Platespin
Free project management for busy people
Keep every plate spinning
Platespin helps busy entrepreneurs and teams stay on top of their work: what needs doing, who's doing it, and when it's due, all in one simple place.
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Free to use. Accounts are by invitation.
What is Platespin?
Platespin is a free project management tool for busy entrepreneurs and teams with a lot on their plate. It's a simple way to stay on top of your work: plan your projects, schedule tasks, share them with the people you work with, and see at a glance what needs doing next.
Whether you're running a business on your own or keeping a whole team moving in the same direction, everything lives in one tidy place, so nothing slips through the cracks.
Platespin is free to use, and runs in your web browser, so there's nothing to install. Accounts are by invitation: ask someone who uses Platespin to invite you, or write to [email protected].
Features
Everything you can do in Platespin today, all free.
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Plan projects
Break big goals into projects, with sections such as To do, Doing and Done, and tags to sort tasks. Turn on statuses to give each project its own workflow, like In review or Waiting for client, and custom fields to keep what your team tracks, like a budget or a client, on every task. Mark milestones to see the moments that matter on the timeline. Every task has a number, like #42, to find it by. Save a project or a task as a template, and start the next one from it in a click. Post a short status update every so often, on track, at risk or off track and why, so everyone can see how each project is going. Set goals for the quarter, each with key results measured by a number you update or by the work in your projects and tasks, and see how far each has come.
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Schedule tasks
Give each task a start date, a due date and time, a priority, someone to do it, and a checklist of steps to tick off as you go. Mark which tasks wait on others, and they can move along when plans change.
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Repeat routine work
Set tasks to repeat every day, week, month or year, or on your own schedule. Finishing one sets up the next, with its checklist ready to tick off again. Or copy any task, subtasks and all, in one click. Teams can add rules that do the routine for them: when a task is added, moved or finished, assign it, date it or file it.
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See your work your way
Look at a project as a list, a board of cards, a timeline or a calendar, and drag things around to change them. Team admins can turn off the views and tools a team doesn't need.
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All your work in one place
My tasks gathers everything assigned to you, across all your teams, sorted by when it's due, and keeps track of what you've assigned to others. Its Today, Next and Waiting tabs answer what to do now, what you can start in each project, and what's held up; plan any task for today with a click. Plates shows every project you're part of, across your teams, with the ones that need you first and why: off track, overdue work, an update due or nothing moving. Group projects into portfolios, your team's or your own, to see how each group is going together, and open a dashboard of any of them, or of a team, to see work done, added and overdue week by week. Search finds the rest, in names, descriptions and comments. Sort, group and filter any project, and save the views you use. Pick several tasks to change them all at once, star the ones you come back to, and press Ctrl+K to go anywhere or add a task in one line.
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Capture ideas for later
Jot down a thought, a list or notes from a call in your own private inbox, from anywhere in Platespin, say it out loud, or snap a photo of a whiteboard or a receipt, and turn them into tasks when you're ready, or add a business card or notes from a call to Platespin CRM. Only you can see them.
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Track your time
Start a timer on any task, or log time by hand, and see your week as a timesheet across all your teams. Turn it on in your settings when you want it. Only you can see your time, unless your team chooses to see the time logged on its own tasks, against their estimates (you're told when it does). You can also say the hours you work and the days you're away, so your teams know when you're around (never why you're away).
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Share work with your team
Invite people to a team as an admin, a member or a viewer, and hand anyone in it a task, whether or not it's part of a project. What your teammates change shows up straight away, without reloading. Only the people in a team can see its work. Share a form, with questions that follow on from earlier answers and room for files, and requests from your team or anyone with the link arrive as tasks, waiting for you to accept, decline or merge them.
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Balance the workload
See who in your team has how much on, week by week: their tasks and how long they should take, against the hours each person works and the days they're away. Spot who's stretched and hand work to someone with room, right there. A team chooses whether to use it.
