How We Collaborate

Greenstand is a globally distributed team. To work together efficiently, it’s important for each contributor to be familiar with certain tools and technologies.

Our core collaboration technologies are currently Slack and Google tools (Gmail, Google meet), and Github (for developers).

Github

Greenstand is a technical solution to climate change and extreme poverty. There is no better place to collaborate on open-source projects than Github. We use it for writing code, storing wikis, and making decisions.

Slack

Slack is a popular group chat tool commonly used by both technical and non-technical teams in recent years. If you’re already a power user, great! If not, this video is a pretty good introduction: Learn About Slack

Please note: Slack is the main way we communicate at Greenstand. If you don’t log back into Slack after your onboarding meeting, we might not be in very good contact!

First, remember to start by making a post to the community_intros page & comment on some recent posts. Also, please read through relevant channel feeds to develop an understanding of how our community communicates and functions to accomplish our goals.

We highly recommend installing the Slack desktop app (instead of just using it in the browser) if you intend to hang out with us for a while. Among other things, this helps it not get lost in a browser tab.

Channels

We make heavy use of Slack channels for many different small teams, but at first we’ll only add you to the few that are relevant to your initial chosen focus. Later on you can search for other publicly available channels, or request access to the channels of other teams if you want to contribute more broadly.

● List of common channels:

● community_intros: a place to introduce yourself & connect with other volunteers

● general_news: community wide announcements & important updates

● building_time: a place to log time spent on Greenstand tasks

● random_watercooler: a place to share randomness & connect with the community

Notifications

To stay up to date with activity and progress in our community, it’s crucial to make smart use of Slack notifications. Each channel has notification preferences that you should tweak to make work best for you. You can have Slack email or push notifications to you when channels you are interested in have activity, or you can mute certain channels that you only want to check in on manually.

Advanced Use

Since Slack is so crucial for our operation, it’s really useful to hone a few advanced Slack skills.

● How to Use Slack Like a Pro

● Slick Features & Capabilities You Didn't Know About in Slack

Building time

Your energy builds more energy - logging what you are working lets others know you are engaged and prevents duplication of work. We would like you to log your time spent on tasks in the Greenstand project. To do that, we have a channel created in Slack called #building_time. Please make a note here of all the amazing work you do for us at Greenstand and we will use this data to analyze where time is being spent across the project. This data is pulled each month and is available to any contributor who wants to know how much time they’ve spent on the project.

Logging time is helpful for both contributors and Greenstand, especially when providing a letter of recommendation or in confirming volunteer hours dedicated. When logging your time, please try to do it on the same day you completed the task. Where this has not been possible, please add the date to your comment - one comment per task. It is advisable to use individual entries for each time log, so just hit ENTER and start a new post for every entry.

Gmail

Typically, Greenstand issues organizational emails to contributors as they are elevated to Core Contributors or as the nature of their work requires it. As per the need of each contributor's work, we will send you an email regarding your new Google account with Greenstand. This email will have your username and a temporary password for Gmail login. You will be prompted to set up a new password upon sign in. Please go to Gmail to login. Use this email address for all your Greenstand business.

Once you have logged in, please create a signature by using the standard signature provided in the Google account setup email you received (copy and paste standard signature in your Gmail signature settings, then customize your information).

Make sure that your signature is as per the Greenstand specs. Follow the following link for signature setup guidelines, and please ensure the brand colors and hyperlinks are correct.

● How to set up your Gmail signature for Greenstand.

Google Meet

Greenstand contributors meet weekly at team meetings or per the need of ongoing projects. These meetings are optional - if you are comfortable working alone and communicating via Slack, that is perfectly acceptable provided independent work results in task completion. However, we do find that face time and verbal discussion help coordinate and move the project forward effectively. Plus, it’s an excellent way to meet other collaborators & become connected to the community!

You can join any meeting directly with the link created by your team lead or anyone with whom your meeting is scheduled, or ask to be invited in order for the meeting to show on your personal calendar. Since Google Meet is a free service, you are equally able to set up meetings, invite attendees, and create unique links to share as well.

Google Drive, Asana, Network for Good, HubSpot

Greenstand uses Google Drive to store important data. We have different Drives for different divisions. Everyone needs some sort of GDrive access at Greenstand. You will be invited to GDrive depending upon your areas of expertise & project assignments.

We use Asana for high-level project management of operational teams. This tool is especially important for the grants, communications, human relations, and website teams.

Network for Good is used for all of Greenstand’s mass communications, such as newsletters and special announcements regarding the technical service. Additionally, this platform allows us to manage our donation page and contacts effectively to maintain positive relationships across audiences outside the Treetracker network.

Hubspot CRM is used to manage communications with current and potential clients (i.e. new Treetracker projects), as well as keeping track of important meetings and deals. This platform allows many contributors to work together in managing multiple team email accounts (ex. info@, tech.support@, partnerships@) and securing contracts.