The basic planOfile concept is to share time-based location information, i.e. a trip. This is generally useful for anyone travelling and they want others to know where the are, where they've been and where they're going. It is quite easy to enter trip data using the planOfile interface directly or combined with Google Earth or Google Maps and save the data on the server. The link to the data can then be emailed to friends or put on a web page so that others can view the trip information in 2D or 3D earth browsers (like Google Earth).

While that functionality is pretty useful, it is really just trip sharing.

The trip collaboration aspect works more like an online calendar. You can create an event (location and time) and other people interested in attending the event can create and add their trips to that event. Then by viewing the event URL, it is easy to see who (how many) is attending the event, when they are planning to arrive, when they are planning to leave. Even simple events, like Christmas, where we have a dozen different vehicles arrive and leave over the period of a week, becomes easy to organise. No need to remember who is coming or leaving when, just look at the event map and see their latest information. Scroll through the time and see their plans. This also has the added value of other attendees being able to share rides because it is easy to see other's trips that match your plans and get a ride with them instead of driving yourself.

Collaboration is achieved by grouping trips in a tree structure with permissions at each node so the creator of the node can allow/deny others permission to edit or add trips below his node. This simple structure is very flexible and allows for complex structures to be created, for example, allowing one group to see some trip data and another group to see more trip data. Or granting different access for different groups to add to or update event information.