Creately is a diagramming tool that is made for Collaboration. By their very nature, diagrams are a unique way of communicating and collaborating on concepts that are better conveyed as visuals. If Creately is to support this fact, its drawing process has to be natural and collaboration should happen seamlessly.
That’s why we have real-time collaboration that works; easy sharing links as well as project level collaboration that are expertly tuned for diagram based teamwork.
Sure, this works great for teams that are directly working on the diagram or the project, but it might not be the best option when it comes to sharing diagrams with people who are outside the process, like clients or people from external departments.
Thus, the biggest need here becomes enabling external collaborators to view the latest diagram securely (while not permitting them to edit anything on it). So that’s exactly what we did!
The special role of Creately Reviewer
What is Creately Reviewer? It’s the handy new feature that, from now on, will allow you to share your diagrams and projects with others as ‘read only’. Yes, it might seem minor, but it is still insanely useful for teams that need it.
Say you want to share a diagram or a project with someone, Creately Reviewer will give you the option between adding her as an editor or a reviewer. If you add her as a reviewer, she will immediately get an email notification with the diagram attached to it. Once she logs in to Creately,she will be able to see the diagram and the project conveniently in her Dashboard.
Improved diagram sharing links
If you have been using Creately for a long time, you probably know that we had this option called diagram view links which could be used to share the diagram with, say, a group without having to add them manually via their emails.
Now, with the new Reviewer addition, when someone clicks on a view/sharing link while she is signed into Creately, she automatically gets added into the diagram as a Reviewer or an Editor.
A stepping stone
A significant amount of effort went into getting this going, and it also included making some fundamental changes to how Creately’s visual collaboration functions. We are super excited about what this feature means for our roadmap for it lays the foundation for some very exciting new developments!
That’s all we can share for now, but stay tuned. Big things are on their way!
Imagine if you took the best parts of each team member and made one superstar. You might take Tom’s smarts, combine it with Renee’s empathy, add a dash of Joe’s writing skills and top it off with Tina’s sales ability. With a person like that working for you, your company would be unstoppable! Of course this person might come out a little funny looking…
The truth is you don’t need some Weird Science experiment to get more from your team. You can get more from your team when they work more together.When ideas, and communication crosses department and even business unit boundaries there are terrific opportunities for innovation. Just imagine the impact that would have on your company!
Improving team collaboration can do wonders for your company
Team Collaboration can mean a lot of things – from overhearing a co-worker who’s struggling with a piece of software and walking over to show them an easier tool; to researchers sharing their best ideas to see if they can learn from each other’s discovery, and everything in between. But getting people to work together is more art than science.
Five Steps for Greater Team Collaboration
Set the stage. In order to get people working together, and more importantly sharing their best ideas and innovations, you have to have a culture that values the team above the individual, that respects ideas no matter where they come from, and where listening is valued. These are the baseline. Without respect, team orientation and listening it’s difficult to get anyone to share anything.
Create the space. Once we have the psychic space, we need to address the physical space.Collaboration happens best when it “just happens”. Chance encounters, overheard conversations, and hallway meetings produce more innovation and collaboration than 1000 “brainstorming sessions”. How can you locate your team in such a way to promote those chance encounters? Maybe it’s not the physical office; there are lots of online tools for knowledge sharing and collaboration that can facilitate it too.
Celebrate a good thing. When you start to see results from the collaboration, celebrate that by sending out a note recognizing the team members who took a risk, celebrating the results they achieved and holding them up as examples to follow. When you do this it gives you the opportunity to reinforce the values of respect, team orientation and listening too!
Stir the pot. Once you’ve got collaboration started, don’t let it grow stale. People tend to collaborate more with folks they know, like and trust. So mix up your teams a bit; invite marketing folks to your production meeting. Send the whole office out for drinks or to a bowling alley. Create some social or team building event that requires folks to work with teams that they wouldn’t ordinarily connect with. The more that people have positive experiences with one another, the more likely they are to collaborate.
Provide the Tools Encourage them even further by providing visual collaboration tools built for teams. From diagram software like Creately to task management tools like Asana there are hundreds of product that encourage collaboration. Features like real-time collaboration makes working together fun and productive increasing the likely-hood of people working together.
Now it’s your turn! What ideas do you have to improve team collaboration? Let me know in the comments below!
About The Author: Brad Farris works for EnMast. They help small businesses get on the right track with tools and processes that are built for success.
While I hate the business-speak cliché, “breaking down silos,” the idea that individuals and individual departments develop tunnel vision when they don’t work together bears repeating. As a former content strategist and full-time writer, I’ve worked within many an organization where each department “did its own thing.” Designers designed websites. Writers wrote content. Social media and marketing departments promoted our content, content that usually turned out to be a disjointed mishmash offering a confused and, by all accounts, unpleasant user experience.
