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Sometimes all tasks feel like #1 on your list. Deadlines are piling up, and perhaps your productivity is taking a hit from the stress of it all. Now more than ever, in the age of distraction, figuring out how to prioritize tasks is a valuable skill.

Prioritizing work around your schedule and available resources is essential. The key is to spend time on the tasks that matter most. Oftentimes, successful prioritization requires you to pass on workload, say no to meetings or move tasks to future work cycles.

Before we get into our step-by-step task prioritization, let’s focus on: What does it mean to prioritize tasks? Prioritizing consists of accurately ranking items in order of importance. Note that focusing on the correct work is often easier said than done.

Tasks might seem urgent but are not actually important. It is then left to your team to determine which tasks to prioritize to achieve company goals and objectives. This might leave you thinking: how to prioritize tasks in the workplace?

The following article will lay out 9 steps for task prioritization we use on the daily that you can easily incorporate with your team.

How to prioritize tasks: 9 steps for implementing task prioritization within your team

In the upcoming section we will define 9 steps on how to prioritize tasks. We have implemented these into our own workflow to prioritize tasks on the daily. Here’s how we did it:

1. Understand the difference between project and task
2. Revisit your project management framework
3. Learn to say no
4. Work with sprints or cycles
5. Prioritize tasks by defining the urgency
6. Set deadlines based off importance and urgency
7. Delegate or outsource where relevant and possible
8. Leverage the My Tasks panel to view all priorities across projects
9. Set Aside important tasks

Keep reading to learn more about how to prioritize tasks in the workplace.

1. Understand the difference between project and task

The first step to prioritizing work is understanding the difference of project vs task. Many people work on never-ending tasks with no closure on a weekly basis. Knowing the difference keeps work well-defined, measurable and accountable.

If you fail to do so, your team might be faced with never-ending tasks which can hurt morale and even cause a toxic work culture. This occurs because the team becomes unproductive and demotivated by tasks or projects that never seem to end.

Simply put, a project is a group of tasks carried out by a team. A task is a direct action which contributes to the progress of an overall project.

For example, a monthly update for a website is a recurring project. Meanwhile, individual tasks in the website project management system such as a new webpage or SEO reconfigurations build towards the final output.

Lines are often blurred, a project can be summarized in an individual task or require an entire space depending on scope and time commitment. There is no rule of thumb for how long tasks should take, or when something becomes a project.

Discuss with your team to strike a balance on the average time commitment of a task. Here are a few questions you can discuss to do so:

• What is the maximum time length for tasks? If longer, convert into two separate tasks or define as project?
• Is there a limit on task assignees? Will you separate into a project or create multiple tasks if there are too many assignees?
• How many checklist items can there be on a task? How much work can they be?
• How do you combine projects with tasks? Do you highlight projects through spaces, labels or a master task in a strategy space with sub-tasks @mentioned in a bullet list?

2. Revisit your project management framework

The right project management framework can help you prioritize tasks and organize your work in more structured ways. Project management frameworks are the foundation to how to prioritize tasks. It helps you define project stages through rules and definitions. High level examples are Agile vs Waterfall:

• Agile breaks down large projects into smaller cycles through sprints. This can provide value as the team can do virtual retrospectives and focus on a smaller set of tasks.  
• Waterfall defines that tasks build upon each and certain tasks need to be finished before starting new ones. On a high level, this helps you with considering dependencies and how you want to organize the different project stages.

Whatever your project framework preferences are, it’s important to set up a list of rules and conditions to define day-to-day project management workflows. Here are some main questions your team can discuss:

• How often do you want to complete a set of tasks (sprint or cycle) and how do you review past performance and set new goals?
• Do you need to be strict with dependencies or can work be moved forward based on urgency and importance?
• How are different task fields going to be used? Title, descriptions, attachments, assignees, followers, start and due dates, sprints, custom fields, etc.
• Are you prioritizing tasks? How?
• Who is mainly in charge of task management within your team?

3. Learn to say no: projects, meetings, new tasks

Saying no is harder than saying yes. We might feel like we are disappointing our coworkers when we say no. However, it’s an important skill to have, particularly when you need to prioritize tasks. Harvard Business Review suggests that straightforwardness is key.

Be honest about your reason for saying no and give context. Also, learn to say no to excessive meetings; we spend too much time on unnecessary ones.Further develop your internal project management practices by setting rules to take this into consideration.

Who can assign new tasks and how is this combined with current workload? Your team should also decide when to organize meetings, what meeting agendas should look like or how to communicate. Setting up a communication plan can be extremely beneficial to keep this well-defined.

4. How to prioritize work by implemeting sprints or cycles

Sprints are a core practice within Agile methodology. They are set time periods to accomplish a set of tasks. Implementing sprints or cycles helps with prioritizing tasks and keeping the to-do list light. It’s also extremely useful when looking into how to prioritize tasks.

Before starting the sprint, you can look at all individual tasks that need to be completed. You can then pick the most urgent and important ones and add them to the sprint.This removes a lof of noise within a space and allows your team to focus and improve their prioritization skills as they will have to select a certain number of tasks they can take on.

Rock has a dedicated feature for sprints. It allows you to filter the space view only for tasks that need to be completed in a sprint or cycle. The same can also be done with labels although this won’t automatically add a start and due date.

5. Prioritize individual tasks by defining the urgency

Now that you have made your selection of tasks, it’s time to rank them on urgency. This allows your team to focus on the key matters at hand. A dedicated toggle allows us to configure task priority as: urgent, high, medium, low and lowest.

The goal is for the team to focus on everything labeled as urgent, and then move down a category every time. This way you can make it to the end of a sprint or cycle and make sure that team members know how to prioritize tasks correctly.

6. Prioritize work by setting deadlines that align with importance and urgency

Add another level or granularity by adding start and due dates to tasks. Some tasks might be blocked for the time being. It’s also possible that they are dependent on work that is prioritised earlier on.

If you find yourself amid loads of urgent tasks, it’s hard to figure out which one to pick first. Setting deadlines allows you to balance out tasks that are equally urgent, and keep the team in the loop on when different activities need to have been completed.

Rock allows you to visualize your deadlines in a calendar view. This way you do not lose track of task prioritization and when what activities are starting or due.

7. Delegate or outsource where relevant

Think about which work you can delegate to another employee or intern. Perhaps a certain task is better outsourced to a freelancer or contractor. Outsourcing often leads to lower labor costs with access to a larger talent pool, reports Forbes.

Additionally, might want to reprioritize work or outsource work if you notice there are too many urgent tasks or you’re struggling to make deadlines. Rock allows anyone to collaborate together. This means that freelancers can be added into any new or already existing space.

8. Make use of the My Tasks panel to see all tasks you’re assigned to

Task management sounds straightforward, but what about juggling multiple individual tasks across spaces? We organize priorities across sprints and projects with the My Tasks panel.

Chances are work is not organized in a single space. To combine sprints and focus on prioritized items across spaces we work from the My tasks panel. This combines all tasks we are assigned to, have created or are following. Priority and due date filters tell us which action items we should tackle in the short term.

We move these to the Set Aside panel to quickly access action items without searching across spaces or look at hundreds of tasks. This makes the workload manageable and defined.

9. Set Aside important tasks

This is the most granular we are going to go in this article. Do not crowd your to-do list with all the tasks from your sprint. The more items you add, the more context switching and mental space these items will take up.

People often keep work in a spreadsheet or their notes app as task management tools can quickly get congested. Finding tasks back in board that have hundreds of different action items can be detrimental to staying organized at work.

It is often easier to keep priorities in a dedicated panel so you’re not distracted with other tasks. This is exactly why we introduced Set Aside a while back. With internal and external projects in one place, we often have tasks scattered across spaces and boards. To avoid context switching within the app, we access prioritized tasks directly from this panel.

This way, whatever space we’re browsing, our top priorities are just a click away in a dedicated panel (we also add messages, notes and topics besides tasks so we can have other important information and files at hand).

How to prioritize tasks with asynchronous work

Asynchronous work nurtures prioritization skills. With a flexible work schedule, employees can work when they wish and focus on the tasks that matter. Team members do not need to be online simultaneously, allowing them the freedom to work when they wish.

This methodology reduces distractions, particularly in a remote setting. With fewer check-ins, messaging, and meetings, our team is more focused. Implementing asynchronous work gives more time to prioritize the tasks that matter while reducing the noise.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice

The great thing about teamwork is that you are not left to tackle challenges alone. In a healthy team environment, everyone is safe to speak up about their workload. Need a helping hand? Make your voice heard.

There is no point in looking how to prioritize tasks if the team member in charge of them has no way of actually completing them. If you have reached a point where you can no longer handle your tasks, ask someone to help you carry the workload.

However, perhaps with the right advice on how to prioritize work, you will feel supported to tackle challenges. This is where communication strategies become key. Seek advice from your coworkers and managers and set up a system that works for everyone.

Make sure you’re well rested

While prioritization techniques are helpful, you don’t want a heavy workload and lack of rest to lead to a burnout. In fact, it will be hard to prioritize any tasks when you are feeling unmotivated and exhausted. It’s essential that you set regular time off to rest your brain.

Only then can you maintain high concentration levels, as well as care for your mental health. Note that rest looks different for everyone. Taking an occasional vacation might not be enough for you. You can also look into setting up a productive morning routine or define how you want to get work done at night if you’re more of a night owl.

How to prioritize tasks with Rock

We hope you can take value from these 9 steps and maybe even implement when looking at how to prioritize tasks with your own team. Prioritising work is often easier than said, but with this foundation you are well set to get important work done and implementing your organizational strategy.

Rock allows you to tackle every point on our list, from Set Aside to the My Tasks panel and unlimited spaces. Sign up for free and try it out. Join one of our dedicate communities if you’re looking to learn more about work strategies, staying productive and getting work done:

• The Future of Remote Work: This community focuses on staying productive, growing a team and building a culture in remote environments. Meet with other professionals and access new resources on the daily.
• The Future of Project Management: Trying to make sense of tasks, notes and other features for project management frameworks? We discuss different workflows, methodologies and project management applications in this dedicated community.
• The Future of Rock: Join the Rock team as we build the future of collaboration and productivity. Learn more about upcoming features, share product suggestions and access the latest resources and events from the Rock team.

We hope these work strategies will help with working efficiently and effectively with your team. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Youtube and don’t forget to share the article and tag us!

Teams can be difficult to manage. The loudest voices often win because they dominate the discussion. Everyone else gets complacent, and that’s when the group becomes weak. Disengagement has a general negative impact on a group's results, but silencing the loudest person or forcing others to talk is not the solution.

You need to improve your management strategies to optimize team dynamics. It might seem obvious, but teamwork requires work. You can’t just assume that collective brainpower will produce great results magically. To empower people to learn from each other, you have to build collaborative groups.

When you prioritize healthy team dynamics in the workplace, people work better together. And to make that happen, you should also improve cross-functional collaboration.

In this article, you will discover some group dynamics examples. You will understand the disadvantages of faulty team dynamics and how you can use two main management strategies to optimize team dynamics (and a few more!).

Keep reading to learn all about the strategies that can be game changers in the success of your team.

What makes a team a good team?

Why do some teams of talented people underperform while others produce stellar results? Contrary to the common idea of a lone genius, collaborative efforts are more likely to produce knowledge and substantial results in the workplace.

The lone genius myth was deconstructed through extensive research by Alfonso Montuori and Ronald E. Purser in 1995. Their study highlighted “the problematic nature of a hyper-individualistic understanding of creativity”. Working together has always been a part of human nature.

The world’s greatest minds didn’t accomplish their feats all alone. Collaboration with others is key. Let’s take art as an example. From Renaissance to Surrealism, it was the collective groups that made art possible.

There has always been a figurehead (such as Michelangelo or Picasso) who took most of the credit, but they worked with teams to make their imagination come true.Teamwork can also spark creativity in the workplace, but it doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why you need to implement great team dynamics at work.

Having everyone’s voice heard will not only enhance ideas but foster a positive environment. You can use any of the two management strategies to optimize team dynamics and achieve that goal. First let’s find out what team dynamics are and why they matter.

What are group dynamics?

Essentially, they are the invisible forces influencing how we behave in groups. Team dynamics are affected by the roles and responsibilities the members assume. As a team member, you do not merely contribute to the team dynamics but are also affected by them.

