Get Your Projects Out of Your Email with CoordinateHQ - 56juqingba: How-to instructions you can trust

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Table of Contents

Pros

Simple interface
Many tutorials to help you get started
Wide breadth of features
Includes a free trial

Cons

Limited customization options compared to similar tools
No mobile app but does work on mobile

Our Rating

In the client service landscape, the traditional toolkit for client collaboration is overdue for an upgrade. Relying on disjointed tools, teams face challenges with information flow, communication, and overall project efficiency. While there are many project management tools on the market, CoordinateHQ has been specially developed to streamline collaboration between businesses and external parties, such as clients and freelancers. We had the chance to test the software and provide our impressions in this review.

This is a sponsored article and was made possible by CoordinateHQ. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author, who maintains editorial independence even when a post is sponsored.

Content

What Is CoordinateHQ?

Launched in 2020 by seasoned client management veterans Rick Morrison (CEO) and Jud Gardner (CTO), CoordinateHQ aims to transform client service operations across industries. Inspired by their own experience navigating the limitations of traditional collaboration tools, the platform offers a novel solution to streamline communication and project management with outside clients.

Designed with users in mind, CoordinateHQ features a simple, intuitive interface for quick and easy adoption. Its focus on collaboration allows clients to access project details in real time, facilitating seamless collaboration. By replacing lengthy email exchanges, this tool fosters transparent communication and improves collaboration efficiency.

Getting Started

If you’re ready to try CoordinateHQ, head to the official website, and click the Start for Free button in the upper right. Add your work email or sign up with your Google account if you use it for business purposes. That’s all you need to do to unlock your free CoordinateHQ two-week trial, which gives you access to most of the features you’ll need to get your first project off the ground. I have to give them major points for not asking for your credit card details before you even have a chance to see what the tool is all about.

CoordinateHQ goes out of its way to make you feel at home. Once you log in to the platform, it actively guides you through its features, helping you quickly become familiar with them. I started with the introductory video, then worked my way through the mini-tasks, which include creating a project and inviting the first collaborator. You can do this for maximum efficiency or proceed to explore the tool on your own, if you prefer this route. I did a mixture of both.

Defining Your User Experience

At first, the CoordinateHQ interface appears a little underwhelming. Featuring a neutral color scheme comprised of mostly black, white, and gray elements, it’s meant to emphasize functionality. Fortunately, you can inject a little whoomp into it. For seamless brand integration, CoordinateHQ allows users to upload their company logo and choose colors that reflect their brand palette.

Personalize the platform through the dedicated settings page. Click on your name in the upper-right corner of the display, and select Settings. Under Account Settings in the menu on the left, click on Your Logo and Branding.

Creating a Project

CoordinateHQ’s intuitive interface allows for easy project creation. Navigate to the Project menu, and select Add Project to initiate your first project. Make sure to also check the Templates section, as I found a couple of really useful options. For this article, I actually used the Design Project Template for Clients.

This automatically creates a project outline for you. You can work to populate it with your project’s unique details, including summary, goals, etc. Though I have to admit that I am more partial to the card-style layout of apps such as Trello, CoordinateHQ’s project outline design undeniably gets the job done.

From the project page, you can add collaborators either as Clients (external) or Your Team members (which you’ve previously added via settings). Once they log in to CoordinateHQ, they can also access the project outline and more, depending on their role. Modify a user’s permissions in settings. Billing Administrator has the highest access level, while a Manager can only access projects where they are an owner or collaborator.

Adding a Task

To start adding new tasks, click on the Edit Plan button. Add a Description for your task and due date if you want. You can also include a checklist, attach files, or add tags. Don’t forget to assign it to someone, including clients or internal team members.

CoordinateHQ has a helpful option, where you assign roles to people working on your project to easily manage common responsibilities on a project. Go to Settings, and click Project Roles under Data Management. The default role is Project Manager, and this is a role you can’t edit (although you can assign it additional roles from the project page).

This role is automatically assigned to the Billing Administrator, but you can create other roles, such as Client or Designer. Then connect a collaborator’s email address to a role, to not have to always remember who’s who.

