Salesforce Collaboration Tools: Enhancing Communication Across Departments

Nikita R.

Media-savvy content creator, with a curiosity for all Salesforce experiences.

Updated: Jul 24th, 2024

Clear communication between teams and departments is crucial for running a business well. When team members have a seamless way of sharing ideas with each other, the business is able to innovate and stay ahead of the tech curve. Increasing the amount of communication between team members also makes giving feedback on services and products easier so that customer experiences are elevated, which leads to repeat sales.

As we can see, adding refined ways to collaborate in your business has many advantages. One way you can easily use Salesforce to collaborate better and faster is by using their native collaboration tools in your workflows. For a list of collaboration tools on offer from Salesforce, keep reading our article.

We discuss each tool’s features and benefits. Make sure you also stick around till the end as we explore Titan’s use as a business collaboration tool! Let’s get started.

What are Collaboration Tools?

They are software apps and platforms that help individuals work better together in an organization. In this day and age of remote working, collaboration tools for business operations have become extremely useful in connecting people from wherever they work in the world.

There are different types of collaboration tools. Some will focus on supporting communication between people, whereas others specialize in managing projects from end-to-end. Let’s take a look at a few common features that reliable collaboration tools will possess.

Instant Communication

Collaboration tools will often provide people with a way to message each other in real-time. This system will incorporate chats, video, and voice calling to make communication and collaboration among different people easier and faster.

Simplify Project Management Tasks

Projects can be difficult to manage, especially if the assignment consists of many specialized professionals each tackling different parts of the whole. Collaboration tools can assist managers when it comes to:

• Assigning tasks to specific employees
• Tracking the progress of tasks or the entire project
• Tools that support timeline management

Document Sharing Capabilities

When teams have an easy way to share files online, they can have access to the most accurate documents. Collaboration tools with file-sharing features allow teams to work together on common business documents like spreadsheets or presentations. This type of collaboration feature inspires multiple team members to work on a single document in real time to get the best ideas or products.

It also speeds up work processes as team members don’t need to send emails back and forth for directions when working on a single document.

Streamline Workflows By Connecting to Other Tools

Collaboration tools also integrate well with other software and business apps to make work tasks easier. Some common software platforms that collaboration tools link up to include:

• Email Providers
• Online Calendars
• CRM Systems, like Salesforce

In this way, collaboration tools can help teams keep their projects well organized.

Team Collaboration Tools in Salesforce

Businesses can use Salesforce collaboration tools to improve employee productivity by allowing them to communicate faster with each other across teams, departments, and even geographical destinations. Here are a few remote collaboration tools from Salesforce that employees can use to message and work better with each other.

1. Salesforce Chatter

This Salesforce solution can be used in businesses to collaborate and socialize online in real-time. Chatter from Salesforce is one of the more popular collaboration tools for remote teams since it comes with these key features:

• Employees can use Chatter to post updates, share files with each other, and comment on colleague’s posts.
• It’s the perfect tool to get quick answers and feedback from subject matter experts to make the best decisions for a business.
• Managers can create public or private groups related to specific workflows, like team, project, or topic forums.
• Chatter in Salesforce sends notifications to employees. These alerts keep teams updated on information or whenever a person’s name has been mentioned in a group.
• Team members can use it to organize work discussions and invite key stakeholders to the session.

2. Quip from Salesforce

Previously known as the Salesforce Anywhere app, Quip is a popular Salesforce workflow collaboration tool. It is great for team productivity as it can combine documents, spreadsheets, and chat messages for employees. Here are some key features from Quip for Salesforce we can explore:

• Team members can create documents in real-time and share them with colleagues.
• Different team members can collaborate on documents and spreadsheets so they can be updated in real time.
• As Quip works well with spreadsheets, teams can create complex formulas and functions to assist data analysis in real time.
• Team members can chat with each other in the shared document in real time.
• With a Quip and Salesforce integration, businesses can enjoy using pre-built templates for common use cases in the office.

