Over the course of the pandemic, companies had to learn how to deal with remote work while remaining engaged and connected to their employees. More and more businesses are now seeing the value in using collaboration tools to help their teams get crucial work done, manage deadlines, and stay on top of important projects.
If you’re not leveraging collaboration tools for your business, you should start now. Read the tips below to find out how you can get the most out of them!
Office 365
Office 365 is one of the most advanced collaboration platforms that is currently available. It has numerous productivity-boosting features and assets and can drastically help improve your business's digital workspace strategy.
Here are the Office 365 collaboration features you and your team should be taking advantage of:
1. PowerApps
The purpose of PowerApps is to manage organizational data by running an app you created, someone else created or shared with you.
2. Office Online
Office Online is Office Suite with elevated collaboration capabilities. You can work alongside team members on PowerPoint presentations and Excel reports simultaneously while using the mobile app, browser, or desktop-based Office Suite.
3. Flow
Flow is a service that lives up to its name. It’s designed to automate workflow across several apps and services relied on by businesses. Necessary for effective collaboration, workflows help people get closer to reaching and achieving common goals.
4. Video
Office 365 Video is like YouTube but focuses on business content. Users can create numerous channels where users can tag people for ease in findability. Video offers simple uploading, playback of video messages, and sharing.
5. OneDrive for Business
OneDrive for Business is an important part of Office 365. It’s a place in the cloud where you can seamlessly share, store, and sync your work files. As well, you can work on Office documents with other people at the same time.
6. Calendar
The calendar in the Outlook Web App is a valuable tool that helps you create and track appointments, deadlines, and meetings. You can create multiple calendars, link to other calendars, and share yours with other people in your organization.
7. Exchange
Exchange is a business-class email experience that includes public folders, groups, and shared mailboxes.
8. Planner
Planner is self-explanatory. It essentially helps you plan your day-to-day schedule, from due dates to status updates, teams can also update statuses and share files.
9. Skype for Business
Skype for Business gives users the opportunity to connect with team members and business partners across the globe.
10. Teams
Teams is an excellent chat-based workspace. It allows users to bring conversations and content together. It’s also naturally integrated with a variety of Office applications.
11. Groups
Groups is a unique collaboration feature that’s designed for communicating and coordinating group work and sharing information. As well, users have access to a shared inbox, file repository, and calendar.
12. Yammer
Yammer is a simple application that allows team members to share their knowledge and engage people within your company, as well as internal and external stakeholders.
13. Power BI
Power BI is a business analytics platform which provides interactive visualizations. Users can create reports and dashboards individually without having to rely on information technology staff.
14. Delve
Delve is an employee profile database for content discovery and simple collaboration. It allows you to find the right person and content when you need them.
Additional collaborative tools:
1. Slack
Slack is a very popular platform for teams to use to communicate through instant messaging, transferring files, and message search. It boasts a wide range of features and the potential to integrate several other tools as well.
2. Flowdock
Flowdock is a private and group messaging platform that allows for the integration of notifications from other channels as well, such as Twitter and Asana.
3. Asana
Asana is a well-known project management tool. It allows users to assign tasks to different members, add followers to projects, and keep track of deadlines. It’s a great organizational service to stay on top of to-do lists and important calendar dates.
4. Dapulse
Dapulse is a visually engaging and simple-to-use platform that assists in setting goals, communicating with fellow team members, and assigning tasks.
5. Redbooth
Redbooth is a basic tool that allows users to plan and collaborate through several functions including video calling.
6. Wimi
Wimi is unique in that it offers team members their own unified workspaces where users can manage projects and share different files. Wimi Drive is their cloud-based system that syncs files.
7. Quip
With Quip, users can upload various file types and edit them live.
8. Google Docs
Google offers a variety of collaboration tools including Docs and Sheets. Users are able to edit files at the same time and changes are automatically saved.
9. Codingteam
Codingteam allows teams to collaborate with each other while creating code.
10. Milanote
Milanote is a dynamic tool that can serve several different purposes including blogging. This tool is a great option for organizing creative projects into virtual vision boards.
What are the benefits of using collaboration tools?
1. Inform employees
Collaboration tools are the perfect way to keep your employees up to date on important information that’s pertinent to your entire organization. Sharing announcements becomes less of a hassle when you can make sure that all your employees can receive updates and notices in a timely manner, all at the same time. As well, you have the ability to schedule specific posts and messages for different times and can create various groups for a selection of topics.
2. Understand sentiment and engagement
Team collaboration tools are a great way to measure and assess analytics. Platform admins can look into advanced analytics that can help you better understand the sentiment and engagement on the platform. This information is very useful for company leaders in being able to see what top-performing posts are and who are the most active platform contributors. You can gain a thorough understanding into broader communication trends, as well as employee engagement within the organization.
These tools also allow you to see what posts are doing well amongst your employees. You can assess team members’ engagement by seeing their reactions on posts and whether they’re actively interacting with posts or overlooking messages from leadership. To further your understanding of sentiment and engagement, you can create surveys to send out to employees through your platform chat function and see firsthand how your staff really feel about specific subjects.
3. Enabling quick communication
Collaboration tools make it simple to touch base with the people on your team, even if they’re not physically working in the office. These tools also give users the ability to set specific statuses so you can see whether someone is away from their device, busy in a meeting, or if they’re available online. Instant messaging individual team members and video calling employees is a breeze when all forms of communication are integrated into one workspace.
Additionally, many platforms allow you to create customized groups chats and channels for various workplace needs, which can be very helpful in organizing your communications with certain people.
4. Planning
Everything from planning meetings and projects, to setting deadlines and client calls can now be done through collaboration tools. Having access to all the information that needs to be prioritized by the various people in your company in a well-organized interface can make balancing unending dates much easier to manage. As well, collaboration tools can help drastically with ensuring that all the people in your organization are on the same page and are far less likely to mix up a date or forget it altogether.
5. Collaborating
Of course, one of the main and obvious benefits of these tools is the ability for teams to collaborate with one another remotely. Team collaboration tools allow users to work together, no matter where they are, on various projects. They can instantly share files, use the platform to communicate via messaging and quick video conferencing, track changes and leave edits, as well as stay on top of important project milestones.
Conclusion:
Collaboration tools offer a truly endless list of benefits that are largely helpful for businesses and staff. Teams can work together on projects and connect with each other on a personal level. Leveraging these tools for your business is sure to result in increased productivity and positive employee engagement.