When you assign a role to a task, the system will automatically reassign it to the user holding that position. For example, you can assign a logo redesign task to Designer. If you’ve previously assigned this role to one of your team members, their name will now show up when you hover over the task.

When a task is up, your external collaborators will be able to see a notification in their own CoordinateHQ dashboard to immediately start messaging the assigned team members. This feels a lot like interacting in real time, where you don’t have to compulsively refresh your inbox to see the latest news on your project.

Setting Up the Workflow

CoordinateHQ ensures that you never miss important client updates, even when you’re not constantly checking your email. You and your team (including clients) have a single source for your project details, updates, and actionable items. No more digging through your inbox or wondering where the latest version of a file is located, resulting in smoother workflows and less time wasted.

To give an example of how you can improve your workflow with CoordinateHQ, let’s say that you’re redesigning your client’s web portal and need to know each time a new product enters their e-shop. Your client won’t have to send you a separate email every time a new product appears in their distribution. Instead, you can create a form in CoordinateHQ via settings. In Data Management, navigate to Forms, and add the desired information fields to the form. For example, Product name and Price.

Back in your CoordinateHQ dashboard, you can add an Action Link that will launch the form. This means clients can add the information straight from their CoordinateHQ dashboard. Filling out the form automatically creates a new task in your project outline, capturing all the details for later use. It’s super easy and convenient, and only takes a few minutes to set up. You can also embed forms into tasks.

While project participants do get progress emails with the latest updates and new tasks from CoordinateHQ, it’s so much easier tracking emails from one source than keeping an eye on the countless email threads from multiple parties that may or may not be related to that specific project.

Managing Your Projects

When it comes to managing your projects, CoordinateHQ makes it very easy. Click on Projects in the upper menu to quickly get an overview of all your projects so far. You can view at-a-glance information, such as Project Status, Tags, Manager, etc. You can use filters to view projects based on certain criteria. For a view of all your tasks, you can switch to the Tasks tab.

If you want to add even more information into the table, click on the gear-shaped icon in the upper right. I’ve added the % Tasks Completed field. But what if you want to add something not on the list?

You can go to settings, then click on Custom Fields under Data Management. You can introduce, for instance, a Checkbox for whether the project was paid or not.

When you go back to your projects view and click the gear icon, you should see the option to add the checkbox to the table.

Pricing

Once the free trial expires, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan if you want to keep using CoordinateHQ. There’s a Pro package at $65 per user per month, which unlocks a few more options, including the ability to configure a custom domain name and up to 100GB file storage.

CoordinateHQ also offers an Enterprise tier, but you’ll need to reach out to their sales team to discuss specifics.

Final Thoughts

During my time using CoordinateHQ, I discovered that the tool promotes efficient project management by fostering clear communication, organized task management, and real-time collaboration, ultimately leading to a quicker completion of projects.

Unlike email, where updates can get easily buried or lost, CoordinateHQ offers real-time activity feeds, keeping everyone informed about the latest project developments and minimizing the need for back-and-forth email and status updates. You just need to remember to check your CoordinateHQ dashboard every day!

The platform’s ease of use is what really impressed me. Plus, if you ever get stuck, you can easily connect with CoordinateHQ for a one-on-one session, a real lifesaver in certain situations.

While the interface impressed me overall, the manual addition of fields, such as task descriptions, was a bit tedious. It felt like an extra step that could have been easily eliminated by adding a field for a task description by default. I also noticed there’s no calendar view option to view your projects in a timeline, so you may have to rely on a different tool for that.

On the bright side, the program offers Webhook API + Zapier integration (with more options on the way), so you can significantly enhance functionality and streamline various processes. For instance, they can integrate CoordinateHQ with their preferred calendar app such as Google Calendar through Zapier.

To sum up, CoordinateHQ has proven itself to be a powerful tool that significantly improves workflow and promotes successful project execution.

Image credit: Pexels. All screenshots by Alexandra Arici.

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Alexandra Arici –
Staff Writer

Alexandra is passionate about mobile tech and can be often found fiddling with a smartphone from some obscure company. She kick-started her career in tech journalism in 2013, after working a few years as a middle-school teacher. Constantly driven by curiosity, Alexandra likes to know how things work and to share that knowledge with everyone.