Lewin was a pioneer of modern social psychology. He studied examples of team dynamics and leadership styles to understand how individuals react to changes within a group. He stated that groups are dynamic and powerful, and influence individuals and communities.

Changes in the group bring out actions and reactions that affect group members.But he also believed that you can introduce changes to improve those group dynamics. As he famously put it: “If you want to understand something, try changing it”.

According to Lewin’s research, the roles we adopt in a team affect our performance. He studied different leadership styles and concluded that a group conducted democratically will be more successful. In recent years scientists have been using research to build on Lewin's ideas.

They proved that the group itself can have a positive or negative effect on the efficiency of its members. Applying Lewin’ theories to our everyday work environment, we can gain further understanding of why we are where we are.

The importance of team dynamics

Team dynamics can be critical to creating successful projects. It’s important to put efficient management strategies to optimize team dynamics in practice. Here are some reasons why team dynamics matter in the workplace:

• Team motivation. Motivated team players have higher levels of engagement. If you feel that you are a part of the team, you are keener to contribute to its success.
• Work efficiency. Positive group dynamics will make you perform in your best capacity. As a result, team productivity also increases.
• Impact on creativity. Groups have the potential to generate synergy, where creativity is enhanced.
• More collaboration. When the right environment is created, there is more collaboration among team members.
• Faster decision-making. The group reaches decisions faster because everyone contributes. People participate but also listen to each other.

3 ingredients of successful team dynamics

The basics of team effectiveness were identified by J. Richard Hackman, who began studying teams in the 1970s. He found that what matters most to collaboration is not the personalities or behaviors but certain “enabling conditions”.

Those conditions are created through positive team dynamics. A group with healthy group dynamics performs better in decision making. People trust each other and feel more confident in expressing their views. As a result, they enable a creative and positive environment that unleashes collective thinking.

It’s also possible to make collective thinking happen in remote work settings. By applying some virtual meeting best practices, you can generate effective team dynamics.What are good examples of team dynamics?

There are three basic elements for successful team dynamics at work according to Steve Farber, the founder and CEO of The Extreme Leadership Institute. This is how you can implement them:

1. Connect team members. You have to create opportunities for people to connect with each other. The better they understand and support one another, the more they’ll grow as a team.
2. Communicate what needs to be done. Use appropriate communication strategies to set up deadlines and establish tasks and challenges. You need to overcome and resolve the most difficult situations at work in a cooperative way.
3. Be honest. Don’t wait until the problems arise to have tough conversations. Prepare for these moments. Get to know your team. Build respect.

On the other hand, poor group dynamics can affect your team badly. Let’s explore in greater detail what happens then.

Causes and disadvantages of faulty group dynamics

When a group dynamic turns toxic, you may find it difficult to get the team back on track. But what are the consequences of poor team dynamics in the workplace, and why do they occur?

Clinical psychologist Nicole Lipkin identifies the roots of faulty group dynamics to group conformity. She says that there are four factors that cause a toxic work culture (and negative team dynamics), such as:

• Too much competition. Competition can be good, but if it gets too serious it creates unnecessary rivalries.
• Unrecognized effort. When personal efforts aren’t recognized, team productivity decreases. So make sure you celebrate your team's wins.
• A rotten apple. Someone with a bad attitude can “tremendously impact decision making, problem-solving,attention/focus, interpersonal interactions, performance, productivity, and the whole organizational culture," says Lipkin.
• Extreme loyalty to a group. If you devote yourself too much to a group, it can lead to “group conformity”, explains the psychologist. It can disrupt creativity and critical thinking.

How can team dynamics be managed?

Now that you know what group dynamics are, let's have a look into how to improve them. We are going to explore two management strategies to optimize team dynamics, encourage communication and improve performance.

So, how do some leaders improve team dynamics?

1. Effective onboarding

Onboarding is the process in which new employees get acquainted with their roles. When the company utilizes well-thought-out onboarding practices, you feel part of the organization from the first day. Onboarding is supposed to enable newcomers to understand the company’s goals and actively start contributing to them.

If you are on the hiring side, having a well-defined onboarding process brings various benefits. It will help to establish meaningful connections and provide a deeper understanding of the organization’s mission and values to new team members.

Onboarding is a critical aspect in the employee life cycle. Don’t overlook it. It can take months, but you have to set the right tone from the beginning. Here’s how you can start:

• Set up a 90-day plan. The first 90 days of a new job can be critical for both employee and employer. You have to help your new hire feel at home while being straightforward about goals and tasks. The organization is key.
• Manage different types of communication styles early on. Use different methods - chats, meetings, notes, videos - to communicate different messages. Be straight to the point and give clear instructions regarding tasks and responsibilities, but make some room for fun activities and employee interactions. Most teams thrive when they are engaged.
• Nourish collaboration across functions and departments. Both cross-functional and cross-departmental collaboration are essential parts of a company’s success. Setting best practices for collaboration will unite teams in working together towards a common goal.

An optimized onboarding program leads to undenied competitive edges. Only 37% of businesses ensure that their onboarding process is longer than a month, recent statistics show.

However, according to HR experts, 93% of employers believe that for new employees, the onboarding experience is critical in making the decision of staying or leaving the organization.

Once you have provided the most effective onboarding program, you can start thinking about how you are going to give feedback.

2. Introduce ongoing Feedback systems

“No feedback is good feedback”... right? Well, not at all. In fact, it is quite the opposite. If you follow that thinking, you should know you risk your team’s general satisfaction and engagement.

Most employees who have weekly conversations with their managers show higher productivity. Companies that implement regular employee feedback have turnover rates that are 14.9% lower than for employees who receive no feedback, research suggests.

You have to provide both positive and negative feedback for a flourishing work environment. But be mindful of how you do it and which platforms you use.Scientific research supports that feedback dynamics are critical to improving performance.

However, you need to know how to set up feedback effectively. Excessive negative feedback can drain even the most engaged employees. This is what you can do to reach the most fruitful results:

• Asynchronous work with feedback through comments on individual tasks. It will enable you to organize the workload better, and will keep everyone up-to-date.
• Switch unnecessary meetings for tasks and topics, and use that space to give feedback. Save time by saying no to unnecessary meetings and use that time for feedback sessions. You can leverage 1:1s, coffee chats, and Looms to improve team dynamics. It will help you have your team members on the same page.
• Adopt virtual meeting best practices to provide feedback. Introduce check-in questions for meetings and use well-defined meeting agendas. Having a space to listen to new ideas and validate people’s opinions is very important.
• Let your employees give you feedback too. Use polls for company-wide feedback. Listen to what your team thinks about various projects and your role as a manager.

And remember that honest feedback, both positive and negative, is always helpful. It’s valuable information that will help both employees and employers make better decisions. It benefits the giver, the receiver, and the organization.

How else can you promote better team dynamics?

We just introduced two management strategies to optimize team dynamics, yet there is more you can do. Follow these suggestions to achieve even more effective team dynamics:

• Understand your team. Get to know the people you work with.
• Use team-building exercises. It will help you build trust in your team.
• Set a new level of safe bidirectional conversations. It will foster collaboration and engagement.
• Don’t give up; it’s a process. Implementing and optimizing team dynamics can take time. Be patient and follow a plan to increase productivity in the long term.

Improve your team dynamics with Rock

Rock brings people together - and makes teams more united - by minimizing platform switching. You can enhance your team dynamics with Rock’s all-in-one functionality. Switch to more effective communication with messages, tasks, notes, and files in just one place.

You can also manage onboarding processes with unlimited spaces and members. Assign tasks, and share video recordings as well as relevant notes and files with people when they’re just getting started.Use Rock’s functionality to nourish ongoing feedback systems.

For example, leave actionable comments on tasks and keep everyone in the loop. You can use notes, topics, or comments to provide feedback. And listen to your team by creating polls and asking them to vote.With Rock, you can bring your entire company together.

You’ll have everything you need to optimize your team dynamics and make your dream team a reality.Start optimizing your team dynamics with Rock!

Dylan Cromhout is a lecturer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and a managing director of marketing agency Brand Shepherd. He uses Rock for both: projects at the university as well as marketing agency work.

Throughout this article we share how Dylan coordinates a large student group on Rock. But first, let’s learn more about the university course he runs, named the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’!

What is the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’?

How can we make universities more productive for societies? Can we prepare students for real life work environments instead of focusing only on academic research? These are the questions that inspired Dylan to create the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ program.

The program is part of the course Marketing Diploma that he teaches at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) which was started in 2010.The project connects around 250 students with approximately 400 small businesses.

The aim of the program is to create a mutually beneficial exchange: students help small businesses improve their online presence, and businesses give them a launchpad to obtain real life marketing skills.

For example, students help create social media pages or update business websites. This gives them hands-on experience and marketing skills for their future careers‘.

Small businesses don’t always have resources to pay for expensive marketing. Luckily, there are many talented students who can learn important skills while helping those small companies.’ - Dylan shares the main idea of the project.

How to manage an educational project with 200+ students without breaking the bank?

In 2021, the program was launched for the first time fully online. Dylan shares that in the beginning it was very challenging and stressful to find tools which would allow him to manage such a big project fully remotely. At first, a Whatsapp group with around 200 students was created.

However, it quickly became clear that there were too many variables and people involved to just facilitate the program on Whatsapp. At that time, Dylan started to search for a WhatsApp alternative. He shares that most of the communication and task management tools he encountered were way too expensive as they charge per user.

The list of options narrowed down even further when Dylan realized that they had to look for a free alternative. ‘Firstly, we wanted to combine Discord for chatting, Todoist for task management and Google Drive for file sharing. These were the only free tools that I could find that could manage more than 100 users easily.’ - says Dylan.

However, shortly after starting to combine those different tools, Dylan discovered  Rock! and because of the affordable pricing as well as tasks and chat being in one place, Dylan decided to give it a go.

Learnings from the first edition of the fully online Digital Superstart Challenge

After testing Rock for a while, Dylan was confident enough that Rock would work for them and decided to introduce it to students. The program was successfully managed and completed on Rock.

Running the program for the first time added some learnings for the future. ‘The main learning from last year - use one space for the whole project. It was way too complicated to have a space per student.’ - shares Dylan.

Rock makes the Digital Superstart Challenge program work because it’s mainly dependent on tasks being completed. Combining messaging with a task management system makes it easier for students and Dylan to communicate and collaborate.

How to manage an educational project on Rock: Detailed workflow on the second edition of the fully online Digital Superstart Challenge

This year, Dylan and his colleague May are running the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ on Rock again. Based on learnings from last year they made some workflow changes that make running the course a smoother experience.

Dylan shares the details of his workflow which allows him to manage a project with around 250 students on Rock successfully. Below you can find a detailed step-by-step management flow of the course:

1. One space per project

Dylan and his colleague created a main project space for the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ where participating students are added and all the magic happens.

Dylan’s colleague May is assigned as the space admin. Her job is to monitor the space, update relevant information and assure that everything works smoothly.

‘We recommend having one person as the admin of a space with full editing rights. This person can make sure all tasks are neat and everything is going smoothly. You should add students as guests and not members, so that they have limited rights to change things in a space and can’t create or delete tasks. Otherwise, when hundreds of students have editing rights, it can end up messy.’ - Dylan shares.

2. Students fill out a Google Form

Students who participate in the program are asked to go to the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ landing page and fill out a Google Form there. They have one week to register.

Once they complete the form, students get an automated email with a link to join Rock. They create their Rock account and get added as guests in the main project space.

A tip from Dylan: Record a short Loom video to show students how to use Rock and share it in the main project space. It will help students to onboard quicker and start using Rock smoothly from the outset!

3. Everything happens in the Tasks mini-app

Dylan and his colleague add all the tasks that are necessary to be completed by students to the Tasks mini-app. They add due dates and detailed descriptions of what students need to do.

‘I also add links to videos which students need to watch to understand the tasks better. Also, I split tasks into different steps with a Checklist, so it's clear for students what exactly needs to be done to complete each task.’ - says Dylan.

General tasks don’t have assignees as they are the same for all students which are in the space. All students can see these tasks on the Calendar view. This way, they are aware of what needs to be done by when.

