Hi folks,

My mother was just diagnosed with cancer and we to manage the flood of information that is coming in.


Some background...

It's myself, my two sisters, and my brother. My dad also. Lots of doctor's appointments to schedule. We're also selling the house, so a lot of correspondence will be coming through.

My sister has been doing all of the scheduling, and we have a group text, but things are getting lost in the shuffle. I'm trying to get everyone on one page, but I don't think people understand how important this will be.

In other words, too busy hacking at the tree, instead of taking the time to sharpen the axe.

My first thought was to set up a gmail account and have it bcc all of us automatically with any incoming mail. I'm pretty sure they have a calendar we can use as well. But I would like each family member to be able to send from that address as well. One email address so the Realtor (for example) only has to keep track of one email instead of five.

The problem becomes, Is Google going to get crazy with multiple sign in's, two factor authentication, etc. Im pretty sure they will.

Here's my wish list:

- One email for all correspondence
- All family members will automatically be copied on incoming emails
- All family members can see what was sent.
- All Family members can send an email from the account
- A Calendar anyone can add appointments to.
- A read only calendar for Dad.
- PDF Storage for document scans
- A list of shared contacts would be great.
- Able to work on Mac, PC (Outlook, I guess?), iOS, Android. Without having to download a new app. Not a technically savvy group.

I tried doing it with an iCloud account, and I don't think it's the best option.

Any thoughts?

(sorry for the brain dump)

Why does everyone have to have their own login?

When sending messages, just be sure to sign them.

Doesn’t make it possible for dad to have read-only calendar access, but are you really worried about him mucking it up somehow?

-Rob

For the email what you need is a mailing list manager that allows the mailing list administrator to set a fixed Reply-to: address. There are probably commercial offerings. Somebody that uses the Mailman mailing list manager would give you what you need.

(If I still had it set up here I'd do it for you for free. Alas: I do not.)

For the calendar thing... I dunno. I suppose you could look at one of the commercial calendaring services, but I can't give you any leads on that one. GoDaddy had one that showed promise, at one point, but it was still in development when I tried it, did not suit my needs, and I dropped it.

Theoretically speaking anybody should be able to set events on their calendar, add invitees, the invitees get iCal email attachments, and the invitees add them to their own calendars.

Theoretically.

My wife and I do that all the time, but we're both using iThings.

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
Why does everyone have to have their own login?

Because shared logins, even for "just" email, is a tremendously bad idea.

Gmail can handle those calendar parts, I know. It’s just managing the share permissions., even the read only share. Google drive can hold docs.

Email should be doable. Even the ‘send mail as’ https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en.

We use Google Calendar; it can do what you want, very easily.

You just name each person for calendar access, and specify whether that person should have read & write access, or read-only access.

Easy Peasy.

I'm very sorry to hear about your mother, and am hoping for the best possible outcome.

You can do all of that stuff with a gmail account. Two-factor auth is optional, however, google typically prevents logins from unrecognized devices even if you don't have two-factor enabled, so you'll need to get through that. You could set your phone to receive a text code when an unrecognized device attempts to sign in, then just be on the phone with whoever is trying to sign in and give them the code you receive. Once their device is recognized, it shouldn't come up again anytime soon.

You can create spreadsheets and text documents in Google Drive, and store files there as well. There are a couple of built-in ways to make simple task lists (Tasks, and Google Keep), but I think spreadsheets would be more flexible and easily adoptable by all for tracking tasks and logging info including who's handling particular tasks, when they're due, links to documents stored in Google Drive, etc.

Part of the trick may be getting everyone to buy in, and then setting it up well to begin with so everyone finds it easy and useful.

Google calendar will work for the calendar. Everyone will need a Gmail(google account). Setup a shared calendar with everyone. We did this for my dad when he had surgery to keep track of how was at the hospital when and then who was able to help out when he went home for a few weeks.

