Top 10 Mobile Apps For Business Collaboration 2
Collaboration is one of today's strongest business trends, fueled in part by advances in (and employees' experiences with) social media. The ability to exchange ideas and communicate about activities has proven wildly popular in the social sphere -- why not in the business one as well? And recognizing this demand, vendors are making tools available that enable teams to keep track of each others' progress on a group project, exchange information about tasks and contacts, and otherwise work togeth
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Cisco's WebEx is one of the most popular tools for conducting online meetings -- you've probably attended several yourself. The service combines desktop sharing, whereby every participant sees what's on the host's screen, with phone and/or video conferencing. With WebEx Meetings for your smartphone (free, for all three platforms), anyone can join in a WebEx meeting from wherever they are and use the phone's voice capabilities for the audio portion. They can also host a meeting and designate someone else as the presenter. The iPhone and Android versions let you schedule and start a meeting; the BlackBerry version lets you start one, but you need a desktop computer (PC or Mac) to schedule it. The Android version also has a widget that lets you access a meeting right from the home screen.
Start by turning to one of these mobile collaboration apps. They don't collaborate directly with each other, for the most part -- they each connect to a central storehouse of information, usually installed on a business's network. Some run on BlackBerrys, some on Android phones, some on the iPhone -- most on more than one. Equip your team members with these and you can extend your business's collaboration potential outside the walls to wherever your workers may roam. The only drawback is that they're not cross compatible.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
Microsoft SharePoint is the collaboration platform of choice for many businesses, providing a portal for file sharing, communication, and content management. The SharePlus Office Mobile Client (iPhone, $14.99) lets you connect to your SharePoint installation from the road and sync the SharePoint lists and libraries you need. You can share calendars and task lists with your team, as well as edit documents, participate in discussions, and contribute to wiki pages. The software stores accessed data on the phone, so you can work with it offline and then sync it back next time you connect. It works with existing SharePoint credentials and doesn't require any new server-side components.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
Salesforce Chatter is a sort of intranet Facebook that gives team members a way to update their own status and track the status and activities of their collaborators. They can form and join groups and share information privately and securely. Chatter Mobile (free for the iPhone and BlackBerry) lets you update your status and add comments via your mobile device. You can also take photos with your device and upload them into the Chatter stream for coworkers to peruse. In addition, it gives you the ability to call, e-mail, or even text message a colleague from your phone by accessing that person's Chatter profile.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
If you need to support Android devices, one option is Seesmic (free), a longstanding, popular social networking app. Seesmic supports multiple social networks -- Twitter, Google Buzz . . . and Salesforce Chatter. As with the Salesforce app, you can read your feeds, share photos, and get notifications of new messages.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
Basecamp provides a workgroup-level collaborative project management platform, with dashboards to show the status of projects, access to related files, milestones, and messages. It's not meant as an enterprise-wide organizational tool, but it's good for teams and departments. The company maintains its own mobile site for access through a mobile browser, but you can also get a standalone app called Insight, formerly called Encamp ($9.99 for the iPhone). Insight provides a dashboard of the latest activity in your account and groups your projects by status, like Basecamp does. You can also email or phone your collaborators right from within Insight, set up to-do lists, and track milestones.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
Jive's main purpose is to enable managers to form and dissolve groups as needed for specific tasks and projects. It collects the working profile of all the employees in a company to make it easier to find the right people to assemble for a project. It also provides a way for employees to submit ideas and vote for the best ones. Jive's Mobile Module (free for the iPhone) lets you browse recent activity, post a response, update your status, and even upload a photo to a new blog post. You can participate in discussion threads and communicate with coworkers through their profiles. You can also download contact info from Jive into your phone's Address Book or transfer contacts to another phone.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
