Workplace by Facebook is a collaboration tool targeting small companies and is based on the Facebook platform.
As a collaboration tool, Workplace by FB focuses on the concept of Post, Notification, Message and Group where grouping means a company having different teams doing different projects, each team or project is considered a group.
As a brainstorming platform ???
A post can be considered a discussion topic.
However, it is not really suitable as a brainstorming platform because a post is more suitable an information sharing channel than a discussion channel.
As the matter of fact, discussion is better get done via the chat feature where conversations are stored in the fashion of emails.
Workplace Chat:
The workplace chat offers real time chat with team members based on the Facebook Messenger's platform.
Nonetheless, no way to perform video streaming.
Business email is required for sign-up:
Workplace by FB does not support single sign-on with Facebook, in fact, each sign-up requires a business email.
Therefore, it is not suitable for community and family collaboration, although it is based on the platforms which the average end-users are familiar with : Facebook.
Premium Features:
It comes with two pricing plans : standard and premium.
Premium features include the following.
I.) Productivity features
II.) Enterprise features
III.) Admin support.
Conclusion:
 |
| Common Facebook interface which everybody is familiar |
As a collaboration tool, Workplace by FB focuses on the concept of Post, Notification, Message and Group where grouping means a company having different teams doing different projects, each team or project is considered a group.
 |
| Post |
 |
| Message |
 |
| Notification |
As a brainstorming platform ???
A post can be considered a discussion topic.
However, it is not really suitable as a brainstorming platform because a post is more suitable an information sharing channel than a discussion channel.
As the matter of fact, discussion is better get done via the chat feature where conversations are stored in the fashion of emails.
Workplace Chat:
The workplace chat offers real time chat with team members based on the Facebook Messenger's platform.
Nonetheless, no way to perform video streaming.
Business email is required for sign-up:
Workplace by FB does not support single sign-on with Facebook, in fact, each sign-up requires a business email.
 |
| Gmail is not accepted for sign-up, only business email with custom domain name |
Therefore, it is not suitable for community and family collaboration, although it is based on the platforms which the average end-users are familiar with : Facebook.
Premium Features:
It comes with two pricing plans : standard and premium.
Premium features include the following.
I.) Productivity features
- Directory of pre-built integrations
II.) Enterprise features
- Administrative controls to manage your community
- Monitoring tools for IT teams
- APIs for custom integrations and bots
- Integrations with e-discovery and compliance providers
- Single sign-on (SSO), Active Directory support
- Integration with G Suite, Okta, Windows Azure AD and more
III.) Admin support.
- One-to-one email support for administrators
Conclusion:
- Better than using Whatsapp or Wechat group to coordinate activities and sharing information
- Serves as a good intranet alternative for small companies - making announcements, random ideas posting, sharing information, real time chatting and overall progress updates
- Not suitable for community and family collaborations due to the requirement of business email for sign-up
- Mobile app available for iOS and Android platforms
- Everything is based on the Facebook platform which everybody is familiar
- Premium feature is affordable, only USD 3 per active user per month
- Useful to collaborate with customers and partners for project coordination, not suitable as alternative for CRM and helpdesk support.
- Every small company with business email should sign-up for it - is free.
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