responding to emails. Phone him if it’s urgent.”

• Automatic

• “Jack has shared a new file: Cash_flow_projections.xls”

• “Cyril has completed task: Review Mark’s changes to libretroshare”

• “Mark has started a new discussion topic: New functionality for Relay v1.5”

• “Mark has added Paul Graham to the Project.”

File-sharing

• Ability to share individual files or the contents of a folder with an individual(s) or with a group, organisation or project (NB: publishing only)
• Ability to create Shared/Synced Folders for Organisations and Projects (i.e. people you’ve shared the folder with can add new files to the folder, edit/change/rename existing files, etc.)
• Version control
• Create a new version of a file but with a different filename (e.g. by editing BusinessPlan_v1.doc and saving it as BusinessPlan_v2.doc)
• When a file is changed (i.e. edited and saved with the same filename), allow everyone receiving the changes the option of saving a copy of the old version with a different filename.
• Support integration with Dropbox, AeroFS and Box.net? Give people choice?
• Support “Archiving”, where a file is no longer active but you want to archive it somewhere where it will still be accessible, either web-download or by requesting from a server that appears in the network as a peer.

Discussions

• Intended to replace email threads
• Can be attached to/associated with a file, task, etc.
• Can have a file attached.

Tasks

• Ability to create individual tasks for yourself or others
• Attributes: Deadline, Priority, Expected Completion Date and % Complete (in terms of effort, not time)
• Ability to create shared tasks (with the concept of a “ball” – e.g. “The ball’s in your court.”)
• Ability to link tasks together with dependencies – (i.e. Task B can’t be completed until Task A is complete, Task C can’t start until Task B is completed). Intended to be informational and to help drive task priorities than as a limiting thing.
• Support for prioritisation of users’ task lists, with ability to delegate rights to change priorities (to, for example, your boss)

Shared calendar

• Ability to integrate with Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.
• Share availability with others.

Chat

• One-to-One chat, with ability to invite people to join IRC-style channels.

Online caching

• Upgrade feature/service
• Allows people to send you updates out-of-band (i.e. they send it to your cache, then later, when you come back online, you download it from your cache even if they’re offline)
• Also works in reverse (you can upload an update to your cache to be delivered to the recipient when they come back online)
• All encrypted so completely secure
• Special “Enterprise” version for holding all of a Project’s or Organisation’s content online.
• Potential to provide support for iOS/Android clients?