Collaborative online tools are of new generation software designed for accelerated development of Web applications in distributed, cooperative environments. The latter means that they allow several users to read and edit the same text document simultaneously, view and comment on one another’s edits in near real time.
Collaborative online tools are a collection of platforms, solutions and services that make it easier for researchers to work together on open science projects. Collaborative online tools include MediaWiki, GitHub, Zenodo, Savannah, SourceForge and the Open Science Framework.
Soda PDF
Sorry, we couldn’t resist. Soda PDF is the revolutionary, reliable, and intuitive portable online collaboration tool that allows your teams to quickly create secure PDF documents, save them to the cloud, sign and send, and share them with the whole team.
It’s perfect if you’re a document-heavy company managing a remote team or a connected network of knowledge workers.
Functions such as:
- Multi-step security
- Fast and intuitive professional document creation in seconds
- Customizable doc options
- Side-by-side view mode for lightning-quick comparisons
Are what make this the perfect tool for the modern knowledge sharing company.
Trello
Does your team have trouble identifying goals, parsing them out into manageable tasks, and tracking progress each step of the way? You aren’t alone.
That’s why Trello, the ultimate project management software available on the web, is trusted by teams everywhere to help them get the job done. Its unique system of project cards allows you to do everything from identifying the importance of a task to gauging progress within a project.
Did we mention it was FREE!
Bonus: Trello integrates with GitHub, Google Drive, and Slack.
Google Keep
Part of Google’s ever-expanding dominance of all things “the Internet”, Google Keep is their note-taking rival to Evernote and OneNote, and it has quickly become one of the best tools online.
Quickly take and save notes, photos, voice memos, and checklists, and share them with your team. With integration into Google’s suite of services, it’s impossible to beat the flexibility and convenience.
Yammer
The business social network, Yammer, is a veteran of the online collab scene:
- Like each other’s statuses
- Create your own ingroup with company emails
- Chat privately or in the open
- And share documents with ease
It’s all as easy as logging in and saying hello!
Yammer is the most widely used of all team collaboration tools, and it’s one of the best ways to increase employee bonding, collaboration, and morale.
Redbooth
Oh, your team doesn’t have Redbooth? It should! It’s one of the most comprehensive and in-depth project management tools on the market.
You can create projects, assign colleagues different tasks, track hours worked, and even view fancy Gantt charts and visualize productivity in stunning colours. The chat functions keep everyone on the same page and video and instant messaging allow for fast, effective communication.
Nectar
Nectar is an award-winning employee recognition & rewards platform that bolsters online collaboration. It creates a simple, standardized way for organizations to give out recognition, spot bonuses, awards and wellness challenges all within budget. This includes peer to peer recognition as well as manager to direct reports.
With Nectar, you can reinforce great work anytime, anywhere through an interactive recognition feed. Keep morale up, teams connected and promote your company’s core values in an online working environment.
Pros
- Connects with your other tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams and more to make recognition as seamless as possible
- Has a robust rewards engine with hundreds of global gift card options or branded company swag
- Unlike others in this space, Nectar aligns with its customers through Fair Billing. You only pay for ACTIVE users instead of per employee per month. They also don’t do contracts or implementation fees.
- Has a free tier along with paid plans
Explore pricing and features to find the Nectar plan that best fits your team.
Cons
- Wish there was more functionality on the free tier
- Reward options are limited outside of the US, UK or Australia
Hubstaff
Remote and asynchronous teams face communication challenges that in-office teams don’t. With Hubstaff’s stopwatch-style timer, teams can track time and see real-time updates from their desktop, web browser, or mobile device.
A virtual dashboard lets them view activity scores, enable optional screenshotting, and set productive and unproductive apps and websites for each member of their team. Integrations with over 30 popular project management, help desk, and HR apps make Hubstaff even more powerful for growing teams.
