With the emerging distances outsourcing home sourcing telecommuting and complex projects the need for collaboration tools is growing. Here are some of the most popular sites that are great collaboration tools for a team of people working on a particular project.
The idea of using collaborative software is to collaborate or get a group of people involved in a common project on the same platform. Tools that help a group of people solve a common task or problem easily are known as collaborative tools and many can be found on free collaboration sites.
These tools are generally web-based collaborative tools and include wikis Whiteboards Peer Reviews IM IRC video conferencing web conferencing data conferencing application sharing EMC asynchronous conferencing electronic calendars time management tools HR management tools workflow systems knowledge management systems social softwares online spreadsheets and document sharing versioning retention and repository.
These software products are commonly known as group support systems workgroup support systems or groupware. These tools can be rightly classified as communication tools conferencing tools and coordination tools. Thanks to these tools it has become possible to work on a single project from different locations.
Though the list of free collaboration sites is endless and includes hundreds of apps this article highlights five popular choices that can be freely accessed on the Internet.
This is a flexible online whiteboard or bulletin board that allows the user to upload documents photos bookmarks notes clippings and manage tasks. The key purpose of using Stixy is to allow sharing collecting and arranging of information by each individual group member for the group.
Google Docs helps share documents and spreadsheets. Moreover it helps collaborate with team members in real-time. The tool is a browser-based application with all work being stored online. This enables your work to be readily accessed everywhere.
Dabbleboard is a robust online whiteboard tool that helps envisage investigate and share ideas. The easy-to-understand and easy-to-use interface automatically detects basic shapes that are drawn. Moreover it is very intuitive and stores previously drawn objects. Files can be uploaded on the Dabbleboard dashboard. The tool is commonly used to create wire frames create flow-charts draw network diagrams and create Toolkits.
Zoho DB and Reports is part of the Zoho online office suite. The purpose of using this set of online collaboration tools is to help users make documents and databases. The tool does not offer too many options and features but it is ideal to create reports that contain graphs and data analyzation in the form of pie charts tables etc. The tool is still in its beta stages and has some bothersome bugs.
Mindquarry is one of the best collaborative tools. It is an open source collaborative tool that is written in Java (J2EE). Unfortunately the online version has been discontinued now. The platform allows file sharing team collaboration Wiki editing and task management. Moreover it can be used on Mac OS X Linux or Windows. The application can be downloaded from the website. It comes with all the source code and thus can be hosted on your own server.
Stixy:
Zoho DB and Reports:
Google Docs:
Dabble Board:
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