Work is constantly changing and evolving, and this is accelerated all the more during recent times with more companies moving remote and away from the typical office setup.
It doesn’t matter where you work from right, be it working from a remote or beat working from an office setup; one aspect of work that always remains constant is the need to communicate effectively. Communication is multi-dimensional; let’s look at it from two angles.
The first is how communication spans across teams; you either communicate internally, that is, within your organization, communication happens within your team across departments and even within the organization. There is communication with external stakeholders; it can be your customers’ partners and contract employees.
This is one way to communicate across teams, not just with involvement within your organization but with outside stakeholders.
Another aspect is communication happens across many modes: voice, video, long-form communication, and chat. We have tools for all these modes, but it needs to sync to create a context for our conversations.
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We spoke about how work is constantly changing, and one aspect again about it is how workers now shifted from an I-centric approach to a V-centric approach, meaning. It is now not just about individual productivity; organizations also need to focus on team productivity.
Facilitation Multi-Dimensional Communication
How do you facilitate effective multi-dimensional communication that ensures you offer all the tools that an individual need and facilitates team collaboration? This is exactly where Zoho workplace comes into the picture.
Zoho Workplace is a bundle of 9 amazing tools, and it offers a shared and unified space for your teams to work together. It helps you easily manage your team files, and it streamlines communication as well.
Nine Apps of Zoho Workspace
Zoho mail is secured in an ad-free email hosting platform for all your formal communication, and then we have Cliq, an instant messaging app. We have Zoho work to drive to help you manage all your team files. Then we have the Zoho office suites, which are a writer, sheet, and your very own word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation platform where your teams can get on documents and work on their ideas in real-time, irrespective of the time zones they’re from. And then, we have Zoho connect, which is your social internet, more like Facebook for your company. And then, we have Zoho meeting, a virtual meeting tool where your team can meet not just with your internal and external stakeholders. And finally, we have Zoho showtime, which is a training platform where you can share knowledge with a larger group audience.
Now, the Zoho Workplace not just offers these two. It also offers these tools in an all-inclusive dashboard, which means you need not open nine different browser tabs; you can access all of them from a single place. For instance, I can access my inbox from here to all my recent conversations using Zoho Cliq. I can look at the company-wide announcements, all the meetings I have scheduled, and a lot more. You can include more here, and you can also swap these things around based on your preference. Now, let’s say you’re someone who prefers work involves a lot of coordinating with everybody that, which means your main focus is to have Cliq and email as your top priority, so you can bring that up and then use that.
Similarly, you can customize the entire dashboard based on your preference, and then we spoke about how it is a single, well-integrated platform. One example of that is here, when I create a meeting, if you see it on the right, a meeting is created, and there is a calendar immediately. My calendar is blocked for that particular time, and I receive an email notification as well, not just me; every participant who’s part of that meeting and who says they’re going to attend receives an email notification, and it folds in their calendar.
This also works not just to integrate together but also to ensure business continuity across these applications.
First, I’ll talk about the Zoho work drive and the Zoho office suites. Zoho work drive is an online file storage and content collaboration platform. Work drive offers a shared space for your team to come together, work on their files and collaborate in real-time. This way, your team members need not share files individually; they can just put all the files in the shared space so that everybody has constant access to information.
We have Zoho office suite, the writer, sheet, and show. Many people are unaware that Zoho has a fully-fledged office suite. These tools have been in the market for over a decade, and they’ve evolved to become very strong editors.
Common Feature They Have
Now I will quickly go through the common features that they all have, and then we’ll move on to the live demo. To start, your team can create a document or sheet or a presentation, get on the document and then work in real-time, which means I can create a document and send it across to my colleagues, and I can see what changes they’re making. I can suggest changes, and we can work together on the same document, just like how they’re next to me, no matter where they are.
And then we also have ready-made templates for all of the office suite products, which means you need not create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from scratch; you can re-purpose these templates, add comments, and read your changes within documents. Let’s say you’re working on a spreadsheet with your team, and you think a particular sheet that a particular problem that your colleague added could be done differently or better than you go about adding a comment to that column. What it does is you need not work in one place, and you do not have a conversation about that work in a different place. All of that has been brought under a single hood; it brings more context to your conversations.
And then, we have the check-in and check-out feature. Let’s say you’re working on a presentation, you’ve got any ideas, and you’re still not sure whether you want to go about it or not before sharing it with the team.
What you can do is you can check out that file, which means the file is now not accessible to any of your team members. Your team members will not be able to make changes to the file. You’ll be able to see what was the last made change. They will only be able to view the file; meanwhile, you can make all the edits. Make sure your idea shapes up, and you can check the file when you’re ready. All the changes you’ve made will then be available to your collaborators so they can share their feedback.