4. Automated tasks via Zapier

Students who participate at the program are in charge of finding small businesses to work with. Once they find candidates, they send them to a landing page where businesses can register by filling out a Google Form.

The Google Form is connected to Rock via the Zapier integration. Once a business registers, a task is automatically created in the main Rock project space. It occurs in a specific list dedicated to businesses.

All the business details which they fill out while completing the Google Form appear in the task description, so nothing falls through the cracks.

5. Students take over tasks of businesses

Once a task of a new business registration is automatically created, a notification pops up in the space chat. Students are in charge of finding tasks of companies which they acquired.

They use the tasks comment section to claim their businesses. The space admin confirms and assigns the student as an assignee to the task.

6. Business related details are tracked within a task

From now on, everything that is related to a specific business and the student assigned to that business happens within the comments section of the task. If students have questions or need some help regarding a specific business case, they communicate in the comments.

The space admin, May, helps out by answering questions, editing descriptions of tasks accordingly and adding labels.  Everything is structured and all information about each combination of business and student is easy to find.

7. Task labels help to identify students’ progress

A part of the task for students is to invite businesses to join a Facebook group. When students complete it and business owners join that group, students share this information in the comment section of the business task.

The admin checks the comments and adds a label called ‘FB ’in order to identify that this specific business has joined the relevant Facebook group.

Labels indicate which steps students have completed with a specific company, so it gives a good visual representation of where each business stands and how much work a student still needs to do. It also helps us filter tasks based on what has been completed so that we can track progress.

8. Tasks are finished!

Once all relevant labels are collected as well as most important information is up to date, students’ tasks get moved to the next phase. Different lists are used to denote phases.

When all is done, tasks get moved to the ‘Done’ list. This indicates that students completed all the steps with helping businesses to improve their online presence!

Invite businesses to Rock

Rock is being used by software developers, startups, and freelancers because it’s very flexible and customizable. At the moment, around 250 students are involved in the program and update their work on Rock successfully. That relieves Dylan and May from a lot of stress in terms of managing the program.

Dylan shares that it would be great to involve not only students but also businesses on Rock. If businesses would like to continue to work with Dylan’s team after the program, they will be invited to join Rock.‘For now, we only manage our students on Rock.

However, moving forward we would also like to use Rock to engage the businesses we work with. Most of them still use Whatsapp or Facebook for their communication but we would like to introduce them to Rock and show them how easy and structured communication and collaboration can be.’

Some businesses are reluctant to change because they are used to managing their communications on Whatsapp, Slack or Facebook Messenger. However, as the businesses grow, this will become more difficult and chaotic and that’s where Rock will be useful.

Starting educational projects on Rock

Dylan hopes that his experience can help and inspire other educational projects to be executed on Rock.‘I totally recommend using Rock for educational purposes.

You don’t need a huge budget, it has many great features and excellent customer support. I hope people working in education can learn from my experience and adapt my workflow for themselves. So they don’t have to go through a messy trial phase which I had last year.’ - says Dylan.

If you want to implement an educational project on Rock but still have questions, feel free to get in touch with the Rock team.

Productivity is often associated with speed and efficiency with which you can complete tasks. With Rock, we don’t want you to waste any time, so we have made connecting to others faster than ever. We want to test out just how fast you can master features on Rock and invite new members to the platform. To provide you with extra incentive to help you share the value of Rock with your network, we are kicking off the Race to Rock!

When will the contest take place?

From September 28th till October 12th, we will be testing the speed of collaboration on Rock with the Race to Rock.

What are the prizes?

Each winner will receive:

• 2-year subscription to our TEAMS 5 subscription, or a lifetime subscription to PRO.
• And a $50 Amazon Gift Card each

The top 3 users who acquired the most points by October 12th can win special prizes. We will also award the 2 new users (joined from September 28th onwards) with the most credits with the same prize.

How to earn credits?

You can get started with earning credits in many different ways listed in our Credit Program article.

For example, you can earn 10 credits for inviting additional people from outside your domain to Rock or you can receive 5 credits just for downloading the mobile or desktop version of the app if you haven't done this already.

Trying out features such as creating your first note, task, or topic will also grant you 1 credit each.

1. Invite friends, clients and colleagues to Rock

Connecting with Rock takes seconds: open a space together using Quick Connect or invite new users to a group space by sharing an invite link. By inviting new people to Rock, you can receive:

• 1 credit per new user
• 10 credits for each new domain.
• 50 credits if the invited user upgrades to PRO plan
• 300 credits if invited user upgrades to TEAMS plan

2. Import from Slack or WhatsApp

Migrate all your important chats to Rock to keep the conversation going.

3. Integrate your favorite apps

Not on Rock yet? No problem, sign up quickly and join the fun as we will also be rewarding 2 users who joined Rock from September 28th with the most referral points. That’s right! It also pays to join our platform.

Is it really that easy to collaborate using Rock?

Yes, it is, try it yourself. If you have been holding off on migrating your colleagues or integrating your apps, now is the time! For more information on the Terms & Conditions visit our Rules of the Road page.

Stay tuned to our social media and Rock Support space for tips & updates regarding the contest!

You can have the best possible team, the best product or service, and the best management tools in the market. But if you don’t have an idea of what a communication plan is (and you don’t put it into practice) you can gloriously crash down an entire business project. Or, at the very least, generate chaos and confusion among those involved.

But it works both ways. Communication planning provides a straightforward way to simplify interactions as well as minimize frustrations. And, ultimately, getting a project across the finish line.

It is a critical tool for professionals to stay fully engaged with a project and create a strong framework to build relationships with internal and external parties.

It might sound complex, but it really is all about keeping things tidy and staying organized at work. To ‘spark joy’ among your team, as Marie Kondo would say. Joking aside, a clear communication plan can really help you simplify tasks and processes.

A critical tool for asynchronous communication

As remote work is taking over workplaces around the world, a communication plan becomes even more critical to keep distributed teams in the loop.

Employees more often work from different cities, continents, and time zones these days. Walking around the workplace and getting an update from a colleague sitting next to you is no longer an option. You also can't set up a spontaneous meeting with a team member you just saw at your office.

As a result, every stakeholder needs to understand clearly where to find all the ongoing information, how the different details will be shared and whom to contact in each case (and through which channel).

Moreover, when asynchronous work takes place – with fewer meetings and more time zones across the work environment – having all the communication processes well-defined and organized becomes even more relevant.

Plus it provides an additional level of documentation that allows people to find updates easily, optimizing their time and energy to focus on the work that matters.

So, how to make communication plans effective, you might be wondering. Just keep reading. In this article, we will guide you through the process and we will give you a project charter example, so you can create your own and start rocking your comms!

But let’s start with the basics.

What is a communication plan?

Communication is a critical part of any successful project. But what is a communication plan? Well, to put it in a simple way, a communication plan is the line of action to make communication happen in a clear and organized way.

‍A communication plan gives you the structure to target your messages effectively across teams and clients. Also, it defines collaboration tools, communication strategies, and insights on where and how to share information.

There are two types of communication plans: if you address your teams, then your plan is internal. If you focus on your clients, then you need to develop an external communication plan.

In both cases, if, for example, there has been a weekly update on a certain project, a communication plan sets up the guidelines to update and access that information. It also defines the processes on how to contact the right person through the right channel.

Think of a communication plan as a road map to get the project team involved and keep everybody on the same page.

What to include in a communication plan?

Think about who is the communicator and the audience. Also, about what needs to be shared, as well as specific details that you can explain briefly. For instance, does it involve the team (internal) or it also involves communicating with clients (external)?

In your communication plan project management, you need to break down all the documentation, timelines, and communication channels. You also have to set expectations on how updates and critical information will be shared throughout the project.

Broadly speaking, a high-level communication plan should include:

• Goals and approach. Think about the purpose of your communication plan, how it fits your organizational strategy, and the goals that you are planning to accomplish. What are the main expectations?
• Stakeholder communications. Create a stakeholder communication plan to define who is involved in the project. Also, the audience: who is the message for? Define how often information will be shared. Will there be daily, weekly and/or monthly updates? Think about who is in charge of sending the information.
• Tools and channels. Describe the methods and channels to share briefings, communicate updates, make a presentation, and meeting agendas, among other information. Which medium or remote work tool will be used in each case?

Five key elements that a successful communication plan must have

On a more specific note, any ‘successful communication plan’ requires five specific elements, according to Forbes:

• The purpose. Think about your goals and ask yourself how you are going to reach them. How will you deliver your message to get the most impact?
• The audience. In the case of an external communication plan, define your target audience, including clients, professionals, and media. It could be useful to create an audience map to identify key audiences.
• The medium. You need to define clearly which communication channels you will use to deliver your information. We will tell you more about this very shortly and provide an example of a project charter that you might find useful.
• The timing. Timing is key. When and how often are you going to communicate your information? Set up a timing plan. Prioritize the most important tasks in your comms strategy.
• The owner. If the communications are addressed to external audiences, the media professionals, marketing, and public relations teams will be the ones in charge. If it is an internal communication plan, you must involve project managers and human resources departments. Decide who is in charge of sending the update/communication.

If you define each element properly, the communication plan will allow you to ‘put together a solid strategy that could bring more success for your business’, says product marketing expert Haseeb Tariq.

If you have read this far, you may know how to answer the question of what is a communication plan. It’s time to put theory into practice.

And now… let’s rock your comms plan!

A thing to keep in mind when you design a communication plan – either for internal or external parties – is to keep it as clear and accurate as possible.

Especially in the case of asynchronous work, it is essential to use a platform that simplifies communication and the way people interact with each other. Rock will allow you to keep your communications on point and bring all project stakeholders in one area to work effectively as a team.

On Rock, you can clearly define which spaces and mini-apps you are going to use for your communications. Ask yourself what you are going to use each feature for:

• Spaces. Do you need a specific space for your communications plan? If so, create a dedicated space and invite everyone who needs to be aware of it.
• Mini-apps. Will the communications plan go into a topic, note, or task? Think about which mini-apps are the most suitable to store and manage your plan. How about creating a specific topic for communication updates? Decide how and where you will communicate updates and changes, too.
• Integrations. Which other apps – Google Docs, Sheets, Loom, etc – will be integrated? Rock offers many integrations of external apps, so you can have it all in one place.
• Meetings. Will you need to set up meetings? If yes, integrate video conferencing apps such as Zoom or Google Meet.
• File sharing. Will you need to upload and send files? You can integrate various cloud storage providers. Everybody in a space can access your files through the Files mini-app.

Rock is very multifunctional. You can facilitate specific mini-apps such as task management, notes, chat, files or topics to share different communication updates for different teams, project management frameworks, and clients.

Example of project charter for a communications plan

Break everything down into a sample project charter and create a list. it will give you a clever vision of your communication goals and processes.

Think of activities such as weekly updates on a project. For instance, communications that your company sends every Thursday to the same client. You can create a topic on Rock to follow and store all the information up to date. You can use the project charter sample below for inspiration and adapt it to your plan.

Why do you need a communication plan?

There are many reasons that explain why a communication plan is vital for a successful project or business. The most important one is that it helps you organize the communication flows and the information you share with your team or audience.

It can also nurture cross-departmental communication between team members. And it allows you to be more strategic and effective with your conversations.

Rock can help you have all your communications in one space. You don’t have to waste time switching between apps. Also, it allows you to make sure that everyone has access to the same information. No more confusion between hundreds of spreadsheets and multiple chats.

Start a communication plan with Rock and keep everyone in tune with your comms!

Product manager, project manager, and project lead. Do you know the difference between each of these roles? For people that aren’t in the industry, they could look like a variation of the same job. This is far from true.

The product manager role is fairly new. Despite that, the sector is growing hugely. Glassdoor recently released a study that suggests that product management is the 10th best career path in the US.This article will go into more detail about a product manager job description.

However, as a brief overview, a product manager focuses on the development, strategy, and improvements of a product. The job is increasingly more important in workflow spaces, product teams, and digital industries.

What Does A Product Manager Do?

A digital product manager will take the overall business goals and align them to the customer base’s needs. With this, they steer a product through creation, across multiple teams. The aim is to deliver a final product that satisfies both the user base and achieving business objectives.

