It doesn’t matter if you’re a solopreneur doing the jobs of 3 people or a CEO heading a 100+ man agency. Collaboration is inevitable, whether it's about coordinating project briefs, finding suppliers, or discussing campaign details.In this article, you’ll get an idea of how to improve cross-team communication, communication strategies and collaboration using Rock.
Drop the emails and communicate on Rock
With traditional multi-app/service work models, working across teams meant having long email threads with partners and collaborators on top of messaging each other on instant messaging platforms and commenting on tasks in project management tools.
With Rock, you can keep things neatly organized in one place. From messaging to project management to note-keeping, a task board and files - Rock makes it possible to put everything in one place.
One of the things that will be front and center once you enter the app and see your spaces is the Chat mini-app. With chat, you can send messages and polls to quickly align on tasks and projects without having to go back to email threads or sit in meetings that don’t need to happen.
You can also use the Topics mini-app, which lets users sort more exhaustive discussions into a dedicated discussion block. This ensures that team members who have not been able to participate in discussions can easily catch up on what they missed. After all, when you’re working remotely and asynchronously, it’s understandable that not everyone can be online simultaneously.
You can @mention group members that you want to be notified on a specific thread to improve communications and visibility. The @mention feature makes it easier to grab people's attention and push forward specific conversations, topics, or tasks, ensuring they don’t miss important details.
Aside from all the chat and text communication features that Rock boasts of, the Meetings mini-app allows several meeting and video apps to be integrated into your Rock account.
When asynchronous work isn’t working out, you have the choice to integrate Zoom, Google Meet, or Jitsi for synchronous video conferencing. Loom support is also available for video messages or screen recordings to help with discussions where chatting simply won’t cut it.
Manage Projects Easily
You must be able to properly manage tasks if you want to have successful cross-team collaboration. After all, how will you be able to work together if you’re not able to delegate tasks properly? This is why Rock makes it easy for teams to track tasks and cross-reference information for everyone in the group.
You can use the Tasks mini-app to keep track of everything that needs to be done in a project. Task management on Rock can integrate with all mini-apps and integrations within Rock. So when looking at a specific task for a project, you can cross-reference existing topics, notes, and other tasks to the task.
Remember that since Rock allows you to create unlimited spaces and add an unlimited number of people into group spaces, you’re able to collaborate with all kinds of project stakeholders, both within your team and outside suppliers. Simply create dedicated workspaces for specific projects or specific teams and each space will have its own project management suite for better collaboration.
For more personal project management, you can use My Tasks to look at tasks you have created, are following, or are assigned to across spaces. This is a nifty feature when you are managing many deadlines and tasks across multiple clients or projects.
To make it easier to sift through everything, you can easily use filters to sort out tasks according to spaces, due dates, assignees, priorities, etc. My Tasks will allow you to stay on top of everything you have to do without going through each space’s tasks.
At the same time, your teammates and external stakeholders will be able to appreciate the fact that you can stay on top of things without all the nudges.
Discuss In The Right Place
Working between teams or organizations means that not everyone can be online simultaneously. So it’s vital to ensure that you discuss issues and updates in the appropriate spaces so that anyone can still jump in without losing context or needing to dig through threads.
Here are some Rock Team tips to ensure your teams practice proper knowledge sharing and documentation. After all, working across teams and across organizations means that you’ll need to ensure proper knowledge hand-off in order to keep things moving despite the lack of physical meetings.
- Keep appropriate discussions in relevant spaces to reduce the noise while allowing others to retrieve past communications.
- When discussions are getting too in-depth in the chat, move to topics to keep it all in one place.
- Keep essential details in notes, you can also attach important documents or cloud files to notes to keep documentation easily accessible.
- Use the comments section on tasks, topics, and notes to keep things within those discussions, ensuring that people who need to find information can easily find them.
- Don’t forget to @mention spaces, tasks, notes, files, or topics so that users can easily cross-check or cross-reference information without having to go looking.
Keep Documentation Robust
Working in a remote setup or cross-organizational means that people can’t just walk up to someone to ask about things, there are typically geographical or logistical barriers to making it happen. Additionally, if you’re working in an asynchronous environment, you can’t just ping people and expect them to answer you right away. The lack of proximity will mean that there will always be a delay in responses.
One thing that can help lessen the need for a back-and-forth between you and any other stakeholder is ensuring that any project or task documentation is exhaustive and up-to-date. Documentation will enable people to move forward without contacting other team members to get a reply as everything is already there.
Within Rock, the Notes mini-app ensures that any needed information is captured and viewed by anyone who needs it. Notes easily allow you to mention a task, a topic, a space, an attachment, or another note to ensure clear instructions and details to everyone who needs it. Any note added to a space is accessible to members of the space, so use this feature often and use it well!
📝 Rock Team tip: The My Notes section shows all the notes you’ve authored and all the notes in the spaces you’re in. Make sure to use this feature to keep track of information across spaces.
In addition to notes, make sure to take advantage of the Files mini-app in order to seamlessly integrate cloud files onto your items like notes or tasks. Files will allow you to integrate accounts from services like Creative Cloud, Figma, Dropbox, Google Drive, Notion, and more. This allows for better information sharing, reducing barriers, and potential information clashes with collaborators.
Start Rocking!
If you’re not sure where to start, the four pointers above should be a good start to help you and your team collaborate better and foster a productive work environment despite the lack of physical contact or communication.
After all, Rock enables teams to work better together despite the differences in geography and timezones.
