How can I use GAINnet as a document archive for my group?

One of the nice collaboration aspects of GAINnet is that discussions allow you to upload files, so you can discuss them and archive them for future reference.  Although other sites like Google, Yahoo Groups and Box.net allow file archiving; leveraging GAINnet allows you to keep files, discussions and group members together -- instead of forcing people to login to various services to collaborate.

If you have a group meeting coming up, consider creating a new Discussion for that meeting inside your group (e.g. "April 2011 Board Meeting") and uploading the agenda and any other documents to be reviewed at that meeting (e.g. minutes from prior mtg).  If the meeting leader doesn't have all the documents, they can just create the discussion and upload the agenda.  Then, other officers who may be sharing documents can Reply to that discussion and attach their document (e.g. minutes, treasurer's report, committee reports, etc.) in their Reply.

Doing this allows for online review/discussion of the docs prior to the meeting and for long-term archiving so your group has some institutional memory.

If you use group discussions to collaborate and uploaded multiple versions of a specific document, remember to include some versioning in the name of your document -- for example, "April 2011 Minutes v1.doc" & "April 2011 Minutes v2.doc" so your team doesn't confuse versions.

If you try this and hit any snags, let us know by reply here...