Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space. I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV. I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can. If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add. Ideally I’d also like to see the product which means we can schedule a demo or just me access so that I can take a look at it.
15Five launches version 2.0
15Five recently launched the newest version of their product which includes a new user interface, the ability to “like” content, private messaging, reporting into specific groups, and a host of other things.
My POV
15Five isn’t your traditional collaboration platform. In fact the whole premise of the platform is that employees spend 15 minutes a week writing up a short report and managers spend less than five minutes reading it and providing feedback. It’s basically designed to give you a “pulse” for your company. Each week employees are asked a handful of questions (around 5) such as “how are you feeling?” or “have you had any wins this week?” Managers then respond. The new design and features look great the platform is very easy to use but again it’s not a product that helps facilitate collaboration or getting work done. It’s still in the early stages so we’ll see what happens!
Clarizen (client) adds JIRA integration
Clarizen is a platform for project management and JIRA is a platform for bug tracking and now the two are integrated together. This means that anything on the development side can now be more effectively planned and managed through Clarizen.
My POV
The integration makes complete sense in my opinion. However, Atlassian also offers a product called Confluence which also allows for collaboration and management of any R&D issues. Clarizen is a more robust project management platform though. The integration should make it much easier for any technical teams to go through the whole cycle of finding bugs, fixing bugs, and rolling out the changes (as well as any general development projects).
Bitrix24 releases the latest version of their collaboration platform
Bitrix24 announced new features such as real time updates in activity feeds, document collaboration, video conferencing, email connectors, more customization’s for how you use and interact with Bitrix24, and a host of other things.
My POV
You know, I really like the Bitrix24 product. I’ve kept an eye on them for a little while now and they have come a really long way. The product looks great and offers a lot of functionality. The UI isn’t that much different from what you might expect to find in another collaboration platform but there are some minor details that give it that little bit of differentiation. I think the sweet spot for Bitrix is either smaller or mid-size businesses but for that particular market it has a great offering with a very reasonable price point. The link above talks about all the new additions but I think this is one of their most significant releases as far as functionality goes.
Until next week!