New Collaboration Platform for Reference Model Project

The TMF Reference Model Project has grown from a small group of DIA members in 2009 to a team of well over 300 people today from around the globe, covering pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, CROs, vendors, consultants and other interested parties. We have been struggling a little to keep on top of the list of members and have not really had an ideal solution for sharing electronic content that we are working on, other than mailing out to all members as an email attachment….. not great Records Management practice!
The TMF Reference Model Steering Committee were therefore charged with identifying a collaboration platform with the following features:

• calendar, including sending alerts to members of upcoming events;
• communication to all members using standard electronic mail;
• document library with sub-folder capability;
• no software to download;
• no cost.

After considering about a dozen possible solutions, we decided upon using Yahoo! Groups and we’re now in the process of getting all members signed up to Yahoo! Groups. Our choice does not provide full document management functionality (e.g. check-in, check-out, version management) but we decided that overall the benefits outweighed the disadvantages. We also recognized that access to the Yahoo! Groups web pages is blocked by some of our member company’s firewall settings. However, this restriction generally does not affect the email communication features of Yahoo! Groups. Therefore, members will still receive communication from the Team but may need to access the file library and other online resources from a personal PC.
If you are an existing member of the TMF Reference Model Project or would like to become an active, participating member of the project, please register to Join the Group at http://bit.ly/tmfrefmodel. If you don’t wish to participate but still have an interest in following what we are doing, just follow this blog and also join the LinkedIn Group.