We used to text more than email to communicate with everyone with a group text set up so everyone got the texts.

We also used a google doc to add some of his medical document so different family members could have access in case it was needed.

Nothing is perfect. The biggest thing is to find something that works and get everyone on board to use it and not some other method.

Thoughts and prayers for your mom and family.

Thanks all for your advice and prayers. I love this place.

quote:

Originally posted by comet24:
Everyone will need a Gmail(google account).

I think the plan is for everyone to just share one login, so all can see the flow of email.

I would suggest considering creating a system of labels for email. You can have multiple labels applied to messages, so they you can label them as far as who's handling a particular email or task. For example, each person could apply their color label to any emails they're handling. Other labels could exist for say prescriptions, or some particular medical need that generates emails, so that a message could have a blue label indicating sigalert has taken responsibility, and a green label indicating it's regarding a prescription.

Again, this is something where the rest of the family will need to buy in and agree to use the system, and I realize that might not go so smoothly.




Link to original video: https://youtu.be/1qKjUvzAs9U

There are built in tools for this in email: copy, forward, and reply. Sometimes even blind copy.

Giving everyone access to the same email account is foolish.

If people can't be bothered to check their own email responsibly, what makes you think they'll log in and check a "family" email?

You should be able to set most emails to send copies to others automatically on receipt. If you need to, you can upgrade to a Google G Suite account and create aliases and distribution groups. It will cost $5 a month, but it may be worth it.

I'm not a fan of Google anything, but even I might be inclined to Aeteocles' G Suite suggestion, as it may be the simplest, most straight-forward, least expensive way.

Of course: Getting everybody on board is another question entirely.

At first thought I have is everyone use their own GMail account, or get a GMail account.

Then, create a private Google Group for your family. I'm not certain it will be a perfect solution.

Tie in a family calendar, providing appropriate access, and I think that may be a good solution.

The problem doing the "reply" and "reply to all" is that just replying to an email may not get the message to the right people, and people will ALWAYS forget to hit "reply to all" instead of reply.

I'm in the last stages of wrapping up my parents estate. Lost dad 3 years ago and mom a year ago.

IMO, you should appoint a point person for each task. For example, the listing agent should take direction only from the designated point person. Otherwise you'll have the vendors not knowing if the instructions they are receiving should be followed.

If you have a group email and someone provided unauthorized instructions, would you be able to tell who sent the email (i.e. who caused the problem)?

I think you'll find that each task has a number of minor decisions. Does everyone really need to be included on an email if you're deciding between two paint colors (assuming you repaint the house before selling), whether the open house will start at noon or 1 pm, whether the repairman comes on Monday or Tuesday. You'll end up with a massive number of in bound emails. Who has the responsibility to respond? Also imagine the number of emails if 1/2 the group does a reply all to discuss minutia.

I realize I'm repeating myself but I can tell you that you have no idea the number of decisions coming your way - some big, most small. If you include everyone on every email you'll be buried! Buried deep! If you have to get everyone's input on every decision you'll be paralyzed and this process will drag on for years, not months.

I only have one brother. My brother and I are very different. We discussed things as early as possible and divided the tasks. We agreed to not get into the weeds on the other person's tasks. I'm sure there are things I did that my brother might have done differently but nothing big. If we had a concern or question about something big, we raised it. There were times I needed input on items I was driving and times I asked my brother to take over some aspect of 'my' projects. He did the same - so stay fluid even if you appoint a lead.

Worked great for us. I realize you have a much bigger group but give our approach a try. Mom died in April and we had everything wrapped up by early October (got real lucky on the house which sold very quickly and at a premium price). The only remaining item are mom's final tax returns.

Hope it all goes smoothly for your family.

One suggestion - figure out how to set up dial in conference calls. There will be things you need to discuss. For each call, decide up front if spouses or grandchildren should (or can) participate. One of our family member's employers allowed us to use their conference call system - we only needed it a few times it added a lot of efficiency.