Product managers will prioritize the new releases and structure the product life cycle. This as well as delivering the product onto the market.Some key elements of a product manager job description are:

• Working closely with internal and external stakeholders on improvements, issues and priorities.
• Following customer needs, collecting information, and analyzing it.
• Prioritizing product features to be released in the upcoming releases.
• Assisting in creating a long-term vision and roadmap of the product.
• Translating the organizational strategy into product requirements and required improvements.

A product manager often works across multiple departments. Because of this, a product manager fills any empty space between teams. This creates a cohesive working unit, ensuring that a product release is successful.

It’s unfortunate that sometimes teams such as key account management, customer support, engineering and design, work in isolation. A successful product manager nurtures cross-departmental communication for product improvements, changes and updates.

Putting this into practice, a product manager will define a vision and a strategy. From there, the features get outlined, and a development plan is created. All of these steps create a product’s lifecycle.

Day-to-day activities of a product manager

Over the last 20 years, product manager roles have gotten more and more popular. Even so, compared to other disciplines, there is still much to define about what a product manager does. A product manager balances a variety of responsibilities and tasks, but what that means varies from company to company.

This lack of clear boundaries is one of the things that makes product management such an exciting position. However, there are some core elements outlined about how to be a product manager.

Product management in a large business

A product manager's role and responsibility in a big company could place them within a team of qualified colleagues. There is more support and resources for a product manager. Nevertheless, there is also more time spent on managing stakeholders to keep them in line with the product vision.

As large businesses need to balance more teams and external stakeholders, gathering and managing information becomes a bigger part of day-to-day responsibilities.

Product management in a small business

Compared to a large business, a product manager in a small company spends less time gathering information from different teams and stakeholders. The product role in a smaller business is more focused on direct work, rather than the big picture plans.

They focus on more straightforward tasks that are essential to moving a product towards completion. As the teams are smaller, they can also handle multiple stakeholders easily, as there likely won’t be too many departments or stakeholders to manage.

Product manager responsibilities

No matter the size of the business, there are a few activities that a product manager in any kind of company will focus on.

1. Create a product vision

The product vision must balance the business objectives alongside the needs of the user base. This means reaching out to stakeholders and customers. With this information, a product manager forms a roadmap and strategy to deliver the product into its vision.

2. Fight for the user

A product manager must understand what the users and customers want. To do this, they conduct a large amount of consumer research. A product manager will find the client base, reach out to them and collect key information. This often means working closely with the customer support team to determine issues that aren’t currently addressed. This information is then used to improve the strategy and development.

3. Market and competitor analysis

To fulfill a product vision, a product manager must understand the needs of the user. As well as their competitors’ offerings. A product manager must understand why customers behave as they do, or why competitors have chosen certain paths. Without this, they could not know where their own product is leading.

Skills needed to become a product manager

A product manager has to combine a range of skills. Some of their skills are very technical, others are interpersonal and theoretical. Below you can read more about the 4 most important skills that should be highlighted in the product manager job description.

Communication and negotiation

Despite how hard businesses try, inter-department rivalries can develop. However, a product manager must navigate the needs of multiple departments. Clear communication and good negotiation skills are crucial to bringing stakeholders together around a product vision.

Customer service, design, engineering, operations, and management must all unite. For a business to meet its objectives and create a happy customer base, all departments must work as a team.A good product manager should set up clear communication strategies to make sure everyone is on the same page.

There are multiple ways to ensure clear communication. These include regular briefings, detailed meeting agendas, clear and accessible documentation, and defined opportunities for teams to give and get feedback.

Here's a list of essential skills everyone in product management should possess for communicating effectively:

• Stakeholder management
• Information & documentation management
• Project management
• Effective communication
• Negotiation
• cross-functional communication
• Feedback management

Prioritization skills

Setting clear and thought-through priorities is another important aspect. The needs of different stakeholders should get addressed. However, this cannot happen all at once. Most teams, in some capacity, will ask for extra resources. But some teams need resources more than others.

It is the job of the product manager to define the teams that need resources the most. It’s also important to estimate the amount of work that goes into an activity. Product managers should be able to separate a project vs task so teams spend realistic amounts of time and resources on different activities.

Prioritization can get tricky. It doesn’t just cover priorities within a company, but clients as well. For example, is it better to release a feature that satisfies the needs of one big client, but might disadvantage a number of smaller ones? Or does the product diverge from its current path, to better align with new business goals?

The right answer depends on very specific business situations. Any product manager must clearly understand the impact that their decisions have.Here's a list of essential skills you can add in the product manager job description for prioritizing work effectively:

• Information pooling and data analytics
• Task management
• Priority management
• Time tracking and skill assessment

Leading the team to work independently

A product manager must have strong leadership skills. This can come in many shapes and sizes, but one thing is for sure. To get a product released, there are too many decisions for a single person to make. It is clear that a product manager couldn’t make all decisions alone.

A product manager has to lead a team of specialists and departments. Ideally, these employees should be capable of deciding the best course of action for their field of expertise. If a decision becomes problematic, a product manager should use their problem-solving and leadership skills wisely.

It’s important to create a space for teams to work independently as well. Especially in remote environments, leveraging asynchronous work as much as possible can be advantageous. Here's a list of essential skills everyone in product management should possess for leading effectively:

• Interpersonal skills
• Empathy
• Recognize and effectively respond to different types of communication styles
• Leadership
• Coaching & mentoring
• Personal development management

Understand how to test and innovate

As a product moves through each stage and gets closer to completion, it enters a testing phase at some point. For example, a software product manager will be in charge of the beta stage and pilot programs of a new product.

They must have a clear understanding of the testing process and how to overcome issues that arise. Learning more about project management frameworks can be very beneficial to people in this role.

Knowledge of the agile framework is extremely useful here. An agile product manager can adjust a project around quick feedback.

Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of Everest Group, writes on Forbes:  “Product management is a companion component of the Agile methodology and DevOps operations. Product management creates a Product manager – an individual responsible for the software product – who sits outside the development team.”

Why product managers should be fluent in task management

Effective task management is one of the most crucial skills that any IT product manager should master. With many businesses moving to remote and hybrid working patterns, task management is an important bullet to add in your product manager job description.

A product manager must be on top of monitoring multiple coworkers' tasks. This is important to keep all teams on schedule and guarantee that everyone is staying organized at work.

To move a product successfully from conception through to completion, a product manager should have the right remote work tools to help streamline processes and organize workflow.

Manage your products with Rock

This is where Rock comes into the picture. Product managers can bring customers, the development team, and management together in one place. Communicate and collaborate with anyone within seconds.

‍Task management on Rock makes managing a product way more straightforward. A product manager can create, assign and follow tasks that are necessary to develop and improve a product. This gives the whole team a clear overview of where everyone stands in the process.

The Files mini-app lets all the people involved with a project access files easily. This means all files get organized in one place. Add files directly from your device or connect to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Figma, Miro, and many others.

Also, you can store any vital project information for everyone to access in one place. In this case, the Notes mini-app or the Pinboard come in handy. Using these features you can make sure that everyone on the team is on the same page and up to date.

To find out more about how Rock can improve your product management, sign up for free today.

It’s no secret that hiring the right people can be challenging. Particularly for small businesses and startups, hiring the wrong person in a role can have devastating effects. Recruitment management systems are used to increase the chances of finding the best match for your open role.

A lot of financial investment and time goes into hiring, and there is opportunity costs that comes with every new position. Remote work tools can make hiring more straightforward and easier to manage by reducing admin tasks, grouping information, and creating workflows.

However, recruitment management systems aren’t always designed with startups, small businesses or smaller sized teams in mind. Businesses don’t always need to invest their resources into a large recruitment management system.

Sometimes, making use of available resources can be the best organizational strategy when hiring.

What is a recruitment management system?

Let’s explain briefly what a recruitment management system is. A recruiting management system helps automate and manage the process of finding new employees.

With a hiring management system, a company has an overview of the people who apply, are interviewing, have been offered a job with documented candidate information, and internal feedback.

Basically, it brings together all the different pieces of information that businesses need when hiring. Recruitment management systems help organize the data while also staying organized at work.

Step by step, the number of candidates pass through different stages in the recruitment process until one or multiple people fill the job opening. After that, you can onboard them with a 90-day plan or other frameworks.

Why use a recruitment management system?

It is part of the natural lifecycle of a company to hire new employees. Sometimes people get promoted, someone leaves, retires or is fired. Achieving company goals and objectives or overall company growth can also be a reason for new positions opening up.

To keep up with the hiring needs, every company must create a process to find and employ new team members in an effective and productive way. Without a good process, companies risk creating a toxic work culture, loss in productivity and a waste of resources and time.

Particularly on a smaller scale, this recruiting process is relatively straightforward. However, as more people are hired or openings receive a lot of applicants, needs become more complex. The hiring process must then adapt to ensure you find the right fit for your open role.

Depending on the system, there is a range of ways a management system makes the hiring process more efficient. With technology advancing so quickly there are now even tons of recruiting tools that use artificial intelligence to automate recruiter tasks.

Here are two main reasons businesses use a recruitment management system as a small business or startup.

1. Reduce administration costs by documenting all information in one place.
2. Pick out the most qualified candidate and hire them faster

Let’s dive a bit deeper into each reason.

Decrease administration costs

The admin side of hiring can become overwhelming. Contracts must get prepared, jobs posted, candidates reviewed, interviewed, and assessed. Alongside this, schedules must align for interviews and meetings. It takes a lot of time to bring relevant information together and organize it.

Organizing and scheduling becomes even more difficult if your business operates on an asynchronous work schedule. A recruitment management system reduces endless back and forth while keeping everyone informed on the current hiring funnel.

Filtering for qualified candidates and faster hiring

An established hiring process will allow teams to more easily pick out the most suitable candidate. A recruitment management system helps businesses screen candidates and assess their capabilities in more efficient ways. This means less time wasted on people that aren’t suitable or the best match.

Writing for Forbes, Deborah Lovich, makes an interesting point about how important streamlining the hiring process is. She writes, ‘In today’s hyper-competitive job market, as the saying goes, those who hesitate are lost.’ If you want to move quickly and not lose talent to competitors, hiring them quickly is extremely important.

With a better-organized hiring process, you can cut down on the back and forth and move qualified applicants to the ‘hired’ stage faster. This means you can improve the chances of the best profile match joining your team.

For smaller teams there are better alternatives to manage hiring

For a lot of startups and small businesses, finding a suitable recruitment management tool can be a challenging task. Advanced tools have a lot of functionality that a small business or startup might not need.

This is because a lot of recruitment management systems were created with scaleups, larger businesses and big multinationals in mind. These large companies are continually hiring, or have a lot of applications to process.

Typically, they also have hiring managers or human resources departments that spend most of their day using the system.Comparatively, a smaller business or startup might have just one person or team member who goes through applications. It might even be a shared responsibility among team members across business functions.

Enterprise recruitment management tools have a lot of functionality that a startup will probably not need to make use of when hiring.

Think of advanced dashboards and complex automation systems.There are a few reasons why enterprise software is not the best match for startups and small businesses. But the main one is that they simply don’t get as many applications on a day-to-day basis.

Also, they might not go as deep into the recruitment process, with their hiring funnel consisting of 1 or 2 stages instead of 5+. Let's dive a bit deeper into why an enterprise tool is often not effective.

Consider the price

Dedicated recruiting tools are expensive. This is especially an issue if a business is not continually hiring and works with a small team.

If a startup wants to hire a new person for a role, buying access to a recruitment management system for one hire is not effective. The subscription could run for months, which is a waste of resources.

For smaller teams, money is often tight, and there are probably better investments the team can make instead of purchasing a recruitment management solution.

Training employees

Specialized tools require getting used to. Users must learn how different parts of the platform work. This can be an ineffective use of time, particularly if there are only a few roles to fill.

A small business might just need a fraction of the functionality that the tool provides. However, because there is so much functionality, an inexperienced user can become overwhelmed.

A new user can get lost among all the options. The more training your team needs to navigate a tool, the harder it gets to involve a wider team as not everyone will be able to navigate the platform.

What startups and small businesses need for a recruitment management system

Despite the benefits of using a hire management system, sometimes startups and small businesses need a more tailored solution. Below are some of the key features a startup should look for in a recruitment management system.

