We’ve been using this little known feature of Basecamp for some time, so I thought I would post it for the benefit of the casual visitor. The good makers of Basecamp have neglected to include a useable collaborative document authoring tool. Since Google has included such a tool as part of the free Google Apps suite, including documents from there into Basecamp seems the natural way to augment what 37-signals have left out. To add a Google Doc to a Basecamp writeboard:
- Create a Google Doc (or spreasheet, presentation, whatever).
- Copy and past the URL of the document (minus the “https:”) into TextPad or Notepad.
- Make a Writeboard in Basecamp, give it any name.
- Paste the following text into the writeboard contents and replace the bold text as required:
<iframe src=”//docs.google.com/a/fluxinc.ca/Doc?docid=asdfkj92399332&hl=en” frameborder=”0″ height=”600″ scrolling=”no” width=”950″></iframe><style type=”text/css”> .Sidebar, .writeboardtitle { display: none; } .col {width: 1024px;}</style> - Save your writeboard, and you’re done! A nice, wide, writeboard with the toolbox hidden to make more space.
Remember to share your Google Doc with however you want to view/edit it — Basecamp permissions do not translate into Google Apps.