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Keep projects on budget
Give a project a budget, in money or hours, and see what it has cost so far: its expenses, and the time logged on its tasks at each person's hourly rate. See what's left, and which projects are close to or over their budget. A team chooses whether to use it, and only its admins see people's rates.
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Write things down
Keep docs: how things are done, plans, notes, anything worth keeping, with pages inside pages to make a wiki. Your own docs only you see; a team's are for the whole team or one of its projects. Look back at earlier versions, and nobody's words are lost when two people save at once.
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Remember what you decided
Keep a log of your team's decisions: what was decided, why, who decided and when, with the tasks and docs each is about. When a decision changes, record the new one and the old one shows what replaced it. A team chooses whether to use it.
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Run better meetings
Keep your team's meetings together: the agenda, who came and the notes. Action items become tasks, assigned and dated, and decisions go straight in the log. Plan the next one in a click, and whatever's still open comes along. A team chooses whether to use it.
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Get work approved
Ask people in your team to approve a task. Each approves it, asks for changes or rejects it, with a note, and everyone can see where it stands. Whatever's waiting for your approval has a list of its own. A team chooses whether to use it.
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Talk it through
Start a discussion for the whole team or a project, without tying it to a task. Mention people with @ to bring them in, follow the ones you care about, and hear about replies in your Inbox. Turn a reply into a task in one click. A team chooses whether to use it.
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Work in sprints
For teams who like to work in cycles: plan a sprint with a goal and dates, move work into it from the backlog, and follow it day by day, with story points, a burndown chart and your team's velocity if you like. Completing it moves anything unfinished on to the next. Limits on how much each board column holds keep work flowing, and marking tasks as bugs, features or chores shows which bugs still need triage. Group big pieces of work into epics, plan releases with their notes written for you, and see how long work really takes with cycle time. A team chooses whether to use each.
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Keep track of customers
Switch to Platespin CRM to keep your team's contacts and organisations beside its projects, set up for relationships or for sales, with a timeline of notes, calls, emails and meetings, and move each deal along pipelines with your own stages, with a weighted forecast of what's likely to close. See how each relationship is going and how much it matters, with statuses and priorities your team chooses, and move people and organisations along a board. See when you last spoke, whose move it is and what happens next, and set how often to check in: when a check-in comes due, it's on your task list. Needs Attention (and a card on Home) says who to get in touch with today, and why, so you don't have to go looking. Keep the proposal or deck with the relationship, and link contacts and organisations to the projects you're doing for them. Add fields and tags of your own, save filtered lists for the team, and change many records at once. Bring them in from a spreadsheet (from HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce, say), take them out as one, and merge duplicates, or bring in contacts from your phone. Call from your phone and log how it went, with a follow-up, or save someone to your phone's contacts. Give any task to a contact or a deal, so every deal has a next step. Export or erase what's kept about someone when they ask. Keep support tickets with targets for answering them. Score leads and send new contacts to the right person. Put products on deals and make quotes to print or save as PDFs. See reports on the pipeline, wins and losses, and set sales goals. Plan meetings, see what's coming up on Home, add them to your calendar and write them up afterwards. Write emails from the team's templates, send them from your own email app, and keep a copy on the timeline. Software you connect can look up your records and lists, write down a call for you, and update a deal. Team admins turn it on.
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Keep everything together
Comment on tasks, break them into subtasks and attach files, so everything about a piece of work stays with it. Point at a spot in an attached image to comment on it, and resolve each point as it's dealt with. Everyone gets 100 MB for files, up to 10 MB each.
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Move your work in and out
Bring a project in from Asana, Trello, Jira or a spreadsheet, and export a project's tasks to a spreadsheet whenever you like. A team's admins can download everything the team keeps, its projects, tasks, comments, docs and more, in one file.
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Stay in the loop
Your inbox tells you when you're given a task, someone mentions you or comments, work you're waiting on or following is done, or work is due, sorted into groups you can pick from. Ask to be reminded about any task, at its due time, a while before, or when you choose. Get it all by email too, if you like.
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Sign in your way
Use a password, a link sent to your email, or your Google or Microsoft account.
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