1. Simple functionality

Complex or hard-to-manage functionality makes hiring harder. Usually, it takes a lot longer to get started with the recruitment process.

If you want to hire someone, you want to start right away. You don’t need to go through a whole setup and learning process before processing applications. Or have the hassle of signing up to get a free trial with a bigger tool.

Your recruitment management system must be accessible enough so anyone can jump in without too much of a learning curve. The focus should be on getting new team members rather than learning new software. Simple functionality promotes  cross-functional communication as everyone can chip in.

2. Integrated work environment

Don’t overcomplicate work with hundreds of different processes and tools. Incorporate the management recruiting system into current work streams. This allows people to easily access new information and updates.

For example, some companies have candidate information stored in an email, the job role in a shared folder, notes on the candidate’s interview on paper, and internal discussions on a communication tool. Browsing each of these tools to find and add information to your workflow is inefficient.

Spreading your recruitment information across multiple platforms is a waste of time. In this circumstance, you’re continually searching different information stores. Instead, securing information in one place will save a lot of time, everything is together, and organized for access.

Collaboration tools like Rock bring all of those knowledge bits into one place. Everyone is involved without switching platforms. You can do everything from one place, with centralized documentation.

3. Lower the cost

An RMS (recruitment management system) only makes sense for smaller startups or businesses if it’s free or low in cost. Startups must be mindful with how they spend their money. They should spend resources on other critical areas of the business if an effective, low-cost alternative is available.

With Rock, you can create unlimited spaces and manage the whole recruitment system at no cost for your team. You can access all main functionality you might need, such as messaging, tasks and notes just like large recruitment management systems.

It can also be neatly combined with other day-to-day work, as you can create unlimited spaces and adapt the functionality for marketing workflows, general team communications and even engineering, sales or customer support tasks.

How To Set Up a Hiring Funnel With Rock

Setting up a hiring funnel in Rock is simple and quick. To do this, follow the steps below:

1. Create a dedicated space and add colleagues involved in the recruiting process.

You can create unlimited group spaces for managing work. A group space allows you to invite anyone in or outsite of your team. This means that you can encourage cross-departmental communication or even invite external recruiters or people you are interviewing to a Rock space.

Group spaces offer loads of functionality, here’s a brief overview:

• Full-fledged messaging: reactions, gifs, polls, threads, and everything else you need to message team members.
• Task management: Switch between list, board, and calendar view with feature-rich tasks for any kind of workflow.
• Note-taking functionality: set up meeting agendas, interview guidelines or other important information in dedicated notes.
• Meetings: start a Zoom, Google Meet, or Jitsi meeting for free, you can also share asynchronous video with Loom.

2. Connect relevant storage providers, add relevant files about the open positions and keep everyone updated within that space

If you’re storing important hiring information on Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive you can directly add the folder to your space.

This allows you to quickie access CV’s, cover letters, interview questions and other important information in your space. You can even attach your cloud files to tasks, notes or topics so you don’t have to search around for information.

3. Leverage the tasks Mini-app as a Recruitment Management Tool

It is also possible to create a hiring flow by leveraging task management on Rock. The Tasks mini-app allows you to add new applicants and manage their progress from start to finish in one place. Essentially, every applicant becomes a ‘Task’, which is then moved between the different stages of the funnel.

To use the Tasks mini-app as a recruitment management tool, format the lists in your recruitment space in a way that mirrors a recruitment pipeline.

For example, you can structure your process like this:

• CV review - the applicant has registered interest in the role
• First interview - candidates to interview
• Case - Complete a case assessment before moving to the last interview stage.
• Accepted for the final interview - a shortlist of applicants to interview again
• Job offer - the candidates that offers were sent to
• Hired - the candidates that accepted the job offer
• Rejected - candidates that turned down the offer or did not pass an application.

In this recruitment pipeline, you can assign and process applicants by creating tasks. For example, a job applicant for a key account manager job applies and a task is created with their relevant information. A colleague involved with their application can be assigned to manage the task.

Any thoughts, remarks or complementing information gets added to the task description. For example, their cover letter. The team can then discuss the applicant in a dedicated comment section under the task.

With a task created, you can move the applicant across each section of the funnel. Following this method, you replicate the functions of a dedicated recruitment system, without paying for the tool.

Use Zapier to Automate the Recruitment Management Process

You can even automate the recruitment process with a Zapier integration in the PRO plan. With this setup, you can automate emails from applicants to go straight to a recruitment space as dedicated tasks with titles, assignees, descriptions, and more.

Instead of copying the data from emails into the relevant tasks, Zapier automatically moves the information into a task and formats it. This is useful because it removes a layer of administration and speeds up processes.

Centralize Your Activities

For startups and smaller businesses, it is important to work efficiently and not waste resources. The more you centralize activities, the better. With Rock you can centralize messaging and task management in one place.

Collaborate and communicate the whole hiring process while also managing other workflows in the same place. Conveniently, you can also manage any other project related to, for instance, marketing campaigns, product development, sales, or customer success.

Find the Right Recruitment Management System For Your Business

A recruitment management system can dramatically improve the hiring process. But it is important to consider the size of your business and whether a dedicated tool is actually necessary.

Use Rock to manage the hiring process and seamlessly incorporate recruiting into your everyday team communication, collaboration, and project management. Set up your first recruitment space and start with a hiring funnel within minutes of signing up.

Metio Software is a Czech software development company that primarily focuses on creating web presentations, information systems and software prototypes. Markéta Mazlová, the CEO of Metio Software, shares her team’s experience with Rock and asynchronous work.

Within their team, everyone is free to change their location and work from anywhere. The team leverages Rock to make this possible while staying productive and completing projects.

Metio Software is a team of 12 people who also work with freelancers on various projects. The company operates fully remotely.

Why Metio Software chose an all-in-one, asynchronous first approach for their remote collaboration

Markéta shares that before discovering Rock, the company was mainly using Slack for communication and Asana for task management. The combination brought some complications in terms of team communication and collaboration.

Switching between different tools for tasks and chatting quickly became tiring, confusing, and simply too much. That was the moment when their team decided to look for one tool which would offer both at once - tasks and chat in one place.

Metio Software discovered Rock in 2021 and quickly adopted the all-in-one approach. Messaging, tasks, and other mini-apps helped their team save time and reduce daily context switching.

The all-in-one approach, especially the combination of tasks and chat, was the primary but not the only reason why Metio Software switched to Rock. The second reason was the combination of asynchronous with synchronous communication channels.

Markéta says that she read quite a few articles about asynchronous work and became interested in the idea. She mentions: ‘I got the feeling that there are a bunch of people who are trying to solve similar work challenges as us. I like that you share your ideas and information about alternative ways of working and improving processes in a remote setting.’

Working across different locations and timezones with a more flexible way of working

Implementing a more asynchronous and remote work model became way easier once the company switched to Rock. The team can focus on the goals rather than being physically together or immediately responding to messages. This gives the team more flexibility and freedom to work from anywhere.

For instance, the CTO of Metio Software travels the world and works from Cambodia at the moment. While the team is mostly based in Czech Republic, they are allowed to take workations from time to time. The team can switch work locations and enjoy new cities or natural parks while still getting work done.

Mention anything, topics, and integrations have been extensively incorporated into Metio Software’s day-to-day work

The Mention anything function allows Metio Software to interconnect different subjects on Rock. It quickly became an important part of daily communication

‍‘It’s so cool that we can mention different tasks, topics, notes or people when communicating. It makes the connection between things so much smoother. There is no need to spend too much time searching for relevant information anymore.’ - shares Markéta.

The Topics mini-app is also a big part of the company’s work routine. ‘It’s so much easier to structure conversations when you use Topics. You can really make sure that important discussions don’t get lost.’ - says Markéta.

Whenever developers want to discuss some new ideas, they create a topic that everyone who is involved can elaborate on. As a result of discussions, tasks might come up. You can easily create them by switching to the Tasks mini-app.

Metio Software team is also glad that Rock offers the Jitsi integration:

Markéta shares: ‘We use Jitsi for our meetings due to security reasons. We find it super cool that you integrate it. We can set up quick meetings without leaving Rock.’

‍Rock also offers other video conferencing tool integrations, such as Google Meet or Zoom. It comes in handy when you need to discuss things in real time.

Another tool that Metio Software (as well as many other software developers) frequently use is Github. Rock offers Github integration which allows everyone to stay up to date on the latest developments.

How can software developers organize their workflow on Rock?

There might be many different ways to organize your workflow on Rock. There is no one-size-fits-all approach but there certainly are things we might learn from each other. Markéta is sharing the workflow that Metio Software has discovered and which works well for their developers.

‍‘Any software development company sooner or later needs a place to coordinate projects and communicate. Our way is to create two Rock spaces per project and it works really well.’ - shares Marketa.

When their team starts a project, they usually create two internal spaces for it. One space is used for more general updates and is run by a project coordinator. They use it for announcing information, updates, deadlines, meeting notes, agendas, and other important things.

The team uses the Notes mini-app to store information. Also, they create more general tasks in the Tasks mini-app in that particular space, too.

The second space the Metio Software team dedicates for daily communication and organizing work in detail. In this space, they create topics and more specific tasks and update things frequently in the process.

Sometimes their team creates a third space for a project where they invite clients. It’s a convenient way to inform them about a project and share summaries and other relevant information.

Markéta also shares that sometimes it’s challenging to break old habits of clients writing emails. However, once they try using Rock all the communication around projects becomes way more centralized. On Rock, you can bring in as many people from outside your organization as you like and collaborate together.

Rock your collaboration as a software development team

Metio Software’s use case shows that any software development company can benefit from the all-in-one approach and the variety of integrations as well as features on Rock. It’s essential for software developers to have a dedicated place to manage projects.

‘We found that there are many useful features which you discover in the process of using Rock. I encourage you to explore these and create the workflow that works best for you. You will definitely benefit from having everything set in one place.’ - Markéta Mazlová

Communicating with people has changed a lot in the last couple of years and in addition to working from the office, many teams now enjoy fully remote or hybrid working environments.

Unfortunately, most of the collaboration tools used today were not made for those work environments which leads to less productive time, too many meetings, and anxiety & stress.

Collaboration is also no longer limited to just your company and your immediate co-workers. Your team is now a more fluid group of people including agencies, freelancers, clients, or even a decentralized DAO or open source community collaborating outside of a typical company setting.

With Rock, we are on a mission to:

1. Make remote or hybrid work “work” – When people are able to communicate both asynchronously and synchronously you don't need to be online or in meetings all the time. We believe that being able to pick and choose how you want to communicate allows teams to reduce noise while maximizing productivity and work life balance.
2. Make it easier to work with anyone - Some tools make it too difficult to work with clients, partners, freelancers, and others outside your organization. As a result, many teams end up relying on email or other outdated communication channels. We believe that by removing barriers, working together with others becomes more seamless, more productive and more organized.
3. Make next-gen communication tools accessible to everyone - Tools like Slack, Asana, Trello, and ClickUp charge per user which quickly becomes expensive and puts these tools out of reach for a large number of people. Controlling costs is even more important given the current economy where every dollar matters. We believe productivity tools should be fairly priced and instead of paying per user you should be able to pay per space irrespective of how many users have access to that space.

The first platform built for the way we work today

In the last 12 months, we’ve talked to hundreds of users and have shipped hundreds of new features and improvements that combined add up to something we're very proud of. Internally we’ve started calling this Rock 2.0 but you can also think about this really being a next-gen collaboration platform:

• Messaging + tasks: Rock combines messages and tasks in a way that nobody else does it. Instead of choosing one or the other, you get full-fledged functionality for both making it easier to get work done in one place.
• The fastest way to start working with anyone: With Rock you can start collaborating with anyone within seconds. Gone are the days of having to figure out  over email how to get everybody set up on bunch of different tools before you can work together. Quick Connect with your own personalized space.new link, and workspaces do away with all that friction.
• The collaboration front-end for every team: Rock deeply integrates with cloud storage providers, document editors, and videoconferencing services allowing you to continue using your favorite tools in your Rock workflows.
• No limits on the free plan & radically different pricing: You can do all of this on Rock for free and we won't limit the number of spaces you can create or the number of people you can have in each space. We have paid plans starting at $5.99 per month per space which still allow you to add as many users as you want without paying more.

