12 Best Collaboration Tools To Keep Projects on Track

Successful teams thrive on one thing — collaboration. It is the force that binds individuals together and gets things done. In fact, an increasing number of companies are focusing on team Collaboration more than ever. Luckily, technology offers abundant options when it comes to team collaboration tools and online communication software. Although selecting the right one is often a herculean task.

“Want to collaborate faster with remote team members? Switch to ProofHub.”

How to choose a team collaboration software

A team Collaboration Software enables team members to better express themselves resulting in stronger team cohesion. Make sure to keep the following things in mind before you zero in a collaboration software for your team.

• Versatility: The most effective collaboration helps you to take care of all aspects of a business. Make sure to select software that comes packed with advanced features which can be customized as per the needs of your business.
• Ease of use: It is one of the most crucial factors that has to be taken into consideration. Go for a tool that does not need a learning curve and can be easily picked up by your team members.
• Security and privacy: Data security should be your top priority. So, the collaboration tool should ensure high standards of data security and make sure you have protected communication.
• Cloud-enabled: More and more organizations are storing their data in cloud-based management software, so should you!
• Integrations and compatibility: You need a tool that brings your favorite apps together at a central place so that you can access them from within the tool.

X Collaboration Tools For Productive Teams

1. ProofHub

Collaboration plays an essential role when you are juggling various tasks and managing different projects. ProofHub is a well-known online collaboration tool that allows you to connect with remote team members and discuss work.

Top features:

• Create, assign, share tasks and subtasks
• Share opinions, updates, announcements with online discussions
• Chat for quick questions and conversations
• Centralized file management to collaborate with remote teams and clients
• Email-in feature allows you to discuss work even when you have access to it
• Mark important topics and discussions as private
• Visual timeline to monitor the project progress
• Integrates with Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, Google Calendar and more

2. Huddle

Huddle makes document collaboration faster, seamless, and secure. It acts as a hub where teams and clients come together to share and discuss work. Whether it’s about working together on a task or collaborating with remote clients, you can customize it as per your needs.

Top features:

• One place for tasks, approvals, and team communication
• Set permissions and manage access rights within and outside an organization
• Share files up to 10GB size from desktop and mobile securely
• Integrates with SharePoint, Google Drive, Box, Dropbox
• Get a real-time overview to see the ongoing progress

3. Celoxis

Celoxis is a top online collaboration tool helping teams to plan, track, and collaborate online with much ease. It is known as an all-rounder collaboration software that offers tons of features, interactive reports, and various customizations in an affordable way. With smooth collaboration, it also makes way for easier project management, risk management, custom workflows, and resource management for teams.

Top features:

• Identify project requests to improve business value
• Know skills, roles, and availability to allocate resources effectively
• Track budget, costs, and profits in real-time
• Share files, add comments and hold discussions to collaborate faster
• Insightful and customizable reports to visualize data

4. Yammer

Yammer is a perfect tool to connect and engage with in-house and remote teams, clients, and stakeholders. It offers a platform where you can communicate openly across all departments, locations, and tools. It is helpful to build a culture of transparency helping project managers to keep team members informed and aligned.

Top features:

• Groups and interactive workspaces
• Open and dynamic communication to achieve better outcomes
• Manage documents, create content, share notes
• Quickly search for people, groups, and conversations
• Advanced security that protects data and confidential information

5. Slack

Slack has always been a front-runner online collaboration software that has grown strength to strength since its inception. Often touted as one of the best communication tools, Slack provides every essential feature a collaboration software should offer to its users such as instant messaging (IM), advanced search capabilities, and file transfer.

Top features:

• Communicate through channels and organize them by department, topic, team
• Find information whenever you need it with a quick search
• SSO and 2FA security measures to ensure data safety
• Can be personalized with the preference feature
• Easily integrable with numerous third-party applications

6. Flowdock

Flowdock is a real-time chat software used by teams to prioritize work, organize stuff, and collaborate across different locations and timezones. At its core, Flowdock works with flows which are open spaces for teams to converse and discuss outcomes and progress. It also aggregates notifications from different social media channels and project management and customer support tools.

Top features:

• Conversations are organized by threads
• Color code conversations to mark and identify important conversations
• Invite people to participate in discussions easily
• Stay connected with its Android and iOS mobile apps

7. Filestage

Filestage is an easy video review software and document approval tool. You can review videos, designs, and documents with team members and stakeholders 10x faster. Filestage has made it very easy for people to get actionable and visual feedback and quick online reviews. It doesn’t require any registration for people to directly comment on your content.

Top features:

• Share, review, and approve digital content
• Manage file-approvals on a single platform
• Time-saving approval workflow
• Paste review links in tools like Slack, Trello, or Basecamp
• Easy to use and intuitive

8. Week plan

Week Plan is not just another to-do app, it coaches you to improve your time management and teaches about the four key principles of priority planning. It helps you to focus on important tasks and block time for crucial things so you can treat your work accordingly. It has 420+ users including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NASA, Franklin Covey among others.

Top features:

• Create recurring tasks so they can repeat the way you want
• Collaboration features include comments, notifications, and see what others are doing
• Synchronizes with Google Calendar and Outlook
• Available on desktop, smartphones, and tablets

9. Fuze

Fuze is a leading cloud communication and collaboration platform for the enterprise. It allows you to call, chat, have virtual meetings, and share content. It blends communication with the right collaborative features that enable higher employee engagement at a centralized place. Also, it offers an exceptional user experience where you can have business conversations and improve overall communication.

Top features:

• High-quality messaging voice, video, and content features
• Work anywhere, anytime, on any device
• Unlocks data from multiple sources
• Various third-party enterprise integrations

10. Appear.in

Looking for easy video meetings for your business, Appear.in fits the bill perfectly. Start with creating a room link, it can be anything you would like it to be. Share the link by email, chat, or in Slack. Anyone can become a part of the conversation by just clicking on the click.

Top features:

• No registration required
• Group video conversations with multiple people
• Screensharing features
• Limit the number of users while video conferencing
• Drag and drop to arrange videos, enlarge, go fullscreen

11. Jabber

Unlike other tools, Cisco Jabber unifies instant messaging, voice and video calls, screen sharing, web conferencing to enable teams to collaborate without any barriers. Interestingly, Jabber allows you to create bots that can send and receive messages and even launch chats and calls. Go where you need to go without any inhibitions because Jabber can help you collaborate anywhere, anytime.

Top features:

• Business class voice and audio features including desktop sharing
• Real-time information and instant messaging to reduce delays
• Available on Android, iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows
• Syncs the Jabber app with a car display and allows users to safely respond to messages.

12. Zenkit

Zenkit combines collaboration and project management effortlessly and acts as a perfect platform for businesses and teams to come together and create new ideas. Its biggest USP is that there’s a view for everything in Zenkit from scheduling meetings to tracking project progress, discussions to reports. The features of this collaboration solution span across all industries such as project management, CRM, support, recruitment and more.

Top features:

• A single place to view all items assigned items
• Track tasks and events across all collections
• Invite colleagues, friends to collaborate on friends
• Customize notifications to get the information you need

“Up your collaboration game with ProofHub. Try it now!”

Conclusion

Make sure to make the most of online collaboration tools to communicate effectively and keep things on track. The number of tools is infinite, be sure to know what you need before you choose a tool for your team. Remember that successful teams thrive on one thing — collaboration. Make sure you’re doing it right!

Top 12 Team Collaboration You Should Explore in 2019 was originally published in ProofHub Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.