SAP StreamWork, from the well-known enterprise software giant, is a team-building and team-coordination tool. It lets a business bring together both employees and people outside the company to work on a task and provides communication features to help them work together. It also hooks into SAP business intelligence software as well as third party collaboration apps. The SAP StreamWork mobile application (free for the iPhone, expected soon for the BlackBerry) lets you create StreamWork activities, add participants, upload content, and establish action items. You can also contact teammates via their StreamWork profiles to call or send them an email.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
AtTask provides a group project management platform, based on Gantt charts, with a variety of reports and dashboards available to help managers keep track of how things are going. It also offers tools for organizing teams to tackle projects, including the ability to run what-if scenarios to see how assignments will affect everyone's workload. Part of AtTask is TeamHome, a workspace for team members to take on tasks, see what they have to do and what's next, and have access to a communication stream to keep informed about what everyone else is doing. AtTask for the iPhone (free) is a portable version of the TeamHome workspace. It lets you manage work requests and see information about your assignments. You can access updates from teammates and comment on them as well as get notifications when they comment on yours. And you can log the time you spend on each task and let people know when you think you'll be finished.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
Not every collaboration platform has an associated native app. Some take the alternative approach of building a special mobile Web site and relying on the smartphone's browser to provide access to the collaboration tools. One advantage of this approach is that it's not (phone) platform-specific: It'll work on iPhones, Android devices, and BlackBerrys. Another is that it's free, since it just uses a phone's built-in capabilities. One example is Socialtext (left), an information sharing and team-management platform. SocialText Mobile detects a mobile browser and directs you to a special mobile interface. Through the mobile interface, you can track team members' activities, read and add comments, and communicate with colleagues through their profiles. Another example is Central Desktop (right), a cloud-based collaboration platform that offers most of the features of the in-house version: shared workspaces with communication and file sharing features. CentralDesktop.MOBI, a third-party Web application, lets you connect to your Central Desktop account by pointing your phone's browser to that address.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
Sometimes collaboration should be more personal and more fun than simply connecting to the home office's collaboration platform to read messages and update your project status. Collaboration can mean brainstorming while actually sitting together, even on a mobile device. That's what Whiteboard Pro ($2.99 for the iPhone, $1.99 for Android devices) lets you do: Put a shared whiteboard on two mobile devices that are on the same Wi-Fi network or connected via Bluetooth. What you draw on one will appear on the screen of the other, enabling true real-time collaboration. You can even draw on top of photos you've taken or images you open in the app.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
Sometimes collaboration should be more personal and more fun than simply connecting to the home office's collaboration platform to read messages and update your project status. Collaboration can mean brainstorming while actually sitting together, even on a mobile device. That's what Whiteboard Pro ($2.99 for the iPhone, $1.99 for Android devices) lets you do: Put a shared whiteboard on two mobile devices that are on the same Wi-Fi network or connected via Bluetooth. What you draw on one will appear on the screen of the other, enabling true real-time collaboration. You can even draw on top of photos you've taken or images you open in the app.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
Cisco's WebEx is one of the most popular tools for conducting online meetings -- you've probably attended several yourself. The service combines desktop sharing, whereby every participant sees what's on the host's screen, with phone and/or video conferencing. With WebEx Meetings for your smartphone (free, for all three platforms), anyone can join in a WebEx meeting from wherever they are and use the phone's voice capabilities for the audio portion. They can also host a meeting and designate someone else as the presenter. The iPhone and Android versions let you schedule and start a meeting; the BlackBerry version lets you start one, but you need a desktop computer (PC or Mac) to schedule it. The Android version also has a widget that lets you access a meeting right from the home screen.
Start by turning to one of these mobile collaboration apps. They don't collaborate directly with each other, for the most part -- they each connect to a central storehouse of information, usually installed on a business's network. Some run on BlackBerrys, some on Android phones, some on the iPhone -- most on more than one. Equip your team members with these and you can extend your business's collaboration potential outside the walls to wherever your workers may roam. The only drawback is that they're not cross compatible.
See Also:
Cisco Announces Multimedia Jabber Software
Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap
IBM Takes Social Business Mobile
RhoSync Brings Salesforce.com Social Apps To iPhone, Android
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