Group collaboration tools are part of a set of software services that support group communications, group productivity, and information sharing in organizational groups. These tools are used in both enterprise and community settings to support group decision making. Group Collaboration Tools help teams with tasks that require input from multiple people, usually organized into informal groups or communities of practice.
Group collaboration tools are tools that allow people in an organization to communicate with each other on projects, create documents together, share data, and edit electronic calendars. Examples include Yammer, Office 365 Groups, Microsoft SharePoint Team Sites, Microsoft Project Online, Microsoft OneNote.
Features of team collaboration tools
Most current project management software offers various features to enhance collaboration, including task updates, progress visualization charts and file sharing capabilities. Tools that are designed specifically for collaboration incorporate even more specific features, such as video conferencing, client-facing portals and live sharing on collaborated documents. However, the primary features that team collaboration tools possess are the following:
- task management
- document management solutions
- project management
Effective team collaboration software possesses task management capabilities that enable users to check the progress of tasks across multiple projects using one screen. This feature provides a quick look at due dates, conversations, files, checklists and time logs for each task, enabling users to save time and take control of the workflow. Users are also able to reassign work, reprioritize tasks and add resources when necessary. The task management feature provides updates on project tasks that the user is responsible for, as well as notifications of tasks that the user needs to accept or reject. A complete report of the task should be available in any file format.
The document management solutions feature enables users to store, organize, collaborate on and share any document or media file. This feature includes an option to automatically notify team members whenever someone approves, rejects, views, uploads, downloads or adds comments to a shared document. The document management solutions feature also includes the ability to quickly and securely drag and drop files into a folder within a user’s personal hard drive, the network drive or a team folder.
Project management is the most important feature of any team collaboration tool. Provided abilities include sharing updates, asking questions, conducting a poll and recognizing team members. Customers and partners can join as guest users, thus providing transparency and visibility throughout the project. A task management module should be connected to this feature in order to ensure projects remain on track and that there are sufficient resources for the execution of each task.
Types of team collaboration tools
The primary types of team collaboration tools are file sharing tools, instant messaging (IM), cloud storage, online whiteboards, document synchronization, video conferencing and calendar sharing tools.
File sharing tools enable teams to quickly distribute and transfer files and provide access to other members. These tools remove the transfer process from email, relieving inboxes from the distracting flood of heavy files and notifications. Shared files can be anything from documents to videos or even software.
IM tools enable teams to exchange text messages and online files in real time. Video files, voice communication and video conferences are supported by most IM apps.
Cloud storage tools enable data to be stored remotely within a telecommunications network. This creates a centralized location for information that all team members can easily access.
Online whiteboards replace traditional, physical whiteboards and provide teams with a place to communicate visual information through graphics, drawings and text, all of which can then be quickly erased.
Document synchronization tools match two documents, making all edits in one version effective in the second version as well. This ensures that both documents are identical and that employees always have the most recent version of the information.
Video conferencing tools provide a way for various people across multiple locations to communicate in a live, visual conversation using video. Video conferencing enables teams to benefit from in-person meetings without having to commute to an office.
Finally, calendar sharing tools enable users to schedule appointments without consulting each person involved. All participants’ schedules and conflicts will be visible on a central calendar, enabling the person organizing the meeting to quickly find a time that works for everyone and send an invitation, saving time and fostering teamwork.
Slack
Slack is one of the more well-known team collaboration software platforms. It allows for instant communication, file transfers, and the ability to create shared channels and workspaces for clear delineation of different projects and interests.
With a whopping 10 million daily active users, it’s clear Slack is a favorite for companies of all sizes and varieties.
Price:
Slack’s friendly, per-user pricing starts at $6.67. That gets you all of the core functionality you’ll need as a small or mid-sized business.
Slack’s “Fair Billing Policy” states you’re only billed for active users, so if not everyone on your team uses Slack, you won’t get billed for their seats.
Ease of use:
Slack’s user interface (UI) is extremely user-friendly. It was designed to increase transparency across all levels of the company, and acts as a potential replacement to email, instant messaging, and text messaging.
The interface is simple to navigate, even for first-time users. Starting conversations and channels are intuitive from the get-go—and Slack offers a comprehensive help center for troubleshooting problems.
Benefit to team productivity:
Slack can be a boon to your business. You can:
- Communicate with team members across locations
- Send files for collaboration
- Tag people in action items that need immediate attention
- Have impromptu video calls
- Create fun community spaces (i.e., “channels”) to connect over similar interests
On the flip side, because Slack is offered as a desktop and mobile app, the lines between working hours and non-working hours become blurred—especially if people enable notifications to be pushed to their attention. So this might be something you’ll want to keep an eye on.
The ability to create channels for activity unrelated to business can also be distracting for people unused to protecting their time from the allure of informal and fun side conversations.
Overall rating:
Slack gets a 4.8/5 stars for:
- Its freemium offering that’s friendly to small businesses and fair billing policy that extends a flexible pricing strategy for all paying users
- Preserving culture by making communication feel seamless across on-site and remote workers
- File-sharing capabilities that kick-start group work and idea sharing
G Suite
There are more than five million businesses paying for Google’s broad range of team collaboration and productivity tools. The search engine giant has its hands in a lot of pots—and one of these pots is its cloud-based productivity and collaboration tool G Suite.
Their major offers include Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Hangouts, and Google Drive.
They compete against Microsoft Office. In 2018, Bitglass, a cloud security firm, conducted a study showing that 24.8% of businesses used G Suite—compared with 56.3% of businesses using Office 365.
Despite Microsoft Office continuing to hold the lion’s share of the market on productivity suites, G Suite is a strong contender in this area because of one key collaboration feature: online editing. Users can share documents with their colleagues and multiple parties can edit the same document or slide in real-time, allowing people to streamline efforts and collaborate that much better.
Pricing:
The G Suite’s Business plan runs at $12 per user/month, compared to Microsoft 365’s $12.50 per user/month.
Ease of use:
As a basic online, real-time editing piece of software, G Suite gets the job done quite well. Also, there are countless “add-ons” to further help you boost team collaboration and productivity.
Benefits to productivity:
The ability to work together on a document at the same time is a true differentiator for Google Docs/Sheets/Slides. You can also tag colleagues to assign tasks or ask questions, alerting them to something that requires their review or attention.
Overall rating:
G Suite gets a 4.7 out of 5 stars mainly because it’s a relatively new kid on the block, trying to gain ground in a productivity industry dominated by Microsoft. Most people will have experience with Microsoft Office offerings first, which makes some G Suite features jarring at worst and annoying at best. However, those differences are a small drop in the pond compared to the instant collaboration gains.
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.
Conclusion
New group collaboration tools, designed specifically for the mobile professional, make team insights and tasks available from anywhere. You can share files with confidence on Box or Dropbox [that’s two different companies, how confusing!], share [wow, sounds like a verb] wirelessly from your PC [how?] to anyone in a conference room with a digital whiteboard, or just stay connected using desktop sharing via GoToMeeting.