For a workspace to be collaborative, it must include several key characteristics.
Easy access
A collaborative workspace enables people to work together, regardless of their physical location. This means workers need to easily access the workspace at any time. Businesses often use several applications at the same time—for project management, documents, production, and more. Going back and forth from one app to another wastes time and impairs productivity. Typically, each application requires signing in, creating a hassle of different usernames and passwords for workers and the IT team. To be effective, a collaborative workspace should be unified with all the apps your team needs to work, share, and stay connected. Some features that make it easier for workers to access the information include:
- Single sign-on: A single username and password for the entire workspace simplifies access, saving time and improving productivity. This single sign-on (SSO) should work across devices, allowing employees to work from anywhere.
- Single interface: Easy access to any app from a single interface makes it easy to switch between them.
- Centralized dashboard: Having all integrated apps (like Office or Salesforce) in a central dashboard allows the worker to open and work in any file, regardless of where it is stored.
Simplified tasks
Accessing the workspace and applications is just the first step. The essence of a collaborative workspace is to simplify how teams work together. An effective workspace provides intelligent collaboration through automated workflows. Workers need to be able to find shared documents and work together in processes across devices. Some characteristics that make it easy to collaborate in a workspace include:
- A central repository: This simplifies finding jobs and producing content. An employee can pick up where teammates left off. The repository should be organized in a logical manner that allows all team members to find and collaborate on shared documents.
- Custom workflows: The team can customize and create automated workflows for different projects. Some projects need more approval steps, some fewer. An effective workspace gives teams a simple way to stay connected and coordinate the work from a central platform.
Easy sharing
This is perhaps the most critical part of the collaboration process. Sharing processes sometimes creates bottlenecks when reviews and approvals stall the workflow. Requesting feedback, approvals, and signatures can be automated in an effective workspace. This helps make projects flow more easily, saves time, and speeds up progress. Some activities you can automate in an effective workflow include:
- Automated approvals and feedback: As soon as a task is completed, request approval or feedback from the task itself.
- Emails within the workspace: A big part of collaboration is communicating easily with teammates. Within an effective workspace, team members can send emails and instant messages without having to step outside the workspace. These integrations ensure all communications are done inside a secure workspace.
- Link sharing: Sharing content with outside stakeholders creates a security risk when done from different sources. By working in a unified workspace, the team can ensure role permissions are applied when sharing links with clients or contractors.