3. Salesforce Communities | Experience Cloud

Previously known as Salesforce Communities, Salesforce Experience Cloud lets designers build branded portals, websites, and online communities in Salesforce. These online communities are created for employees, partners, and customers to communicate and collaborate with each other. Here are a few key features from Experience Cloud to support customer communities in Salesforce.

• Web projects can be built without coding or programming skills as the tool has drag-and-drop functionality to customize applications.
• Designers can create a Salesforce community portal that matches the brand requirements of the business.
• Alternatively, designers can select pre-built templates to match a common business case, like partner portals.
• Writers can upload knowledge articles and other content to a community portal for visitors to access.
• The portal can include forums for visitors to communicate and collaborate with each other.

4. Einstein Activity Capture

This Salesforce tool automates tasks that capture emails and event information for teams. By using Einstein Activity Capture, teams can find all their communication logged in Salesforce. This means that all employees can speed up their data-capturing tasks for Salesforce as they don’t have to manually enter data from interactions with each other and customers from Microsoft and Google applications.

Here are some features from Einstein Activity Capture and Salesforce to help teams collaborate better:

• Einstein Activity Capture automatically captures data from emails and calendar events, like Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. The data is automatically linked to Salesforce records to remove manual data entries.
• When it comes to emails, Einstein Activity Capture collects inbound and outbound messages and then links them to Salesforce records like contacts, leads, or accounts.
• Einstein Activity Capture collects event data and stores them as Salesforce records so everyone can see when meetings will occur.
• All teams can find their latest information and communication on Salesforce, as data is synced consistently.
• Einstein Activity Capture has reporting and data analysis functionalities. For example, managers can view data on team tasks, like how many emails were delivered or how many meetings were scheduled.

5. Files

If you are looking for a tool that manages and shares files within your CRM, then Salesforce Files is pretty good at attaining this goal. Here are some key features from Salesforce Files to boost team collaboration in the workplace:

• Team members can share files with a single person, a group, or the whole business.
• Your business can share files with external partners, customers, or vendors.
• You get to track all changes to files by viewing their history.
• You can control who can access and make changes to files.
• Salesforce Files can attach documents to records.

Third-Party Salesforce Cloud-Based Collaboration Tool

There are also advantages to choosing third-party collaboration tools that integrate with Salesforce. Your organization might have specific needs and goals that can only be achieved by secure collaboration tools that have the advanced features you are looking for. As one example, many businesses choose third-party online collaboration tools when they need special features that Salesforce does not have for project management or document collaboration.

Another reason businesses choose third-party tools instead of Salesforce native ones is that they might provide a different user experience. Many third-party tools dedicate their features to user experiences by making the software interfaces user-friendly. When customers find tools that are easy to use, they don’t want to adapt to other solutions that are complex and have a learning curve.

Additionally, third-party apps that work on mobile devices are very attractive to businesses that employ people who are always on the go. If you can relate to this and are looking for advanced software collaboration tools, we can recommend Titan. Our powerful no-code platform for Salesforce gives your teams extensive customization options to tailor your workflows to your specific business requirements.

Take a look at some of the features you get from Titan:

Teams can use the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature to scan text from documents like receipts and passports so they can sync data to Salesforce automatically, instead of manually entering data.

Add barcodes to your projects with Titan, with data pushed automatically to Salesforce.

With Titan, teams can automatically merge files into new formats for Salesforce.

Teams can use Titan to create, route, update, execute, and report on approval processes like contract management or working with employee absence requests, all in Salesforce.

Titan can integrate Salesforce into your favorite collaboration tools online, like Google Drive or One Drive.

Titan can create powerful workflows to push and pull real-time data directly to and from your team’s Salesforce databases.

Titan automates every stage of business processes while making Salesforce your single source of truth.

You can mix and match different interfaces and build any business process customized to your organization.

Your Titan and Salesforce workflows can integrate with countless leading payment platforms for secure and convenient transactions.

Other state-of-the-art features that require no coding include conditional logic, eSignatures, and document generation directly from Salesforce.

We hope to see you soon!

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Disclaimer: The comparisons listed in this article are based on information provided by the companies online and online reviews from users. If you find a mistake, please contact us.