Zoho releases collaboration platform to meet 'changing nature of work'

Zoho's new Workplace platform reflects the changing nature of businesses towards a virtually connected collaboration, productivity, and communication, or at least that's Zoho's aim when it comes to helping businesses solve problems quickly and collaboratively.

The company says that while there are many ways to bring teams together to collaborate, collaboration platforms are often disconnected from other business applications, which means they lack awareness of underlying business issues.

"The nature of work has undeniably changed, and Workplace has grown to meet that change," comments Zoho chief strategy officer Vijay Sundaram.

"Businesses, both globally and in Australia, are not only looking to solve a collaboration problem, they are looking to solve a custom invoicing problem or sales enablement problem or support problem. Collaboration platforms need to facilitate better business outcomes, not just improve productivity.

Workplace brings together email, messaging, audio and video conferencing; a cloud office suite with shared file storage; common team and collaboration paradigms built into each of the products; and AI, search, and other services that span the entire suite.

• Mail - Users can now make audio or video calls from within the app, edit document attachments in Zoho Writer, meet online with contacts, and access all email accounts from within Zoho Mail. Mail includes a control panel with eDiscovery, Backup and Recovery. The app comes with mix 'n' match plans, flexible storage, and an extensive Integration platform, as well as S/MIME certificates, MFA, email rules, unusual login alerts, and custom spam controls.
   
• Cliq - Users can check in or check out and set custom statuses, collaborate with external stakeholders, connect with teams via group audio or video calls, and view message-read status. Cliq comes with module level configuration and customisation, role-based permissions and integration with EMM providers, as well as user-based availability reports.
   
• Meeting - Users can schedule recurring or one-off meetings and set multiple email reminders from web and mobile devices. Now supporting 16 languages, Meeting is integrated with Zoho Projects, Bookings, CRM, and others.
   
• Connect - Connect integrates with human resource information systems, including Zoho People. Zoho Connect users can moderate content and modules with fine-grained permissions and user policies and custom domain and SAML-based SSO.
   
• Show - Show is integrated with Atlassian, Unsplash, and Humaans, and features an organisation-wide slide library and data linking, allowing users to connect live data to slides.
   
• Sheet - Users have access to the latest functions for lookup and match and can visualise historic data with race charts, create drop-downs with predefined values, and link cell ranges using IMPORTRANGE. Sheet enables users to track changes while collaborating, gain insights, maintain clean data, convert images to spreadsheets, and bring contextual data from both Zoho and non-Zoho applications.
   
• WorkDrive - WorkDrive now features unified search and TrueSync, which allows users to access files without worrying about hard drive space. WorkDrive is equipped with a comprehensive admin panel, customer reports to monitor team activity, and is integrated with Zoho Directory.
   
• Writer - Users can convert documents to fillable forms, restrict comment visibility, gather document engagement insights, and enable a powerful AI-based writing assistant. Writer features template-driven automation and APIs, form-driven automation, and automatic signature and approvals.
   
• ShowTime - ShowTime supports branding and white-labeling. Users can set roles and privileges for their training team and gather training insights.