In a corporate world increasingly dependent on teamwork, perhaps no innovation is as simple or valuable as document collaboration. With several people working on a single file, all without being in the same room, you can compose, modify, refine, and approve documents of all types rapidly and with as little risk of errors as possible. This is a simple way of preventing low productivity due to too many meetings for both leadership and staff, with team members distracted from valuable projects and routine tasks.
Collaborative document-sharing and -writing features are built into a wide variety of office suites and other software platforms. It’s possible to enhance these features further still using document collaboration tools during and outside of real-time meetings.
What is Document Collaboration?
Document collaboration is a meeting between two or more individuals to discuss, review, and suggest or approve alterations to one or more important documents. Traditionally, this process had to be carried out in person, typically in a meeting room, with each participant having an individual copy of every document under discussion.
Real-time document collaboration has revolutionized such conferences by enabling administrators to digitalize the process of revising and updating documents with live feedback from all the relevant stakeholders. Document collaboration tools can streamline the creation process before, during, and outside of meetings, and will give contributors and administrators an expanded toolkit to approve and protect documents prior to releasing them.
Sidestepping the need for in-person or live meetings offers several distinct advantages. Through document collaboration, meeting administrators won’t have to invest time and resources in planning, preparing, and scheduling meetings or video conferences. Similarly, participants won’t need to make time in their working days to attend events or to prepare for video calls, thus saving them time and enabling them to focus on their most pressing tasks.
How to Collaborate on Documents without Meetings
Convene in Teams (CiT) is a meeting management platform designed for seamless integration with Microsoft Teams. It offers an array of document collaboration tools for efficient, real-time participatory work on important files, as well as opportunities to access and edit files and address concerns on your own time, outside of scheduled meetings or collaborative sessions. While it’s possible to collectively compile and edit documents in group settings using platforms such as Microsoft Office, doing so can be a cumbersome, insecure process requiring more time and precautions.
CiT avoids many of the drawbacks of collaborative work through the following features:
Review Rooms
CiT offers the option to create Review Rooms: a secure, access-controlled virtual workspace built around collections of documents. Participants may be granted access based on their level of involvement in a project or their need to know. As part of the document collaboration tools, participants can review and privately or publicly annotate documents, take notes, and suggest important changes to files. Users will also receive notifications when changes are accepted or rejected and when other important edits are made or suggested.
Action Tracking
CiT allows participants to assign actions and track their progress on any document revisions or updates. With this document collaboration tool, administrators can gain insight into the amount of time it takes for an action to be completed while ensuring accountability by clearly laying out the task details per individual.
Signature Tools
With Convene’s built-in Signature Tools, CiT users can sign or initial documents safely, quickly, and transparently. This secure document collaboration feature can be valuable for time-sensitive projects requiring relevant participants to sign off on documents with tight turnaround times.
Security and Traceability
While Microsoft Teams document collaboration is a valuable asset, it doesn’t come with the range of convenient secure document collaboration features offered by CiT. These include enhanced traceability to monitor the progress of documents and protect them, with viewing and editing permissions restricted to authorized users only. CiT’s audit trail, for instance, can serve as a record of actions taken regarding certain documents or files. In addition, documents — along with all edits, notes, and action items — can be quickly and easily recovered in CiT due to built-in permanent documentation.
Explore the Latest Document Collaboration Features in Convene in Teams
Convene in Teams is a proven meeting management system built to enhance the user experience within Microsoft Teams. This document collaboration software has so much to offer meeting administrators who want to maximize flexibility and collaboration among document conference participants. This agile platform comes with an extensive array of features designed to allow participants to review, annotate, and develop documents in real-time without setting aside working hours for virtual or in-person meetings.
At every stage of the collaboration, CiT’s comprehensive recoverability and collaborative editing features enable administrators and users to retain access to every iteration of their most important documents and to make changes with minimal delay and maximum precision.
Want to learn more? Head on to CiT’s features page and see how the platform can take your document collaboration to the next level.
Audrey is a Content Marketing Specialist at Convene, in charge of managing the production of quality content on the company’s website. A communication major keen on marketing, Audrey has been constantly seeking approaches to create tailored content—may it be about governance, digitalization, boards, or meetings—fit for the stakeholders. When not strategizing on the next ebook to produce, Audrey finds solitude in reading make-you-ugly-cry novels and listening to self-improvement podcasts.
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