Most businesses operate with the need for multiple people to participate in many areas of the operation and to share documents, data and procedures. In many offices the tool for sharing info and documents is email. We are all familiar with long email trails where notes or documents get circulated, commented on and sent on to others or worse still replied to "all".
In the past few years there are a couple of collaboration systems which have been developed and designed to better facilitate sharing within organizations and especially those which have more than one office or floor. This sharing is designed to make it easier for adhoc groups of users to come together, work on a project or set of tasks and communicate smoothly while doing so.
The two most broadly used packages of this software grouping are Slack and Microsoft Teams.
The manner is which they operate obviously differ somewhat but in essence they attempt to tackle the same basic needs within organizations and there is a bit of a competitive battle between them. To date their primary usage has tended to be in large enterprise organizations but the principles of their operation can be applicable in SMBs and other smaller entities.
A recent article in IT World Canada indicates that currently about 20 million users are active in some manner using Teams while about 13 million are using Slack. One of the reasons the Team numbers appear to be growing is that the product is bundled within Microsoft Office 365 making it available to users where this popular office suite is deployed.
This short video introduces Teams and shows how users can make it work for them.
After reviewing this short intro the concept of pooled activity using a collaborative chat format is a bit easier to understand if you have never seen it before. The ability to use the tool to carry out a number of activities on tasks while keeping multiple participants informed and easily included can make the whole team more productive and hopefully reduce redundant work and effort.
If your organization has need for group participation one of these types of tools could be a fit for you. Check them out and see how you might reform your users interactions.