What does "collaboration" mean to your organization? Looking for examples.

Tisha Leslie

Collaboration is a term that is being used a lot lately and I'd like to have some examples of what it means to different organizations.

 

One of our Smartsheet customers said it captures "togetherness, team unity and relationships".

 

Another large company in Seattle defines it as,  "knowing where to get information when you need it, not duplicating efforts between teams and colleagues and, being able to get up to speed quickly".

 

Any other examples?

 

JamesR

"Working together for the good of all to a common goal."

 

Use Discussions to get rid of E-mail Ping-Pong.

Use Attachments to share data and have only one version of the truth.

Use Workflows to progress activities towards the goal.

Use Notifications and Alerts to hasten responces and activities

 

Enjoy

John Sauber

I like the "other company's" description. We like sharing information, but we don't like sharing it when someone isn't ready to receive it. Interruptions are so frequent now with the ubiquity of the modern OS and mobile devices. We do everything we can to work off the same page, and work on something when you're ready to really study the task or problem, work on it, solve it, and move on. We use Smartsheet as a way to talk to eachother at exactly the right time. We think the right time is now if you have something that is important for others to know, and the right time for someone who needs to know that information isn't necessarily now, but when you're good and ready to digest and take action on the information.

 

Highlight changes (usually since the sheet was last viewed) is an insanely powerful tool that can really support the above concept. We use it all of the time to draw our attention to what has changed, and basically ignore everything else, because if it isn't highlighted, then you already considered it, and we assume that you took action if you were required to do so.

 

Notification based on real Smartsheet dates also aids in this in a tremendous way, as JamesR points out.

 

We are looking foward to enhanced methords of handling update requests, and the email integration features which have come out recently are good steps to supporting that (though our Exchange server version (2007) does not support apps ).