Every team and every leader needs support from their organization. But without easy collaboration and access to your team, that support can be challenging. A challenge that has only been intensified by the world’s shift towards hybrid work.
With that shift, our needs for collaboration tools changed, too. Organizations are looking for the kind of collaboration tools that makes it feel like your colleagues are right beside you, even when they aren’t. In this article, we’ll break down what a document collaboration tool is and how it can bring your teams together to maximize productivity — and sa
What is a document collaboration tool?
Historically, when you think of collaboration you envision a room packed with whiteboards and notes. But now, technology has opened up an all-new frontier.
Streamlining collaboration now requires the right technology. And a bit part of that is understanding and choosing the right, document collaboration tool.
Document collaboration software facilitates the capacity for multiple people to create, edit, or contribute to a digital document’s creation and completion in the most efficient way possible.
In essence, document collaboration tools help teams achieve mutual goals by working together even when they aren’t physically present in the workplace. Ultimately, it acts as a holding area for the work your team performs and allows them to flesh out ideas, share feedback, and work together toward a common goal.
At its core, a document collaboration tool not only stores documents but allows for constant edits to those documents without leaving the software’s ecosystem. The upside is limitless, and if you choose the best tool for the job, it’ll do far more than just facilitate collaboration.
How does a document collaboration tool work?
On monday.com, as an example, document collaboration means your team can create, view, edit, or collaborate on any workdoc directly in the monday.com Work OS. That means no jumping over to Google Docs or Microsoft Office to do work and moving it into monday.com for storage. It’s all within the same workspace the whole time.
As your team works on a project together, they can comment on specific elements of the document or assign tasks. That means you can get feedback in real-time from your colleagues half a world away. The best part is you don’t have to break up your workflow to do so. It’s all in monday.com.
What are the benefits of document collaboration?
As you can see, document collaboration has significant potential benefits.
You already know the importance of collaboration so let’s specifically breakdown what the right document collaboration tool can do for your business:
- Greater document organization prevents your team from wasting precious time searching for the right document.
- Increased productivity because your team can collaborate on projects in real-time from anywhere in the world.
- Enhanced communication since all messaging is done in the same Work OS versus email or third-party messaging apps.
- Greater efficiency because you’re not swapping back and forth between apps to create or edit documents.
- More easily build a sense of community that leads to quicker idea execution.
The upside is massive, and so is the return on investment for purchasing the right document collaboration tool. Once you see the difference, you’ll wonder how your team ever got anything done before.
Who uses document collaboration software?
A collaboration platform benefits companies from all industries and of all sizes. Every organization, regardless of its work location preference — in-office, hybrid, or remote — needs team collaboration software to work as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Collaboration pools your team’s resources and brainpower to produce results you’re hard-pressed to create on your own. It’s truly one of the greatest multipliers you’ll ever get in business and one that’s hard to quantify.monday.com puts collaboration features at the heart of everything we do. To illustrate that in action, here are some common use cases for document collaboration:
- Project collaboration from project management professionals to aid in creating deliverables for their clients.
- Remote team members collaborating on training materials that’ll help onboard new customers to their SaaS product.
- Marketing and design teams collaborating on the latest graphic designs for upcoming ad campaigns.
- Business operations teams creating flyers to promote upcoming inter-departmental events.
- Nonprofits and charities collaborating on grant proposals or outbound campaign letters to drive more donations.
Much like the benefits, the list of use cases is quite literally endless. There’s a strong chance every single department at your organization will end up using some aspect of document collaboration software.
What to look for in a document collaboration tool
Finding the right team collaboration software means understanding which collaboration features are most important to your organization. Ideally, you’ll find the right mix of must-have and nice-to-have items and still leave room to grow into features you may need one day.
Here are some features to consider when searching for your perfect enterprise collaboration tool:
File sharing
The key to mastering remote work lies in having easy-to-use document management software. First and foremost, the right document collaboration tool will have plenty of storage space so your team can collaborate as much as needed. With monday.com, for example, total storage capacity grows with your company’s plan, which means you’re covered from 5 GB to well over 1000 GB if needed.
The file type supported is also an important factor. For example, monday.com supports visual files like PNG, JPEG, GIF, and MP4. You also get different text and sheet files like Word, PDF, Excel, TXT, and more. You can upload from your computer, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or OneDrive, or monday workdocs. Anyone with access to your board has full access to edit or download said files. For file restriction, it’s as simple as creating invite-only boards so people without clearance won’t see them.
