When it comes to communication everyone's got their preference and sometimes the boundary between when to use them can get really blurred.
Email used to be the one solution for all kind of business communication, and increasingly relying on email for things that it was never designed to do, our email has become overwhelms with information overload.
Fast forward 20 years later, post-social media era, we are all very familiar with different style of communication with Synchronous such as Chat and Asynchronous such as post and reply in Facebook/Twitter.
In this article, we're going to explore what we've learnt in terms of best practice using these different methods of communication within Claromentis Digital Workplace.
1. Chat (Slack / Rocket)
A real-time synchronous communication.
Your company or organisation may have this type of software available outside Claromentis. We're at Claromentis had some experience using a popular messaging application such as Slack and Rocket Chat.
Chat is a synchronous communication, meaning multiple parties are participating at the same time and wait for replies from each other.
What it's great for:
It's great to discuss things in one to one or in within a group in a real-time when face to face meeting or a phone call may not be suitable but you need answer or response within 5-30 minutes.
Often Chat solution has native mobile apps allowing people to participate on the go and answer are discussed in real-time leading to the faster outcome.
What you need to be mindful
Chat can be counterproductive, and the discussion can easily be drawn into shallow conversations. With multiple simultaneous conversations happening inside a single Chat channel, users can easily lose track of ideas proposed, they discussed for a bit and then lost.
Chat is a third-party application that sits outside Claromentis, meaning they are limited by integration options.
2. Discuss
Share ideas and having a discussion.
Discuss is an app within Claromentis designed exactly for well.. a "Discussion". It's asynchronous communication, meaning answer aren't expected right away. Just like Twitter or Facebook, the easy nature of posting allowing a user to post status updates (what are you working on), ideas, opinion, in a discussion which later can be commented or replied by other team members.
Discussion can also be categorised and devised into topics allowing better organisation.
What it's great for:
It's great to post things which are not really time sensitive. (respond needed within 24-48+ hours or no response required - just as a reference).
A great example is posting ideas, new information or opinions that don't require the answer immediately.
Discuss is available as standard in Claromentis, it is also integrated with the main global search meaning it's growing knowledge and the content of discussion are fully indexed and searchable.
In our experience Discuss is perfect to discuss ideas or initiative which later can be turned into a Project should the company decide they need to turn it into action.
What you need to be mindful
Discuss require users to know the topic or finding the discussion, in our experience, this might be the biggest barriers since users always want the easiest way. We encourage to have discussion topic embedded into relevant Pages in Claromentis to provide the users with contextual engagement.
3. Communication
An internal messaging app.
Communication app also often referred to as an internal messaging tool.
It allows Claromentis user to send direct messages to other user or to a group of users.
What's is great for:
This is particularly useful in the context of Managers sending messages to their subordinates or as a communication manager sending a bulk message to everyone without having to send individual emails.
In Extranet environment, often user's email address isn't exposed to protect user's privacy. Using communication it allows the member of an extranet to send messages to each other without revealing email address.
What you need to be mindful
Sending bulk messages to a large number of users can be 'spammy' so always check if the context of the message and ensuring they are relevant to the recipients.
Push Notification
In Claromentis 8.6, push notification using OneSignal API will become available. this would allow direct messages such as the one sent by Communication app to be relayed to the user's device via push notification
