By Heather Clancy
Latest edition of the cloud service adds new social features, such as the ability to ‘follow’ the progress being made on certain projects.
One of the most established players in cloud-delivered collaboration applications for small businesses, HyperOffice, is adding features that borrow from social networks.
Here are some of the specific features being added:
- Detailed profiles of employees that includes personal information, skills and reporting managers
- Activity streams that let teams keep tracking of what’s going on for colleagues, groups or certain projects
- Social “walls” where users can debate documents, project milestones and other topics
- Internal instant messaging and presence
“Enterprise social tools like Yammer are thin on collaboration capabilities, while collaboration software like Google Apps and Office 365 don’t see social tools as essential to their suites,” said Farzin Arsanjanni, president of HyperOffice. “We believe social collaboration and structured collaboration belong together.”
EDF Communications, a communications firm with offices scattered from Miami to Bogota, Colombia, to Eastern Europe, has been using HyperOffice for about five years to keep tabs on documents, calendars and address books for its farflung of about 20 people. “It is simple, to the point and straightforward,” said Erich de la Fuente, CEO of the company.
Basic collaboration features from HyperOffice are priced starting at $7 per user, per month. The company has been around since 2004.