There’s always blame to go around for an end product with which your user or clients dissatisfied. But it’s been my personal experience to witness, day-in and day-out, a complete disconnect between website designers, marketing specialists, and copywriters. And I think this often forms the crux of the problem, a problem that can easily be solved by the following:
Substantive Communication
We can talk about effective communication all day, but it’s frequently the case that writers and designers use a completely different language. Writers are concerned about word choice, style, syntax, tone, etc., while designers discuss fonts, images, layouts, and more. Often, a designer does not necessarily understand the lingo used by writers and vice-versa. To engage in real, effective communication where copywriting and design are involved, it’s important to understand each other on their terms, not yours.
If you’re a designer, take some time to read a writing style book (a personal favorite is the newly rediscovered and reprinted classic Style: The Art of Writing Well by F.L. Lucas). Conversely, if you’re a writer, don’t shy away from the more technical parts of your business. For those of you who don’t really understand web design, I’d check out Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform your Business, as well as Universal Principles of Design. Each of these books is perfect for beginners, and they focus more on the why of design rather than the how.
Once writers have a genuine appreciation for what designers do (and vice-versa), and once writers understand precisely how good design can persuade and engage users just as much as good copy (and vice-versa), we can begin to have a real conversation where all parties involved aim to work together to create a cohesive user experience for each and every bit of web content.
Communication is key when it comes to solving problems
Wire-frame software like Creately with it’s real-time collaboration features makes it even easier. A designer can initially create the document and share it with copywriters and marketing team. Everyone can add or modify the content and other will instantly see those changes in real-time. This makes it very easy to make decisions and agree on the final product and it cuts down hours spent on email conversations as well.
Compromising instead of Clashing
Even once writers and designers have a better understanding of the different languages they use and the value their department adds, conflict won’t magically disappear. Designers still believe that it’s the design that draws in users, while copywriters still hold fast to the notion that the user experience is determined by the right words. Instead of constantly clashing, both sides need to understand that they’re setting up a false dichotomy when they make such distinctions between design and written content. They’re both, in the final analysis, two sides of the same coin.
In my experience, it’s best to have project managers who don’t push an agenda that emphasizes either good copy or good design. Bringing a disinterested person to the table who can weigh priorities, mediate conflict, and arrive at compromises that serve the interests of the user helps immensely in breaking the deadlock of intra-departmental conflict.
Truly Putting the End User First
This sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how much designers and writers lose focus on their clients when their creative work and egos are at stake. A Smashing Magazine article put it perfectly, noting:
“The other way to resolve conflicts — astoundingly underused, in my experience — is to get feedback from target users. Simply showing people a Web page and then asking for their key takeaways will tell you just about all you need to know about how effective you’ve been in getting the point across. Our opinion of our own work will always be subjective. Furthermore, because we’re emotionally invested is what we’ve created, discussing its flaws calmly and collectedly is difficult. Users are the ultimate judge of any creative effort, so why not take subjectivity and emotion out of the equation by going directly to the source?”
The best way to get feedback from target users in an efficient way is to show users and/or clients your product after each step in the design and writing process. This way, the user can voice their opinions before the whole project is completed. This saves the time spent on having to completely redo a project from the ground up.
So what are you waiting for? If you’re a writer working with designers, go have lunch with them. If you’re a designer working with writers, take them out for a drink. When we begin to understand the importance, and dare I say, enjoyment, of working together, you’d be surprised by how successful your projects can become.
What have been your experiences working across departments on web content? Chime in below!
Rachel Sanders is a freelance writer with a specific interest in web design, education technology, career trends, and lifelong learning. Check out more of Rachel’s writing at www.webdesignschoolsguide.com. Rachel welcomes your feedback!
It’s been more than a month since we added real-time collaboration to our diagram tools and the user feedback is nothing short of fantastic. This is to be expected considering the numerous benefits of real-time collaboration. Creately helps you visualize things while working in real-time so this makes it extremely easy to make decisions and be more productive. Still not convinced ? listed below are few benefits of real-time collaboration to encourages you to try it out.
Benefits of Real-Time Collaboration
Clear Communication, Less Confusion – Because the diagram is shared everyone can see the changes made by each other in real-time. This visual communication is very powerful because it leaves little room for confusion. As anyone can instantly spot the modifications they can easily object to changes they don’t like, it leads to much better communication and interaction in meetings.
Saves Time – Real-time collaboration saves your time in so many different ways. You can cut down the time spent on meetings because of visual communication. No need to go back and forth to meet clients because most things can be done online in a much more efficient manner. You can even save time spend on email communications because no need to have long email conversations, just share a diagram and work on it in real-time.
Increase Productivity – It helps people working from home and working from remote locations to be more productive. Since everything is done online its just a matter of connecting to the Internet or the Intranet.
