The Online Collaboration Tools Guide
Collaboration tools and online storage applications offer many possibilities: online collaborative editing, synchronizing across computers, sharing multiple files and discussion boards, and sharing windows and documents on the spot, to name a few. The following review of major products in this space will help you choose the right collaboration tools for your needs.
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This is a guest post by Eyal Sela, author of the productivity and Internet blog ProductiveWise. He is a freelance Internet and social-media project manager.
Online Editors
Online editors are web applications that let you create and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online through your web browser. No installation is required, and you can use them in offline mode when there is no Internet connection.
You can share documents with other people by entering their email addresses and inviting them to collaborate or just view the documents. Several collaborators can edit the same document at once. Collaborators can also add inline comments. Version management features allow you to retrieve earlier versions of a document in case you are not happy with the initial result.
Zoho and Google Docs are two online editors that work (and look) quite the same. Both require you and the people you collaborate with to have an account (Zoho allows you to sign in using your Google or Yahoo account).
Zoho has built-in chat for collaborators to communicate in real time while editing. It also has a plugin for Microsoft Office that makes changes in your Office documents reflect directly in your Zoho account (but it is available only for documents and spreadsheets).
Zoho Writer in action
Google has built-in chat only for the spreadsheet application. Collaborative features vary among Google’s applications (see “Simultaneous editing and viewing” for more information). Notification of changes is available only for Google spreadsheets.
A Google Docs document
Use online editors in the following cases:
- You want to collaborate with someone on a document, spreadsheet, or presentation and you or they don’t have collaboration software.
- Some of your collaborators do not have access to a word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation tool on their computers.
- You wish to collaborate simultaneously.
Synchronization Services
Synchronization services allow you to keep working with your desktop applications as usual, without having to learn a new interface or work through your web browser. They automatically save folders and files to all of your computers, to the computers of people you collaborate with, and to the web, keeping everybody in sync. All collaborators must register, download, and install software.