1. Messaging + tasks together at last

Gone are the days of having to jump between different apps or hacking together bots and third-party services just to message or manage projects. Rock has a full-fledged task manager alongside a feature-rich chat in every space.

Chat and Topics mini-app

Topics are one of the most notable improvements to the messaging experience on Rock. Chat messages are great for ad-hoc and urgent conversations, but messages can quickly become distracting and chaotic if you’re not following along in real-time.

The Topics mini-app was introduced to solve this issue by enabling teams to discuss in more structured ways. Topics allow you to document information, keep conversations organized, and limit notifications only to those involved in the conversation.

Tasks mini-app

You should be able to manage any kind of project or workflow with the Tasks mini-app. The calendar view is the main highlight of changes in the Tasks mini-app experience. Teams can now view deadlines for projects and schedule new tasks with a time-based view.

We have also added a calendar integration for most major calendar services in the PRO plan. This allows teams to visualize work deadlines alongside other important weekly information.

Tap to Organize

By combining tasks and messaging, Rock provides a solution for a bunch of problems teams run into when work happens across different apps.

Two improvements that showcase this are Tap to Organize and the ability to @mention anything.

You can move conversations over to topics, notes, or tasks with a few clicks through Tap to Organize. Create tasks out of messages or document information by moving information to a relevant note or topic leaving the chat stream more organized and less chaotic.

Mention Anything

With information organized across different mini-apps, it’s easy to create links directly to information within Rock allowing you to share more context. We have made multiple improvements to the @mention anything feature so teams can more effectively link to information across mini-apps.

Besides a smart object snippet in the chat, teams can @mention tasks, notes, topics, and attachments in the description and comments section of every object. This allows you to jump to the object in question and we even introduced cross-space @mentions so you can interlink between spaces within seconds.

2. The fastest way to start working with anyone

Getting started on a new platform or tool can often be a tedious process. This is especially true if you have to leave behind both your task management and messaging platform. We’ve added some improvements focused on making it easier to invite new people as well as migrate your stuff from other platforms.

Quick Connect with space.new links

Quick Connect is the fastest way to collaborate with anyone. You can set up your space.new link and share it across your social channels, website, or email. When someone visits your link or scans the dedicated QR code, they are directly added to a group space with you.

Instead of first having to exchange emails and then go into different tools to give everyone access you can now just share your space.new link and get a brand-new space set up so you can work together within seconds.

Import messages and tasks from multiple platforms

We understand how important it is for users to access past conversations. In order to make switching easier, we introduced import from Slack or WhatsApp. The import feature allows users to take all their data with them, assign messages to people, and directly migrate new users to Rock.

If your team cannot stop slacking, we also introduced a dedicated Rock bot for Slack that allows you to receive Rock notifications in your different Slack channels. Users can keep up with new tasks, notes, and topics across Rock spaces without leaving Slack.

For tasks, you can import all your project management information from Trello, Asana, Jira, and ClickUp. In addition to that, we have also added an import from CSV option. This makes it easier to convert large databases into individual tasks on Rock.

Bring it all together with workspaces

We introduced a big change to team and space management with workspaces. This feature was added to make it easier to manage multiple users and spaces from a single workspace similar to how you can do this with a Slack workspace or a Discord server.

Users can set up a workspace for different teams, clients, communities, or other use cases. A dedicated settings panel in every workspace allows you to invite people to the workspace and manage their overall permissions.

3. The collaboration front-end for any team

Unlike other apps out there, we don’t think you want to replace all your apps. Different teams still need access to documents, design files, meetings, or other important information in apps like Figma, Notion, Dropbox, Adobe, Miro, and Zoom.

Rock brings all of these together in one simple front-end with messaging and tasks enabling people to discuss, collaborate, and get work done with these external services.

Editors & Cloud storage

From design files to spreadsheets and other documentation is key for any team so we worked hard to expand the number of services you can add to Rock.

Users can now set up integrations with Google Drive, Onedrive, Dropbox, and Smartsheet and quickly access important folders and files from within a space. It is also possible to add a Notion knowledge base or Miro whiteboard to the Files mini-app.

For design teams, we added an Adobe Creative Cloud and Figma integration. This allows anyone to quickly access creative files and attach them to tasks, notes, or topics when relevant.

Video conferencing

Meetings and asynchronous video sharing can provide a lot of value when used correctly. Rock offers messaging, tasks, notes, and files for people to discuss in more asynchronous ways, but when really needed, we also provide more synchronous real-time channels.

Start meetings in any space with Zoom, Google Meet, and Jitsi integrations. While you should be mindful of your meeting frequency, it is sometimes better to just talk to someone face-to-face.

We also added a Loom integration to the Meetings mini-app to encourage more asynchronous video sharing. Do you really have to talk to someone live, or is a quick video walkthrough enough?

Automations

Automate the creation of tasks, notes, or messages with a Zapier integration in the PRO plan. With this integration, you can build automations for emails, social media posts, web forms, or other information that create messages and tasks in Rock when triggered.

For engineering teams, we have also introduced a public API for custom integrations,  Github, Rollbar, and Sentry integrations. This means that you can more easily integrate Rock with technical, product, or development workflows.

A sneak peek into what’s next

Based on feedback from users, we’re building some of the most requested features which are shipping very soon. From a management dashboard to a time tracker we have a ton of stuff on the pipeline that will make Rock even better for everyone.

Are there any features you would like to see that are not available on Rock?

Let us know in the Rock Support space or create a new space with us through this Quick Connect link.

Celebrate Rock 2.0 with us in September ?

Thousands of hours and lots of hard work went into building all of these features so to celebrate all of this we are doing a special launch on Product Hunt. Our goal with this release is to share Rock with new users, teams, and communities worldwide and hopefully introduce them to a better way of working.

It would mean the world to our team if you can support us by signing up for the dedicated landing page. We’ll make sure to send updates when the date nears and we will provide you with special discounts and promotions on the official launch day!

You can also support us by sharing the landing page link across social media and tagging us on Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter.

One of the things that companies should prioritize in this day and age is innovation. Having an innovative mindset paves the way to new ideas and solutions – ones that can help you breathe life into an original product idea.

Creating a product, however, is no easy task. There are many factors you need to consider – from the steps in making it a reality to the different members of your team. That’s where product development comes in. But what is product development in the first place?

Keep reading this article to learn more about the foundations of product development.

Product development and its meaning

A simple way to define product development is to understand it as the entire journey involved in creating a new product. This covers the ideation of the product up until its market launch. It’s the process that you and your team must go through to make your concept of a product a reality.

When we look solely at product development’s definition, the process may seem easy. However, every product launch is different. Things don’t always go according to plan, and there’s really no foolproof blueprint to success.

Note that there are several crucial steps that can increase your chances of success. Some of them are more extensive than others, but all of them are equally important. But before we get into that, it’s important to know why you should follow a framework or a strategy in the first place.

The importance of a product development strategy

Maybe you’re asking yourself – if there’s no surefire way to create a well-performing product, why create a product development plan at all? That’s because having a plan takes into consideration market research and analysis.

This is crucial because you can’t successfully launch a product if you don’t understand what problem you’re trying to solve, or who it’s for.

And because your product will be backed by research, you have more opportunities to learn about similar products that failed, similar products that succeeded, and how you can leverage current market gaps for similar products.

Planning out each product development stage can also save time once you go through the different steps. That’s because you already laid out what you need to do and what each team member has to be doing. It also gives you a better understanding of the project as a whole.

Another thing about having a product development plan is that it helps with staying organized at work. By having something to guide you throughout the process, cross-functional collaboration is more seamless. This is especially true when you apply effective communication strategies.

Task management also becomes less complicated, and everyone will find it easier to stay on the same page.Ultimately, having a product development plan doesn’t ensure your success, but it definitely helps a lot.

Having a good framework can determine whether or not you achieve company goals and objectives, so it’s an important step you shouldn’t overlook!

The stages of product development

Now that you’ve answered the question, ‘What is product development?’, it's time to look at the specific stages that your team will go through when developing a new product. Although different industries may have iterations of product development stages and examples, the process generally has the same flow or steps.

1. Identify a need in the market

Every product development process starts with ideation. This means having brainstorming sessions with your team. You can begin by identifying today’s problems in the market. Once your team zeroes in on one, your next step would be to try and solve it.

You might get stuck on this first step because some teams search endlessly for the “perfect” idea. This is something you should avoid. Instead, keep an open mind. Bounce off ideas, no matter how out-of-the-box, and see which ones stick. This will help ideas flow, and maybe even connect with one another.

If you need help with ideation, you can try using the SCAMPER technique. It’s a model that helps you explore different perspectives to encourage fresh ideas.

‍S - Substitute (what can you replace?) C - Combine (what can you combine?) A - Adapt (what can you add?) M - Modify (what can you change?) P - Put to another use (what other uses does the product have?) E - Eliminate (what can you remove or simplify?) R - Reverse (what can be rearranged or done in reverse?)

The next time you have a brainstorm, try asking these questions about existing products. You can also gather insights by talking to your target market and studying data on the problem you’ve focused on. All of these will help you have high-level ideas on your product’s look and functionality.

2. Quantify the opportunity

Now that you have a problem you want to solve, figure out if it calls for a product-based solution. You need data that shows there is demand for the product you want to make. Research on the number of people the problem impacts, and whether or not people would be willing to pay for a solution.

3. Create a concept for a product

Once you’ve confirmed the need for your product, it’s time to start conceptualizing it. This means taking your initial idea and refining it further. Deep dive into the design of the product by answering specific questions.

What is the product’s value proposition? Have you finalized a product roadmap? What does the product look like? Are your product’s key features well-defined? Is everyone aligned on your key performance indicators (KPIs)? How does it align with your organizational strategy?

These are some of the questions you must answer during this stage. This is also the stage of product development where marketing might start getting included in the conversation.

Granted you don’t have your finished product yet, but it’s good to have a general idea on how to go about marketing on this product development stage.

4. Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Once you’re done with fine tuning the fundamental concept for your product, you can move onto creating a minimum viable product (MVP). This is a version of your product that has just its basic features. Doing this will help you see how the product works at this point.

After creating your MVP, you can have a small group of early customers test it out. This will help you gather feedback that you can use to further improve your product. It will also help you gauge how the market reacts to it, and if it’s something that resonates with your target audience.

5. Validate and test

Since creating an MVP should have helped you finalize your product’s design, it’s now time to validate and test it. First, it’s important to see if your product addressed the problem that you were trying to solve. Second, you should test the different aspects and functionalities of your product.

Check that everything works as it should, and that you’ve addressed potential problems that may arise. You can even use this stage of product development in testing your marketing efforts. Make sure your campaigns are all set and will be ready for the launch.

Naturally, you would want everything to go off without a hitch. However, if you encounter a big problem, there’s nothing wrong with going back to the conceptualization stage. This doesn’t mean you’ve hit a dead end – it just means you have more information to go with for your next attempt.

6. Commercialize and scale

Once your different testing phases are complete, you’re now ready to launch your product to the market. Make sure you find your perfect market fit or the audience that has the highest need for your product. Once you nail this down, you can look into scaling the distribution of your product.

Easily do this by using different channels to spread the word about your product. You can also run various marketing campaigns online and offline, and even get the help of sales agents or distributors based on your product.

What is product development all about?

One thing you should understand is that the product development process isn’t set in stone. There are times when you may need to redo certain steps depending on the results you gather. Research and feedback are also a big part of the process, which means the concept for your product can change along the way.

Also, note that the product development plan and examples of stages that we shared are just a guide. You can customize it depending on the needs of your project.

Ultimately, product development is about continuously learning how to solve the pain point you’ve chosen. Don’t get discouraged if you encounter challenges along the way. You should always remember your goal!

Who are the members of a product development team?

Your project is more likely to succeed if you have the right people on the team. If you’re a startup, it’s possible that each team member may take on more than one role. This is okay, as long as the workload is manageable.

This is important to take into account if you’re looking to avoid a toxic work culture. Here’s a list of people that you need on your product development team:

1. Product manager

The product manager oversees everything in relation to the product’s life cycle. They create the product vision and strategy, spearhead market research initiatives, and take the lead in brainstorming sessions. He or she also ensures that the team is working towards a unified vision.

