STRATEGIC INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

Internal newsletters have been around forever. There are pros and cons. They take time and work to produce. Difficult to gauge impact. Is there a better way?

We, at the Montana Board of Housing, have found some success and efficiency with these three tools: Teamup Calendar Program Dashboards OneNote

1. teamup.com

We now use this web-based calendar to see all events for our Division: Color-coded for each program Click on an event for more detail

Customize the layout for viewing and/or printing. Three levels of access: Administrator Add Events Read-only

2. Dashboards Created monthly for Board members. We also use these to share program productivity data and stats.

We have a set format for each: Some are tables Some are text Some include graphs Data is updated each month, format stays the same.

3. MBOH has become a mega-user of OneNote. We collaborate We coordinate We communicate

We had a trailblazer. We had feet-draggers. We watched some training on Lynda.com and have never looked back.

Our notebooks

We are looking at the HD Meeting Agendas NOTEBOOK We are looking at the HD Meeting Agendas NOTEBOOK. We are in the Executive Leadership TAB. Each page is a prior meeting agenda. Was a plain agenda, now full of notes and references that we can all refer back to . Initials of who wrote what.

The office manager keeps us on task and on time with checklists and due dates and reminder emails. Initials of who wrote what.

OneNote is a perfect tool for Project Management. You can keep organize images, audio files, documents, links, calendars, meeting agendas, contact lists, etc. We are limited to collaborating via our network. If you were free to use the cloud, you could access your information anywhere, with any device and collaborate with others, outside your network. Start your own, private OneNote file. Get organized and get comfortable with it. Then, organize and simplify your organization’s internal communications. Initials of who wrote what.

The End. Contact me with comments or questions: Montana Board of Housing Penny Cope Research and Outreach pcope@mt.gov 406.841.2846