A Comparison Of The Four Most Popular Collaboration Tools

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a start-up, medium-sized company, corporation, marketing department, project team, agency, or a team made up of freelancers: collaboration tools offer numerous advantages in working together and in collaborative project management. In the following, we present the five most popular collaboration software in the areas of “task management,” “project management” and “communication”:

1. in fact
2. asana
3. Trello
4. Slack

Fact

Facto organizes itself into projects and individual tasks. These can be filled with comprehensive information, such as a description, checklist, responsibility, time planning, performance recording, and utilization overview. Users can choose the view according to individual preferences and practical added value. Kanban, a project structure tree, and a beneficial task list that can be filtered and grouped are available. With factro, cloud-based teams can work together flexibly at any time, regardless of location.

Advantages

1. GDPR and BDSG new compliant
2. complex performance recording
3. free personal customer support
4. Best Practice Store with ready-made structural templates

Disadvantages

1. Booking from 3 users
2. The Kanban board is limited to four columns

Asanas

Initially, this project management program from the USA was primarily intended to improve the productivity of Facebook employees. Today it is used to facilitate organization and teamwork. The workflow is presented in the form of individual cards. With the help of Asana, any number of teams can be assigned to a workspace in which projects can be organized, and tasks can be created and edited. For this purpose, deadlines can be defined, or local files or documents from Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive can be attached. The dashboard shows all tasks at a glance and can be sorted by alphabet, deadline, or task status. Other features:

1. team calendar
2. project chat
3. Message system with archive
4. Synchronization of tasks with external calendar software
5. Print and export functions

Advantages

1. Own message system
2. Free for up to 15 users

Disadvantages

1. English-speaking customer service
2. Storage on American server – not GDPR compliant
3. No free guest users can be integrated

Trello

Like Asana, the Trello program is built into lists in which various tasks are created as cards. The program was developed based on the Kanban project planning method. For this reason, the tool provides three lists: “To Do,” “In progress,” and “Done.” The tool enables the planning and implementation of individual tasks ( task management ) by designing cards with different options:

1. assign members
2. Check off checklists
3. comment functions
4. Determine deadlines
5. Attach links or files (local files or documents from Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive)
6. Use activity log

Additional features are added via power-ups, but these expansion options are limited to the free essential function.

Advantages

1. intuitive operation
2. many design options for tasks

Disadvantages

1. unchangeable position and structure of the cards
2. Storage on American server – not GDPR compliant
3. confusing archive

Trello is ideal for simple task management, but the tool can quickly reach its limits with more complex projects.

Slack

With this tool, the focus is on communication. In companies and agencies, Slack is mainly used for mutual exchange – in the form of personal messages or attached documents. To create the best possible communication platform, any number of channels – chat rooms – can be made. The tool has no other features for collaborative work in a team – so it needs an alternative for project and task management, for example. For this, it can be closely linked to other applications. Some examples are:

1. File management: Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Box
2. Communication: Hangouts, RSS, MailChimp, Skype
3. Development: GitHub, IFTTT, Zapier
4. Marketing: Statsbot, Drift
5. Productivity: Trello, Google Calendar, Asana
6. Social & Fun: GIPHY, Twitter, Bitmoji
7. Design: InVisionApp, Zeplin, Lucidchart

Advantages

1. easy sharing of documents
2. Connection to other software

Disadvantages

1. limited to communication
2. Storage on American server – not GDPR compliant
3. confusing from a certain number of channels

Also Read: The Advantages Of A Construction Project Management Software