2. Project manager

The project manager’s main role is to make sure that the project is moving according to plan. Project managers usually keep track of everyone’s progress, as well as the project’s goals and budget. He or she also delegates tasks, makes sure the team plans retrospectives if applicable, and helps prevent any gaps in communication from happening.

3. Designer

The designer works mostly during the prototyping phase of product development.  Also, when design improvements are made throughout the project. He or she has a crucial role in designing the product to follow the company’s branding as well as UX & UI best practices. This means putting emphasis on the customers’ needs.

4. Developers

Developers deal with using research and concepts to bring the product to life. They help provide insights on the technical aspect of the product, such as what’s feasible to do and what’s not. You can have one or more developers in your team – it all depends on what the project calls for.

5. Testers

Testers are a big part of a product’s quality assurance (QA). They analyze the product and note down changes that can be done to improve one’s overall user experience. They also make sure that each aspect of the product is working the way it’s supposed to.

6. Marketers

Once you have your final product, it’s important to give it as much market exposure as possible. That’s where marketers come in. They help define your target audience and do research on the current landscape as well as your competitors.

They do this so that they can form a marketing campaign strategy for your product – one that can increase brand awareness and patronage. These are just some of the key personnel that you need on your product development team.

Depending on what the project calls for, the number of team members you have will vary. But one thing is certain, product development involves cross-departmental collaboration with different business functions coming together to build a new solution.

Effective project development tools

Now that you know what product development is, you’re ready to start creating your new product. Don’t forget to use the best tools for the project! If you want an easy way to manage the process, try out Rock - a holistic task management and communication tool.

Rock is the preferred tool of choice because it has everything you need. You get to send messages, create tasks, and monitor the progress of the project in one platform.

It also connects to different apps and third-party software providers that are useful in product development. This includes Google Drive, Dropbox, Miro and more. It streamlines the process of accessing files, lessens movement from one app to another, and makes collaboration easier.

Switching between synchronous and asynchronous work isn’t a problem on Rock either. Each Space has full-fledged task management functionality, which you work on with list, a board, or a calendar view.

The Tasks mini-app is packed with functionality – labels, descriptions, assignees, sprints, and start and due dates, to name a few. If you’re a Project Manager who wants to oversee movements on the project, there’s an option to follow tasks.

This gives you a great overview even if you may not be directly working on the task at hand. You can apply any kind of project management framework with flexible functionality across the board.

Rock also provides unlimited space for your files and conversations, so you don’t have to worry about losing important correspondence. You can even invite collaborators from outside your organization, absolutely for free!

You’re all set for your product development project!

Now that you know what product development is, why it’s important to have a product development plan, the different stages it involves, and who you’ll be needing on your team, you can certainly start creating your product.

By having a good product development plan, you can better grasp your team’s overall vision, as well as the steps you need to take to achieve your goals. Remember to stay focused on these goals as you work on your product.

Hopefully, your journey will solve the pain point you’ve pinpointed while also bringing something unique to today’s market.

Do you spend too much time working with emails? How about trawling through old threads to find important information?

It’s easy to forget that when sorting out emails, often, you aren’t getting any actual work done. Yes, you are working, but most tasks aren’t ticked off by categorizing email threads.

Emails can improve your work by streamlining communication. But once an email becomes time-consuming and cluttered, it's less effective.

That’s when implementing email organization strategies becomes important. By doing this, you get more work done, in a quicker, more effective way.

What is email organization?

Before beginning, let’s explain exactly what is meant by email organization.

Email organization is the digital equivalent of tidying your room or desk. There can be important pieces of information and items scattered everywhere. Amongst them, there is also a lot of rubbish that isn’t needed. When you go to find the important information, you have to sift through the irrelevant junk as well. This can quickly become a waste of your time.

Email organization is about keeping your inbox clean, structured, and usable. This allows you to stay organized and productive, setting you up for success in order to achieve company goals and objectives.

Why are email organization strategies so important?

There are a couple of levels to this. The first is about staying organized at work. The second is psychological.

To concentrate on the first point, a cluttered inbox is not productive. It takes time to process emails. When messy, information gets lost, is not responded to, and documentation goes missing. The whole process is less efficient.

Have you ever looked at your inbox and felt a bit of despair? Perhaps after a couple of days off, you’ve opened your email account and it seems that there is a mountain of tasks to complete. This is why email organization is psychologically important.

Many people use their inbox as an unofficial to-do list. If it’s always full, it can feel like nothing is progressing. This can impact mental health.

One study by researchers from the University of California found that ‘[t]he longer one spends on email in [a given] hour the higher is one’s stress for that hour.’

Organizing your inbox properly will reduce the time you spend on emails. Caroline Castrillon, writing for Forbes,  argues that workers, ‘are suffering from email overload’. The goal of these tactics is to get work done faster and reduce the chance of burnout.

Top 13 best email organization strategies to manage your inbox

With just a few well-implemented strategies, organizing an email inbox is straightforward and time effective. Below, we’ve set up a list of all email management best practices at work.

1. Folders and Categories

Creating a filing system is incredibly important when defining email management strategies. The terminology will vary slightly depending on the email client you use. But folders, categories, and labels help to group and file different types of emails.

To get started, identify the different types of emails you want to keep. For instance, sales leads, design, marketing, and industry information could all enter your inbox. Create a folder for each of them. Now, when one of these management emails enters your inbox, you can file it away into a relevant folder to quickly find information back.

Most email providers let you create subfolders as well. So for instance, in the ‘sales leads’ section, you could have, ‘follow-up’, ‘cold’, and ‘priority’, for the different stages of acquisition.

2. Filters

Filters can be a great email organization strategy.

If following best practices for managing email, automate as much as possible. Instead of manually wading through emails, filters can instantly categorize them. You can set up a filter with two basic inputs. The first is the term to monitor emails for. The second is the action applied to the email when a term is matched.

As an example, an administration team updates a website’s CMS extremely frequently. As part of their job, they respond to all change requests via email with ‘updated’. You could set up a filter to automatically move emails from the admin team with ‘updated’ into a dedicated folder.

3. Ditch email communication with clients or partners for Rock spaces

There are great alternatives to reduce emails and communicate in more efficient ways. Rock allows you to collaborate and communicate in one place with anyone. You can keep important conversations on Rock, easily access project information, and involve anyone at any point.

Create a space and invite colleagues from your team. You can also nurture cross-departmental communication and invite people outside your organization in every space. When working with another company on a project, Rock reduces the noise from your inbox as communications are done elsewhere.

Instead of several email threads, you can use full-fledged messaging and task management.

No matter the level of collaboration needed, Rock has you covered. If you have tasks that need to be completed, organize them in a Tasks mini-app. If messaging is the main requirement, Rock offers a dedicated chat in every space. Of course, you can easily combine both.

Work is then also integrated into your day-to-day work activity, which is a massive plus. Also, if you’re primarily looking for remote work tools, Rock is the perfect solution.

Use Rock topics for more versatility

You can create topics when you need to discuss a certain topic in more detail without overloading the main chat. Topics allow teams to have sub-conversations in a space while not overloading people who shouldn’t be involved with notifications. You can also move existing messages from the chat into topics, with Tap to Organize.

For example, if there are 20 people in a space, but a discussion only involves 5 people, you can move the conversation to a Topic. This way, the 15 other people that don’t need to be included in the discussion don’t get irrelevant notifications.

4. Move conversations with Quick Connect

Every Rock account has a Quick Connect link. It can be a link or a QR code that allows you to connect on Rock simply by scanning it.

Move email conversations to Rock with Quick Connect links in your responses to clients or in your email signature. If someone presses the unique link or scans the QR code, it creates an account on Rock, alongside a space with whoever sent the link.

By moving to Rock, you reduce emails. The conversation can continue within a dedicated space. This stops your email from filling with a 35 email thread with a colleague after colleague cc’d. With a Quick-connect link, you can get people started on Rock and use messaging and tasks to organize the discussion.

5. Unsubscribe from lists you don’t read

As much as we try to avoid needless subscription lists, sometimes it’s inevitable. Maybe you need an email address for a useful tool, you have to keep up with industry-related information, or you decided to put your work email instead of your personal one into an online shop.

One of the top email organization tips is to keep an eye out for the subscription emails that you repeatedly delete without reading. You should unsubscribe from the list rather than deleting the emails on a regular basis.

6. Properly check your emails once a day

As an exercise, over the course of a day, monitor all the time you spend doing emails. Understand how long you take to read, process emails, reply, and sort. Then with this information, ask yourself, was that time well spent? Often, the answer is no.

Set aside one time slot in the day to properly go through your emails and reply. Keep to this schedule, including a set time limit. If you go past your time limit, return to your emails the next day.

For this approach, you need to prioritize which emails are more important and which ones can wait.Depending on your job, monitoring emails is often unavoidable. For example, a lot of direct input positions require employees to react to time-sensitive emails.

Even if you are in this type of work, the ethos of this strategy is still actionable. Instead of constantly checking back on your inbox, set clear times, and concentrate on asynchronous work outside of those designated slots.

From time to time, an exceptionally long email enters your inbox. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking an exceptionally long email is exceptionally important. Scan the email quickly and assess if it requires your input. If not, file and archive it.

7. Reduce writing time

Just because an email is long, you don’t have to respond in kind. If you get into a back and forth with extremely lengthy emails, you should consider if another type of communication strategy is more effective.

Just like with reading your emails, set a time limit to write them. Distill the key information, don’t waffle, get your points across, and move on to the next email. If a reply is not very urgent, once your time is up, save the draft and come back to it at the next allocated slot.

8. Templates

With a bit of analysis, you can most likely find patterns in your management mail. These could be people, or inboxes, that you reply to or reach out to regularly.

For example, internal direct action emails for a website update, monthly reports, and answers to client requests, could all be emails you regularly compose. You might have a format for sending these emails, for instance, highlighting a couple of key figures in a monthly report.

Consider saving a template, write the words once and insert the figures monthly. Or think about this situation: a client emails you during a really busy day. You want to respond and acknowledge you’ve seen it, but will address the request at a later date.

With a template in place, you can write the email in seconds and get back to conquering your to-do list.

There are many situations where a basic template can outline information. This email organization strategy allows you to fill in the blanks and adapt it to the exact situation.

Write down answer templates on notes

If you have recurring answers to emails you can quickly write them down in a dedicated note on Rock. This means you can quickly access them and spend less time searching or writing repeated responses.

On Rock, the Notes mini-app lets you write down any information that you want to access easily.  If needed, your colleagues can also access these templates and make comments.

9. Prioritize

In an ideal world, we would respond to all emails instantly. But just like all day-to-day tasks, some emails are more important than others. Some emails can wait, and you shouldn’t spend time on some at all.

For some people, this is difficult to learn, but not every email needs a reply. Again, this is very dependent on your industry and position.

Do you need to respond to an automated email from the tech team about a detail irrelevant to your work? Absolutely not. What about an email from a client about terminating their contract? That’s a high priority.

As a generalization, communicating with clients and customers should be prioritized with quick and thought-out responses. On the other side, a back-end developer should put website downtime and essential maintenance at the top of their priority list.

10. Delete where possible

Before implementing these inbox management strategies, check what your company’s policy is here. Some businesses prefer to never delete emails. In this circumstance, use the archive function.

Dedicate time to clear out your inbox. Either bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly, put this time aside for a deep clean. This means moving old emails that aren’t relevant anymore into the trash bin. Make sure the information in an email isn’t needed for future projects.

11. Schedule in organization

The purpose of email organization strategies is to stop emails from creeping in and taking over your work time. Set clear times and stick to them. This point means scheduling time to review your inbox every week. Not necessarily to reply to people, but to file away loose ends, and not miss anything important.

With this dedicated time in the diary, you know you’ve planned to catch anything that falls through the cracks. You don’t need to keep checking your inbox out of fear and can concentrate on your tasks.

12. Keep team conversations on rock

Instead of searching in long email threads for messages with your team, you can discuss everything important in chat, topics, tasks, and notes on Rock.

This way, all collaboration and information exchange is in one place. This means you won’t lose any important details. Rather than trawling through email threads, it’s easier to find structured conversations on Rock.