Saves Money – A combination of all the factors mentioned above lead to a considerable amount of savings. Increased productivity is saved time and money.
It’s fun – Seriously, you will love it once you try it. There is something addictive about drawing and modifying a diagram together. We do this in our meetings everyday and absolutely love it.
Already using real-time collaboration ? We love to hear from you. It could be about how you are using it in your work or it could be about some trouble you had using it. Drop us a message and we will get back to you soon.
Three weeks ago we had the beta release of real-time collaboration in Creately and the feedback was amazing. We are really privileged to have committed users like you who are eager to help out by giving feedback. So after a very tiring few weeks, we are ready to roll it out to everyone by default.
After this release every Creately user will have real-time collaboration enabled for them. So share a diagram with your friends and experience real-time for yourself. With teams in Australia and Sri Lanka we regularly have online meetings and we are already seeing how beneficial real-time is. It’s amazing how easy it is to make decisions or give your opinion when you can visualize what others want in real-time. Give it a try and see for yourself.
Real-time collaboration enables you to see the changes made by others instantly
Power Up Meetings Using Real-Time Collaboration
When you are trying to get a point across nothing helps like having a diagram to explain what you mean. A picture does speak a thousand words. So try coupling Creately with your online meetings on Skype, Webex or IM. With Creately’s real-time collaboration everyone will be on the same page literally. Having Creately by your side when you are discussing a point over the phone is the next best thing to everyone on the call being in the same room.
Imagine how this transforms the process of trying to agree on a project schedule over a skype call. Having the instantly updatable version of a Gantt Chart on Creately available to all parties, you’d get the point across much faster, and stakeholders can modify these tasks set timelines, add dependencies etc. As everyone sees the changes, the meeting gets closed off faster.
Other obvious use-cases include defining process flows using flowcharts, brainstorming with mind-maps, designing websites using wire-frames. The possibilities are endless.
Taking Diagramming to the Next Level
Our core aim is help users to communicate their ideas visually and enable visual collaboration within teams. Real time collaboration is a core piece of this aim. And so is helping people get started quickly with the Creately diagram community. It provides users with thousands of diagram templates and features like projects as libraries enable easy sharing among users. Now with real-time we made collaboration easy and simple, so you can get things done faster.
How will you use the new Realtime Collaboration features?
Let us know. We love using it side by side with Skype or Webex for brainstorming, meeting notes and to hammer out finer points in a software spec. Let us know at support@creately.com or tweet us at @creately.
If you thought online collaboration is awesome wait until you try real-time collaboration. This was our most requested feature with hundreds of requests, so I’m sure this will make lot of you happy. This takes diagramming to a whole new level and will definitely improve the productivity of teams. Multiple people can work together in a diagram and everyone can see the changes others make in real-time. This makes it possible to give instant feedback and makes it that much easier to make decisions. The marketing team used it for one of our meetings and I just loved it and I’m sure you will love real-time collaboration too.
Get things done faster with real-time collaboration
It’s Still in Beta, But Don’t Let That Stop You
We’re fine tuning the process so it isn’t available by default. But we understand that some of you just can’t wait to try new features. If you are one of those eager ones you can manually enable real-time collaboration in Creately. Go to the “My Profile” tab in your Creately account. There you will see a check box like below. Check the box, log off and log-in to use real-time collaboration.
Enable real-time manually using the check box
Benefits of Real Time Collaboration
It’s fun, but there are many benefits to using real-time collaboration.
Saves time – No need for back and forth email communications and unnecessary meetings. Work on the diagram together and see the changes made by others. Instantly make decisions in agreeable to everyone.
Reduce costs – People on different locations can work together in real-time. Ideal tool if you have employees working from home or sub contractors working elsewhere in the world. Work with customers right inside your office and save time and travelling costs.
No multiple versions – Now when you are collaborating with another colleague or friend at the same time, you both wont end up with two different versions of the diagram since you both are seeing each others changes while you are making it. Saves you from much trouble.
No conflicts in changes – Since there wont be multiple versions there wont be changes to the documents that conflict with each other. When you are real-time collaborating you can make decisions as you are changing the diagram talking to your collaborator. This will avoid conflicts in changes. later.
Works on Desktop too – It doesn’t matter if you are using Creately Desktop. The greatness of real-time will come to you soon as well. All you need to do is make sure you have internet when opening the diagram and you will be collaborating real-time!
Your Thoughts about Real Time Collaboration
So like I said, we are in Beta and we really want to know what you guys think about this new feature. We get really excited when we see a mail from you 🙂 If you have any ideas or suggestions please drop us a message . If you come across any problems, do let us know and we will quickly look into it. In the meantime enjoy real-time collaboration !.
