Google+ for business users

Grundlestiltskin

Hey all, we're always looking into new communication tools and management asked me to look into Google+; it was recently enabled for Google Apps so we figured we'd give it a look. I hadn't checked out Google+ before so I've just been playing around with it.

What we were hoping to do
Basically, we wanted to be able to create circles/user groups by functional area, project, whatever. Post to those circles, people would get the relevant information, etc etc.

What actually seems to happen
Say I have a circles for Project 1, Project 2, and Project 3. Person X is in each of those circles. If I post to my Project 1 circle about that project, Person X also sees that post in his Project 2 and Project 3 circles because I'm in those circles.

It looks like Google+ is built more to control who messages go to/come from, regardless of the content. Is there a way to make this work better for what we're trying to do, or Google+ really just not designed to work that way?

mts

no it only goes to whomever it is shared with regardless of what other circles the poster is in, assuming they limit who can see it

Grundlestiltskin

mts wrote:

no it only goes to whomever it is shared with regardless of what other circles the poster is in, assuming they limit who can see it

That part I think I get. The problem I seem to be running into is when I have the same people in multiple circles. If I filter to Project 3, I should only be able to see posts that relate to Project 3. If Person X is in my Project 1 and Project 3 circles (and I in his) and he posts to the Project 1 circle, I see that post in both the Project 1 and Project 3 filters. That's the issue I'm trying to resolve.

Thanatos

Google+ doesn't tell you what circles other people have put you in, and as far as I know, there's no way to get it to filter for that. Say Person X and Person Y are both working on Project 1 and Project 2. Person X sends out an update on Project 1, it goes out to everyone in Person X's Project 1 circle. Person Y receives it, but all Person Y's G+ account knows is that it came from Person X, and that Person X is in Person Y's Project 1 and Project 2 circles; it doesn't know what circle it's directed at, so it shows up in both streams.

It's really not meant as a project management tool, but as a social networking tool. There are some free project management programs out there, but I'm not really familiar with any of them.

Optionally, you could also just set up GMail accounts for everyone, with calendars and task lists and such, then set up tags and lists for the various projects. GMail can easily filter by tag. Honestly, though, if you're on an Exchange Server, it's probably easier to set up through that.