Consider migrating key information from email threads into notes (if you want to document it) or tasks (if it’s actionable). This keeps work together in one place, it is more organized and accessible for everyone. You can also nurture more cross-functional collaboration by inviting different stakeholders to a space.

13. Process emails with task lists

There are two elements to this email organization strategy. The first is to create tasks to help remind you to manage your inbox.

For example, clean and organize your inbox either weekly, monthly, or quarterly. You can use Rock to remind you to do that.The second point is that in Rock, you can create tasks directly from emails with automation through Zapier.

This lets you streamline your workflow and spend less time switching between different tools.

Automate emails into tasks or messages With zapier

With Zapier, Tasks and Messages are automatically created into a Rock space. They can be created from an email account that you connected to Rock via the Zapier integration. When an email comes in, Rock notifies you and you know if you need to check it.

It’s very beneficial as you don’t have to monitor your inbox constantly. Another example is if emails are actionable tasks. For instance, organize support tickets better by automating them into a space. The colleague who deals with the tickets is then assigned to do the tasks.

With Zapier integration on Rock, include all the details of the email and automatically create a task out of it.

Automated creation of Tasks via Zapier integration on Rock can be useful if you often receive actionable emails in a certain inbox that require action. Automated messages alert you of important emails without constantly hovering over your inbox.

Organize your inbox with these email organization strategies and keep your work tidy

The old saying goes, ‘tidy room, tidy mind’. Perhaps the 21st-century version should be, ‘tidy inbox, tidy mind’.

In this article, we have listed some email management best practices to keep your inbox organized. The impact of email organization strategies isn’t just improving your work, but it can help with mental health and stress.

Rock is a great support when managing your day-to-day inbox. To find out more about how Rock can improve your email organization, sign up for free today.

Invite people and upgrade to PRO starter or TEAMS starter for free! The referral program rewards you with credits every time you invite new users and corporate domains. You can also earn credits by checking out different features on Rock, making it even easier to upgrade.

Top 3 ways to quickly earn a lot of credits

It is possible to quickly earn enough credits to upgrade to PRO or TEAMS. Here are three simple hacks to boost your credits.

1. Invite new users and domains
2. Import chats from other tools
3. Integrate your tool stack

1. Invite new users and domains

Send your Quick Connect link anywhere for people to join you on Rock. You can quickly earn a lot of credits with 1 new credit for every signup and 10 credits for every new corporate domain.Step by step:

1. Invite people to join you on Rock: Quick Connect, invite link, email or phone number.
2. Success! Receive 1 credit for every accepted invitation and 10 credits for every new domain.
3. Upgrade to PRO starter when you collect 20 credits or TEAMS starter with 150 credits.
4. Receive credits when the users you invited upgrade to a paid plan. Continue extending your PRO starter or TEAMS starter with enough credits.

2. Import from Slack or WhatsApp

The import feature rewards you with 10 credits and allows you to directly invite your whole team. Receive 1 additional credit for every user and 10 credits for every new domain you add during the import.Step by step:

1. Export your chats from either Slack or WhatsApp
2. Import them to Rock
3. Map users from your chats, this directly invites your imported spaces. Receive 1 credit per new signup and 10 credits for every new corporate domain.
4. Receive 10 credits for a successful signup.

3. Integrate your tool stack

The last few releases have added a lot of new videoconferencing and cloud storage integrations. Make sure to add your complete toolstack to quickly connect workstreams and gather some credits. Available integrations include:

• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• Onedrive
• Notion
• Miro
• Zoom
• Google Meet
• Figma
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Smartsheet

What can I earn from the Rock referral program?

Rewards from the Rock referral program depend on your current plan.

• PRO starter plan/extension [20 credits] -> Available to free users and those already on PRO starter that want to continue using it.
• TEAMS starter plan/extension [150 credits] -> Available to free users, those on PRO & TEAMS starter and PRO purchasers.
• Extend full PRO plan for an additional month [120 credits] -> Available to paid PRO purchasers.

There are currently no rewards for TEAMS plan purchasers. We will be adding custom options very soon! You can still collect credits, and use them when new rewards become available.

PRO starter plan

Redeem 20 credits to earn 5 free PRO spaces and two workspaces with up to 20 spaces each for 1 month. You can continue extending the plan as long as you have enough credits.

PRO spaces accommodate a whole range of added functionality that you can use to supercharge your communication and collaboration. To get more out of your task management, PRO spaces unlock:

• Calendar integration with the Tasks mini-app
• Custom fields
• Sprints
• Recurring tasks

In addition to that, PRO spaces also include:

• Pinboard functionality
• Zapier, Github, Rollbar, and Sentry bots
• Larger file upload limits, add files up to 50MB
• Scheduled messages
• More coming soon!

TEAMS starter plan

The TEAMS starter plan allows you to manage your team on Rock for 1 month in exchange for 150 credits. The plan includes the following:

• 10 PRO spaces: includes PRO functionality described in the previous section.
• 3 workspaces with up to 50 spaces.
• Team management functionality, 2 managers (user + someone else in your team), and claim domain.

If you have enough credits to renew, you can extend your TEAMS starter plan for another month. There are currently no limits on the number of redemptions.

PRO users: Extend the PRO plan

If you are currently under the PRO plan, you can extend your plan for free by 1 month in return for 120 credits.

How to earn credits

Receive credit rewards by directly inviting clients, team members, friends, or corporate partners to Rock. You can use credits to upgrade to the PRO starter or TEAMS starter plans.The Rock referral program compensates you with credits are the following:

• 1 credit: Inviting a new user
• 10 credits: Inviting a new domain
• 50 credits: Invited user upgrades to PRO
• 300 credits: Invited user upgrades to TEAMS

Invite a new user -  1 credit per user

Invite anyone, either in or outside of your organization to Rock. We reward you with a credit once the invitee successfully created an account and entered the platform. Here are a few ways to invite new users:

• Email invite: Create a space or add new users through space settings by inviting them by email.

• Invite by link: Enter space settings and look for invite links, this allows new people to directly join your space as a member or guest.
• Quick Connect: Use your Quick Connect link or QR code for people to open a new group space with you! When someone clicks on your dedicated link they can join you on Rock through a shared group space.
• Phone number: Create a new 1:1 space with a user that is not yet on Rock by entering their phone number in the 1:1 invite panel.

Invite a new corporate domain - 10 credits per new domain

Invite a user from a new corporate domain (e.g. acmecorp.com). Check the ‘invite a new user’ section for different ways through which you can add someone that is not yet on Rock.

A user will be considered a new corporate domain user under the rock referral program when:

• They are not signing up with a non-corporate domain (e.g. @gmail.com, @yahoo.com)
• The corporate domain does not have any matching accounts that already exist on Rock.

You will receive 10 credits once a new corporate domain has fully registered an account in addition to the single credit received for the invite. The reward for a new domain might be slightly delayed if the new corporate domain is not directly recognized in our system.

Additional signups from that domain that you directly invite will reward you 1 credit. 10 credits will be awarded for each new corporate domain you bring in, and can be earned unlimited times as long as the domain is not registered.

Invited user upgrades to a paid PRO plan - 50 credits per upgrade

You receive 50 credits under the Rock referral program if one of the users you invited to Rock through email, invite links, quick connect or phone number upgrades to PRO. Learn more about the PRO plan here.

You receive the credit reward only the first time a user upgrades to PRO, and it applies both to the monthly and yearly memberships. If a user renews the following year you will not receive additional credits.

• You receive 50 credits for any invited user that upgrades to PRO, even if they’re within the same domain.
• Switching from monthly to yearly memberships will not award additional credits.
• If a user upgrades from PRO to TEAMS, you will receive the reward credits for a TEAMS upgrade (if the user has not had the plan yet).
• If a user downgrades from TEAMS to PRO and has not been on PRO before, you will still receive the 50 credits.

You receive 50 credits for every individual user that you invited who upgrades to the PRO plan. PRO plan upgrade rewards are given out once per invited user.

Invited user upgrades to a paid TEAMS plan - 300 credits per upgrade

You receive 300 credits under the rock referral program if a user you invited through email, invite links, quick connect or phone number upgrades to a monthly or yearly TEAMS subscription. Learn more about the TEAMS plan here.

You only receive the reward if it’s the first time they upgrade to TEAMS. No recurring credits are received for plan renewals or monthly payments.

• You receive 300 credits for any directly invited user that upgrades to TEAMS, even if they’re within the same domain.
• Switching from monthly to yearly memberships will not award additional credits.
• Plan renewals will not award you with additional credits.
• If a user downgrades from TEAMS to PRO, you will receive the reward credits for a PRO upgrade (if the user has not had the plan yet).

You receive 300 credits for every individual user that you invited who upgrades to the TEAMS plan. TEAMS plan upgrade rewards are only given once per invited user.

6 Rock team tips for inviting people and new domains

Looking to get more team members, clients, partners or friends to join you on Rock? Here are a few suggestions on how to get them to join you and receive credits with the Rock referral program!

1. Share your Quick Connect link across channels

You can conveniently move communications from channels such as social media, email, or other platforms to Rock with your Quick Connect link. Remember that under the Rock referral program you get +1 credit for every new signup and +10 credits for every new corporate domain.

Here are some channels where you can embed your link:

• Email signature: Add your Quick Connect link to your email signature so people can quickly switch to communicate with you on Rock.

• LinkedIn profile: You can add your Quick Connect link to your LinkedIn profile so anyone who wants to connect can create a group space with you on Rock.

• Freelance platform profile (i.e. Upwork or Fiverr): Connect and communicate with clients on Rock by adding your Quick Connect link to your profile on Upwork or Fiverr.

• Contact link on your website: Have a contact form or link on your website? You can replace it with a Quick Connect link, pick a template and adjust your welcome message to anything!

• Social media messages: instead of inviting people to DM you, send a dedicated quick connect link for them to chat with you on Rock!

2. Import Tasks from other tools to continue work without friction

You can import tasks from Trello, Asana, ClickUp, Jira and CSV. This way you can continue your task management without losing past workflows and documentation.Continue work with all your tasks on Rock.

The import migrates titles, descriptions, labels, checklists and so much more! You receive 10 credits for each platform you import tasks from.

3. Import messages from Slack or WhatsApp and directly invite users

Rock allows you to import messages from Slack and WhatsApp so you don’t lose any past conversations while migrating your team. You can also configure the import feature to automatically invite the corresponding people to different spaces on Rock.

This means that you can instantly invite users across platforms while keeping past conversations available in every space. You receive +1 credit for every new user that joins and +10 credits for every new domain under the rock referral program!

4. Import your contact book on mobile

You can import your complete mobile contact book to Rock within a few seconds. This makes it easy to send invites to team members, clients, friends and even family members!

Here’s how you can import your contact book on mobile: user settings -> view my contacts -> import -> press ok.

You can invite new users by contact email or phone number by searching for their name when creating a new space. With your whole contact book on Rock, you won’t have to search for the correct phone number or email address.Importing your contact book also directly rewards you with +10 credits.

5. Explain the benefits of Rock

When inviting users to Rock, make sure to explain what makes Rock different from the rest. Here are a few unique features and benefits when switching to Rock:

• Messaging + tasks: Rock provides different ways of communicating and collaborating so you don’t have to switch between platforms to collaborate with each other.

• Unlimited spaces and invites: Instead of paying by team size or projects, you can create unlimited spaces and send as many invites to people in and outside of your organization for free.
• Loads of free integrations: Integrate with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Zoom, Google Meet, Notion, Miro, Figma, Loom and so many others for free!

Here is a sample text you can use when inviting people while earning credits for the rock referral program:

‘’Hi there! Join me on Rock to collaborate with messages, tasks and so much more in one place. Signing up only takes a few seconds and is completely free. Click on this link [insert Quick Connect link] to start communicating and collaborating for free!See you there!’’

6. Add your Quick Connect QR to posters, business cards, your website, or ads

Your quick connect link also comes with a custom QR code. Spark the interest of website visitors, clients or partners with a QR across your visual communications.

Here are some suggestions for locations where you can add your Quick Connect QR:

• Business cards
• Banners
• Social media background/post visuals
• Social ads
• Youtube video thumbnails or end screens
• Website pages: about us, contact, etc.

Allow people to join you on Rock by scanning your QR and earn credits from the Rock referral program!