Pros
- Beautiful UI/UX
- Simple tracking
- Unlimited screenshots
- Automated timesheets
- Customizable invoices
- Easy team payments
Cons
- Relies on integrations
- If you’re looking for just a time tracker, there are free options that don’t provide the same features Hubstaff does but are cheaper.
Nifty
True collaboration is where communication meets action. If you’re planning in one place and discussing in another — where is the collaboration truly occurring?
Nifty is the award-winning project management tool that closes the gap between communication and action to serve as the all-in-one remote office you and your team have been looking for. Packed with easy-to-use project management tools as well as direct and group messaging experiences, Nifty is the glue between planning and execution.
Pros
- Build roadmaps with Nifty’s milestones which are phase-based Gantts that roll up tasks into actionable steps and automate progress as the tasks are completed.
- Timeline, Kanban, List, and Swimlane views let teams of all types visualize their work in the way that suits them best.
- Tags scale across tasks, docs, and files in all projects to create scalability within the workspace
- Built in docs, including a two-way Google Doc, Sheet, and Presentations bring your notes, content, and specifications directly into your workspace.
- Overviews, Workloads, and All Tasks give automated managerial insight on project and portfolio health and make managing resources across projects as simple as can be.
- Project Discussions and Team Chat give opportunities for group and direct communications
Cons
- API in the process of being opened
- Free trial, but no Free plan
Chanty
Chanty is a simple team chat solution, with easy-to-use collaboration features, unlimited message history, and workplace apps to enable teams to foster healthy relationships through transparent and accessible communication.
It is a messaging tool that enables your team members to complete projects, activities, or tasks easier and faster. It also helps you consolidate all the information you need in one easy-to-use application.
Pros
- Unlimited searchable message history
- Inbuilt task manager
- Simple and clean interface
- Easy-to-start and easy-to-use
Explore pricing and features to find the Chanty plan that best fits your team.
Cons
- Limited in custom integrations
Flock
A communication-focused Slack alternative
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+Easy to use interface+Neat productivity tools+Free to use
Flock is another application very similar to Slack but is arguably a little less daunting to use and offers more comprehensive communication tools.
Flock supports channels for different teams as well as 1:1 or group conversations. Users can search through messages, files and links and Flock will find it no matter who sent it and where.
There are audio and video calls and screen sharing as well as productivity tools such as polls, note sharing and reminders, while users can assign tasks to certain members of the group.
There’s also integrations with third party applications like Google Drive and Twitter, with notifications appearing directly in channels.
Flock has a free tier, but searches are limited to 10,000 messages, there is a 5GB storage limit and only five third party integrations are permitted. A Pro plan adds unlimited search, 10GB of storage per user, and admin controls, while the Enterprise plan ads 20GB of storage per user, more admin controls and dedicated support.
Filestage
The second one in the list of tools for online collaboration is Filestage. Filestage gives teams the easiest possible way to manage the content review process. The project management software and platform makes it simple for internal and external stakeholders to leave in-context feedback on videos, images, PDFs, and more. The tool also generates to-do lists based on those comments to make sure your team never misses a piece of feedback. With Filestage, you can review and approve in real-time, external partners and clients can comment without registering, version control makes projects easy to manage and easy to see as to which stakeholders have approved a file.
What is unique about Filestage?
- Easy review – FileStage makes feedback gathering simple, you don’t even have to sign-up, if you are a reviewer, to carry out the review process.
- Comments – reviewers can directly comment on files to share feedback making the process easy and less time consuming.
- Consistency – by giving you a central place to review files and share feedback, FileStage helps you develop consistency in your feedback sharing process.
- Creative management – with easy-to-use features for reviewing and feedback sharing, FileStage aids in creative management and quick collaboration for teams as well.
- Time saver – by simplifying the process of creative reviews and approvals, the software saves a lot of time that was earlier spent by teams juggling through email threads.
Conclusion
Collaborative online tools help team members to collaborate in a distance. There are several types of collaboration systems but the most common ones are the threaded comments, bulletin board, wiki and forums. All collaborative tools use a software application that allows employees or business partners to input their responses from remote locations.