Collaborative workspaces are making online work easy. A new kind of online office designed for remote collaboration, these workspaces make it easy to connect, get down to business, and get back to being productive offline.
Collaborative workspaces is a way to communicate with teammates and leverage their expertise. They allow you to create a space where teams can work together effectively. It’s an office of the mind for your team.
How will an online workspace help my business?
An online workspace is exactly as the name suggests – it is a centralized environment, which can be accessed via the internet, to be used by groups of users that need access to the same content. It can provide not only just a place to work together, but when integrated with other features such as file storage and task management, it can transform your business’s whole approach to working, making things easier and faster.
By moving your files and communication to a secure online workspace, departments and teams will be able to access information instantly and significantly improve their output. Your business will see improvements in performance after introducing online workspaces to employees; whatever industry you work in. Overall, projects will be more manageable, communication will be easier, and information sharing will be much more efficient.
How to make the best use of your online workspace
Once you have your online workspaces, you’ll want to know how you can make the best use out of them. So, in order to do this, it’s worth remembering these five useful best practices.
- Ensure users have a clear understanding on what the platform is for, how to access it and how to contribute to their own workspaces.
- Check that the relevant permissions are put in place in order to control user access and increase the security of your platform.
- Integrate your workspaces with the tools that you’re already using, such as Google apps or your email.
- Remember to regularly upload content within your workspaces, to keep other users aware of the latest progress within a department or group.
- Create dedicated workspaces for external users as well as internal ones; such as clients, partners and anyone else from outside the company who you feel would benefit.
What are the key features of an online workspace?
Availability of real-time activity streams
Workspaces can provide live activity streams that can be seen by all members of a workspace in real-time. Team members can see who had made a change, to which content, and when the content was changed. For example, everyone can immediately see if a team member has uploaded a new version of a report or added an event to the calendar.
Document management
Online workspaces are the ideal places to get documents signed off quickly and efficiently. They’re also important for keeping track of feedback and making updates transparent between team members. Files can be locked (version-controlled) whilst changes are being made, so everyone always has access to the latest version of a file.
Ability to set secure access permissions
Online workspaces are secure and offer a range of solutions up to bank-grade security/SSL encryption for accessing content. Additional measures may include two-factor authentication, automatic sign-outs, complex passwords, and more, depending on the business’s nature and requirements.
User dashboards
Many online workspaces have the option to create custom user dashboards. This way, individual users can see what’s most relevant to them. This could be particular chat threads, to-do lists, or direct messages.
How do online workspaces support a hybrid workforce?
Online workspaces support employees working in a hybrid model in countless ways, including:
Enables team camaraderie
Threaded discussions, similar to social media posts can be used within a workspace where employees can like or mention other colleagues. This can help remote, and office employees work together more easily. By initiating group chats and discussions, hybrid teams can develop increased camaraderie and work more effectively together.
Keeps data secure whilst working remotely
Online collaborative workspaces can help hybrid co-workers maintain a safe place to store files and keep them safe from risks of theft of a computer or hard drive malfunction. This functionality ensures data is not lost. Since all data is kept in the cloud, it can be accessed no matter what happens to the hardware.
Examples of online workspaces
There are many examples of free online workspaces available offering task and project management, calendars, file storage and document management 24/7.
Chanty
Chanty is a business messenger that enables seamless collaboration powered by AI. It helps teams become more productive with instant messaging, unlimited search history, file sharing and united notifications. The AI algorithm predicts responses when team members are typing, thereby saving time, while workflow functionalities bring structure to conversations enabling users to coordinate tasks efficiently.
Chanty costs $3 per user per month for which users get unlimited private and public conversations, voice messages, roles and permissions, unlimited integrations and up to 20GB storage per user.
Crew
This mobile-first app helps companies streamline communications across widely dispersed teams. The crew gives teams access to information and team discussions with the state of the art compliance controls, dependencies, advanced integrations, tools, templates, and a modern messaging platform.
Crew’s advanced analytics let you track schedules, monitor key engagement metrics in real-time and keep track of team-level conversions and feedback. The basic plan is free for one organisation and up to 35 users. You can then select add-ons and extra support as required.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a smart workspace plugin, where teams, online collaboration tools and content combine. It enables creating and storing shared cloud content from Google docs, sheets and slides to Office files and Dropbox Paper files. The software brings files together and integrates with many third-party apps, such as Trello, to enable hybrid teams to work together.
Pricing varies according to business needs, but standard plans start at £12 per month for 3 users with unlimited space. You can also try DropBox for free for 30 days.
Basecamp
Basecamp is an all-in-one remote toolkit that enables teams to work together more productively. Work is broken up into projects where everything needed to complete that project is kept in one place – from people and discussions to documents, tasks and important dates. Teams have access to message boards, ‘to do’s’, schedules, group chats and automatic check-ins.
Basecamp’s ‘my stuff’ lets users see everything from their assignments and schedules to bookmarks and project activity. At $99 per month, Basecamp might be a bit pricey, but you can test it for free for 30 days.
Glasscubes
Glasscubes offers secure online workspaces for team collaboration along with tools that enable efficient project-management. The software allows teams to store and share files securely and set up an approval workflow.
Customised dashboards allow team members to view announcements and see the latest activities, posts and completed tasks. High priority announcements can be pinned to the dashboard for continuous viewing. Threaded discussions and calendars are other useful features aimed at team collaboration. Glasscubes can be trialled for free.
Otter.ai
Otter automatically transcribes your audio into text. Text notes full of timesaving ways to search, find, and share with your team no matter where they are. Otter has several integrations with apps like Zoom that make collaboration and remote work faster and more efficient.
Price: Starts at $9.99, billed every month. Learn more on Otter.ai Plan’s pricing page.
Free Plan: Yes, with limited usage and features. Get started.
Here are just a few of the things we love about Otter and the one minus we could think of.
Pros
- Otter integrated with Zoom making it quick and easy to add live comments, delegate tasks, and action items in real-time
- Allow Zoom participants to add photos, audio, and highlights in real-time to create collaborative meeting notes
- Get a text summary of your meetings instantly, no waiting for notes to be cleaned up. No delays, no loss in productivity
- Search within and across all your transcribed conversations
Cons
- Love that Otter is available on desktop and mobile we wish more of Otter Premiums were available in the free version
Nextiva
Nextiva brings all the features of traditional business phone systems to companies that work remotely or across multiple locations and time zones. Using just one robust online platform (and one service provider), you can deliver and manage reliable phone service to employees in multiple locations.
Remote and flexible companies traditionally struggle with reliable communications. In fact, LucidChart points to a Zogby Analytics study that isolated information gaps and delays as a top obstacle facing remote workers.
Nextiva helps companies overcome the remote communication barrier. Manage call traffic over the internet, establish a cloud-based call center, and so much more.
Pros
- Top rated customer service and free trial period
- Reliable cloud-based enterprise Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) with zero outages last year
- Streamlined control panel and single platform for easy management of phone, email, chat, and SMS
- Collects customer insights to supplement business decisions
- Security monitoring and protection
- Tons of bells and whistles, including automations and integrations
- Physical phones available on request
Get a full view of all Nextiva’s products and features.
Cons
- Employees may have to change existing phone numbers
- May require a light communication and training plan if you’re replacing an existing system
Conclusion
Collaborative workspace is a place where people from different organizations and industries meet to work on project-based activities. Collaborative workspaces, referred to as Co-Working Spaces, provide independent work alongside communities and resources to encourage and foster creativity and innovation.