Collaboration tools are used for business collaboration. A business collaborating with another business is often required to share financial, operational, processing, manufacturing, distribution, supply chain management, HR (human resource), computer systems. The purpose of the collaboration is to benefit all parties involved. There are many applications to achieve the collaboration e.g. Skype for Business(Skype for Business) , SharePoint(Microsoft SharePoint) , Microsoft Exchange Server(Microsoft Exchange), Office 365(Office 365), Windows 10/8/7 Desktop App Store etc.
We use tools such as collaboration tools to our business communications. The collaboration tool can be a media and it is used to communicate with others over the internet and networks, and the collaboration tools we use are: email, intranet , instant messaging, voice chat and wiki.
Ryver
An easy-to-use collaboration platform
TODAY’S BEST DEALSVISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Easy-to-use interface+Comprehensive platform
REASONS TO AVOID
-Rivals have more features
Ryver is similar to Slack, aiming to give your organisation a highly effective means of communication, and an easy way to talk over tasks, ensuring that deadlines are met.
What makes Ryver a compelling option is the fact that you can create as many teams as you want within the app, and easily categorise them to boot. As is the case with Slack, you can use the platform to set up chats with groups and individuals.
There are some interesting filters, too. You can control who sees the things you say and post in the app, and obviously enough, join the teams that are most relevant to you. All company posts are located within a Facebook-style newsfeed, and you can mark posts to come back to them later on.
There’s also a host of native clients across mobile and desktop, including Mac and Linux. There’s also a premium version for enterprise which offers workflow automation, Single Sign-On (SSO), and advanced team management.
Trello
An app for organising all your projects
TODAY’S BEST DEALSVISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Clean, easy-to-use interface+Free version
REASONS TO AVOID
-Not many comms features
If you have ever looked into project management software and online collaboration tools, then no doubt you’ve come across Trello. Available on the web and with mobile apps, it lets you easily organize projects and work on them with colleagues.
The platform allows you to work with boards or lists, which can be organised by teams and different tasks. And within these, you can set up to-do lists and delegate amongst colleagues. There’s also the option to assign comments to cards – a quick way to give feedback to others.
Furthermore, Trello boasts a number of integrations with apps such as Evernote, GitHub, Google Drive and Slack. You can download the app for free, but there are premium options available which give access to more features.
The Premium pricing tier unlocks a number of additional administrative features for better organization. There’s also an Enterprise edition which is priced according to the number of users required, and provides some additional organizational management features.
ProofHub
If you are willing to manage teams and projects using a single software, ProofHub is just the perfect project management and online collaboration tool you need on your side. It brings together all the essential tools to foster teamwork and stay on top of your tasks. You can easily break a project into tasks and smaller subtasks and assign them directly to your team members. ProofHub also makes it much easier to streamline projects and stay on schedule with its built-in Kanban boards and Gantt charts. By using a Kanban board it becomes possible to see tasks moving through different stages of the project. On the other hand, a Gantt chart lets you view how each task fits in the overall timeline of the project along with the assignees.
What is unique about ProofHub?
Here are some key collaboration features that you will get in ProofHub:
Review files related to projects, give feedback, and approve them in real-time. Moreover, you can use markup tools to annotate files and point out the specific regions that should be modified.
When you need to brainstorm or collect thoughts from people on your team to resolve a particular matter, you can create dedicated spaces in ProofHub as discussion topics. Add people, grab the attention of team members by mentioning them in comments, and share files within a discussion space.
Team collaboration is incomplete without communication. ProofHub enables all the members of a team to be one the same page with its chat tool. You can use the chat interface to connect with your colleagues either in a one-on-one chat or a group chat. You also have the flexibility to send files directly from your chat box and say goodbye to clunky mails.
Store and organize all the files of your projects in a common space. The cloud storage offered by ProofHub makes it possible to upload files from your system or other third-party file hosting services like Google Drive and DropBox. You can even share and collaborate on files with your team members using ProofHub.
GanttPRO
GanttPRO is an advanced project collaboration tool based on Gantt charts. It gives teams lots of possibilities to collaborate on their projects. To start with, GanttPRO offers robust task management with dozens of settings like statuses, priorities, assignees, duration & estimation, time tracking, deadlines, and many others for you to know who is working on what. Further, teams feel home here, like they wouldn’t need anything to collaborate on any project-related information: real-time descriptions, comments, attachments, and notifications do all the collaboration work. One more great feature is resource management that allows the reallocation of overloaded/underloaded resources efficiently. The learning curve is pretty short, so you and your team can easily give it a try.
Customer Support
Freshdesk
If you want to bring all your team together and deliver extraordinary customer support, Freshdesk is a tool that you can lean on. It comes with robust collaboration features that promote teamwork and help your team to work more efficiently. This online tool for collaboration allows you to invite team members, agents, or business partners to discuss and solve tickets at a single place. Additionally, there’s a customizable team dashboard that you can use to monitor all the customer support activities of your team.
What is unique about Freshdesk?
- Simplified ticketing – Freshdesk gives you an easy way to manage and organize your customer tickets so that things never slip through the cracks.
- Collaboration features – it also lets you share the ownership of tickets and collaborate with your team members for providing seamless customer support and service.
- Automation – Freshdesk leverages automation technology, allowing your team members to do away with repetitive tasks.
- Reporting – advanced reporting and tracking system in Freshdesk ensures that you can make data driven decisions in the future.
- Security – Freshdesk employs top security measures and SSL encryptions to ensure that all your data is complete safe as a house.
BlueJeans by Verizon
Everyone has a preferred way of attending online meetings. BlueJeans, a cloud-based video communications platform, gives attendees the flexibility of joining video conferences using a web browser, desktop app, or mobile phone, all while making meetings more productive with a wide range of collaboration features that are available across platforms. These include the ability to host meetings in conference rooms and town halls, share screens, and record meetings.
BlueJeans makes it easy to combine workflows. For instance, you can schedule meetings with Outlook and Google Calendar and integrate the software with other popular business apps and services. All content is transmitted with AES-GCM 256-bit encryption, and conversations can benefit from BlueJeans’ real-time closed captioning for hearing-impaired users. Users who don’t have video- or audio-capable devices can phone in to join meetings.
Plans for BlueJeans Meetings start at $9.99 per host per month if billed annually. The Pro version, which supports up to 75 meeting participants, starts at $12.49 per host per month if billed annually. [Could your business benefit from video conferencing? If so, check out the video conference services we recommend for small businesses.]
Cisco Webex
Businesses that rely heavily on meetings need full-featured communications software. Cisco’s Webex offers HD video conferences with collaboration and file-sharing capabilities for all types of meetings, including presentations, sales demos, online training sessions, web-based events, staff meetings and remote tech support.
Webex is fully accessible on mobile devices with the Webex mobile app for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry. The basic version of Webex is free and supports up to 100 meeting participants, but it’s limited to a single user, and meetings can only last up to 50 minutes. Premium versions start at $14.95 a month and include phone call-ins, file transfers, 5GB of cloud recording storage and live 24/7 support.
Conclusion
The depth of collaboration that is possible with today’s cloud offerings is amazing. This enables businesses to transform the way they do business and how they develop and deliver great customer experiences. However, in most cases, these cloud solutions are vendor agnostic and many businesses want to keep providers separate for security and governance reasons.