The importance of collaboration is hard to underestimate. Working together on documents and tasks improves communication, helps to better identify weak spots or spark new ideas, and promotes creativity.
Collaboration Tools as New Means of Digital Communication
The modern world is inevitably drifting towards digitalization. Paperless office and digital workspace are no longer just concepts, they're become our reality with advanced management software. Most of the documents we work on are digital. Thus, providing easy access to viewing, discussing, sharing, and editing them in real time is essential. So, if you want to keep up with technological progress and the latest market tendencies, you need to think about installing a document collaboration tool.
Effective document collaboration tools can benefit your teams in many ways, including:
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Working and communicating remotely saves time, money, and other valuable resources
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Interactions between employees are more focused on accomplishing task rather than idle chatting
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Team work leaves more space for creative thinking, constructive feedback, and brainstorming
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Productive communication leads to a better work environment.
What to Look For When Choosing Collaboration Tools
The primary purpose of any document collaboration tool is to allow you and your teammates to view, edit, and discuss documents you're working on in real life. But, its functionality shouldn't be limited to these instruments. Here is the list of features that are crucial for productive collaboration:
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Sufficient selection of file templates
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Various communication options, such as instant messaging, commenting, video or audio calls
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Integration with applications you might need while working on a document
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Ability to view version history and track changes
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Notifications on changes and updates
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Autosave and version control
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Ability to support different file formats
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Enough space to store your files
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Access granting capabilities
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Desktop & mobile versions
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Online & offline accessibility.
Top Collaboration Tools to Upgrade Your Team Work
If you're ready to move forward from old-fashioned and time-consuming ways of communication, such as e-mails, phone calls, and office visits, to the digital world of accessing, editing, sharing, and discussing documents within the same interface with a couple of clicks, then you should review some of the most recommended and reputable document collaboration tools.
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 is a complex platform that offers a wide range of business instruments, including document collaboration tools. Its editing functionality is as broad as Office 365 or Google Docs, and you can invite an unlimited number of users to join you. You can import, export, and share files on any device both online & offline. Together with your colleagues, you can discuss progress via chats, calls, or conferences. Plus, its integration capabilities will definitely impress you.
Pricing & Plans
The free version might not offer as much collaborative and editing opportunities as you need, but its integration capabilities compensate for that. You do get unlimited users 100% free.
Google Workspace
Google finally developed a complex business solution called Google Workspace, and it has everything to provide you with excellent document collaboration tools. Its main advantage is the ability to enjoy the capabilities of almost every Google application, including Gmail, Drive, Meet, Calendar, Chat, Currents, Jamboard, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Keep, Sites, and Forms. This means that you and your colleagues can add notes to edited documents or import forms when needed. You and your teammates can use a broad editing functionality of Docs, while Chat and Meet will provide efficient instruments for communication. Plus, it is compatible with Office 365.
Pricing & Plans
Your choice here depends mostly on the scale of your business.
Office 365
When it comes to document collaboration tools, it's hard to compete with Office 365 products. Its solutions were designed specifically to create and edit various types of documents. Surely, you know what you can achieve with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. You can store, share, and exchange documents you create using Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint cloud services. With such broad functionality, you can discuss progress and brainstorm productively. Yet, it has no integration with other apps. But, if you are a part of the Microsoft family this software should be your first choice.
Pricing & Plans
Business Basic and Apps for Business plans are more suitable for small companies with lower expectations while Standard and Premium solutions will fit the requirement of businesses with higher demands.
Dropbox Paper
Dropbox Paper is incorporated into the Dropbox applications package. Thus, it doesn't offer as much editing and communicating capabilities as its competitors. However, it has its advantages such as unusual document collaboration tools and effective instruments to store, share, import, and access files. Plus, you can make presentations out of documents within a click. You and your teammates can also comment on every element of the file, including images. Yes, you can add images, GIFs, video and audio files. Overall, a neat and concise set of features makes the application's interface intuitive and easy to use.
Pricing & Plans
Dropbox Paper is a part of the Dropbox application and has the same functionality regardless of your plan. Thus, your choice depends on the cloud service capabilities that you need.
Zoho WorkDrive
Zoho WorkDrive is an online file management system that also presents its users with document collaboration tools. This platform was specifically designed to help team members to connect and work together without any distractions. Thus, you and your colleagues can use Zoho Office Suite to create, view, and edit documents (Writer), tables and spreadsheets (Sheet), or presentations (Show). In addition, you can try a beta version of its Genie application that enables you to open and edit any file using the programs installed on your device. Files need to be organized, protected, stored, and shared, that's why WorkDrive has such instruments as Team Folder and Cloud Storage.
Pricing & Plans
Generally, all plans have basic functions that are necessary for document collaboration. The Starter package doesn't have locking, activity, and access stats for files. Moreover, the Business package provides an enhanced set of security and admin features.
Box
Box used to be a cloud storage solution, but it evolved into being something a lot more sophisticated. Most of its document collaboration tools come from integration with numerous applications, including Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Zoom, and Slack. Yet, you can also use Box Note to leave notes with recommendations or new ideas, comment on them, or tag your coworkers to them while reviewing or editing the document.
Pricing & Plans
If your company is small and you don't need to collaborate so often, you should probably take the Business (Plus) plan. But, if you deal with documents frequently, it's better to obtain the Enterprise (Plus) package.
Bit.ai
Bit.ai was developed to create an ecosystem that accommodates all your business processes. You can easily store, organize, manage, import/export, and track files of any format. Its document collaboration tools allow you and an unlimited number of co-authors to view and edit documents simultaneously. You can also brainstorm or provide feedback through notes, comments, and chat messaging. Plus, you can make your collaboration more interactive with media files that you can store or add from a Content Library.
Pricing & Plans
If you don't like limitations, you should choose the Business or Enterprise plan. But, if you don't mind dealing with a limited number of users and storage space, you can use the Pro or even Free version.
Confluence
Confluence is a neat office solution with an intuitive and distraction-free interface. Its document collaboration tools provide plenty of opportunities to make your team work together with pleasure. It offers a variety of document templates that you and your colleagues can edit together in real time. You can brainstorm and discuss changes over chat, comments, and notes. You can also add some positivity with images, likes, and emojis. Plus, unlimited storage space is a feature that anyone will find hard to resist. Besides integration with Jira and Trello, you can download a perfectly Confluence compatible version of any app, including Google Docs, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Office 365 from the Atlassian Marketplace.
Pricing & Plans
Differences in Confluence prices don't affect the set of document collaboration tools, so it's better to decide judging by the scale of your business.