Adding files is a bare minimum requirement. What makes monday.com especially useful is the ability to add files to tasks so you can keep the task, communication, and files together for increased relevance.
Seamless execution
Choosing the right document collaboration tool isn’t the only step in making sure your organization is fully utilizing docs. For many organizations, a shared doc is where a project or idea begins — but more times than not that doc does not follow the project through its lifecyle. The doc quickly becomes outdated and irrelevant and ideas change, work starts moving, and no one can find the original doc to begin with.
monday workdocs make it easy to turn any words into action items within a board on your Work OS. You can embed live dashboards or project plans, and collaborate seamlessly together. That means your doc continues with you from brainstorming through to execution.
Team communication
Sharing documents regardless of your location is a crucial component to document collaboration but what really makes it special is the actual online collaboration. Communication and collaboration tools are what truly make or break an effective document collaboration approach. It’s not enough to let people talk about their documents, you need ways to assign ownership, communicate clearly with tagging, and make suggestions in real-time.
Here’s where monday.com really shines. Not only can you view all your docs, but you can work on them within the system itself. No jumping back and forth between other apps is required because monday.com is a fully functional collaboration platform.
As an online collaboration tool, monday.com makes it easy to give feedback on your various documents so you can have real-time relevant conversations, ask questions, or even assign tasks. In essence, we’ve gathered up all the tools you’d need to collaborate on your documents and housed them in one Work OS.
Integrations
A major component of proper collaboration is how well your collaboration tool syncs with all the other software you use each day. For starters, all the files you’ll collaborate on have to come from somewhere, which is why having the right software integrations is crucial for the online collaboration tool you select.
Sure, monday.com syncs with the major ones like we mentioned above, but it also syncs with Adobe’s Creative Cloud, so your creative team’s workflow is built right in with the rest of the organization. monday.com comes with dozens of integrations as standard, and with the Zapier integration, you get access to 3,000+ more which skyrockets your reach.
Then there’s also the monday.com apps marketplace which, like integrations, extends your reach and provides a more customized experience to collaboration. You get to power up your workflow with custom widgets, views, automations, integrations, and more.
Plus, many of these custom apps offer free trials so you can ensure they’re right for you before committing to them.
Task management
Document collaboration is far more than document sharing or receiving feedback. It’s about getting stuff done. Your team probably has a sky-high to-do list and having the ability to integrate document collaboration with said to-do list is a game-changer.
Once again, here is where monday.com is invaluable.
As a Work OS and online collaboration tool, monday.com fuses the best of both worlds to offer a complete Work OS, which makes it easy to brainstorm and create documents, assign tasks, and track progress in real-time.
That means you get beautiful board views like the one above and color-coded boxes that display a task’s status, priority, due date, owner, and more. With the Files Column, you can see the files attached to each task as well. Every task can also have its own subtasks and checklists to break down even the most complex tasks into simple ones for the team to collaborate on.
Extending your reach with the power of monday.com
As stated above, monday.com is a complete Work OS. But what does that mean exactly? It means you get cloud-based document collaboration plus a platform that allows your teams to build custom workflow apps.
You can plan, run, and track your processes, projects, and everyday work all in one place. And the best part is it’s all connected, so your entire organization remains in sync at all times.
Naturally, every department will want in on the action, and we don’t blame them. Let’s explore some other features that make monday.com more than just a document collaboration tool:
- monday.com whiteboards replicate that over-the-shoulder feeling you get when watching someone sketch out their ideas or plan on a digital whiteboard.
- Chat and video integrations bring your team together while working on projects and sync right into your workflow.
- Automation recipes remove the monotonous admin work and status updates, so your team can get more done in less time.
- 8+ data visualizations mean your teams can view all their data in a format that suits them the best.
The list of features we’re sure you’ll get value out of is truly endless, and so are the possibilities. And the best part is you get 24/7 customer support, so you always have the guidance you need to be at your best.
Getting on the same page
It’s easy to see why monday.com is such a powerful solution to your document collaboration needs. It checks all the boxes you want from a document collaboration tool but goes much further if you leverage the full power of the total Work OS possibilities.
So the question becomes, what are you waiting for? You could be collaborating with your team anywhere in the world right now. Your goals could get a little closer today, and your team would probably thank you for it. The best part is you get a 14-day free trial to check it out for yourself. Give our Digital Asset Management template a try.
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