Convo, a tool perhaps best described as a real-time company message board, picked up a new trick this week: automated acknowledgements.
It’s a pretty common thing in the corporate world: you need to send something out to all of the employees at your company, but you also need to know exactly who has seen it (and, of course, who hasn’t.) Who actually got the memo? Can you say that everyone has seen some mandatory reading? Who still needs to see it?
The load of information being shared on multiple platforms makes it difficult to ensure that it has been seen. This leaves room for misinformed employees, loopholes in following standard guidelines and poses a threat to overall reliability of communication processes.
Convo has designed the first enterprise social networking platform for a diverse range of verticals. Integrating with different apps and bringing everything you need to work under one platform, Convo creates a digital environment fit for delivering information, collaborating on it and making sure everyone is on the same page. With network wide distribution of information, ensuring compliance and integrity is a necessary facet which the platform does not overlook.
Post Acknowledgements on Convo
How it Works
Try it Out Today
The non-desk workforce is an essential part of a company and requires proper means of communication to be productive. While most software in the market that provide decent collaboration options, only a few succeed in delivering all the required functionality to employees at every level of the organization.
Most collaboration platforms focus on the desk force, the people in the office, and are created keeping them in mind. However, for any platform to fully optimize productivity and improve performance, it needs to integrate non-desk and desk workers equally in a company. It is not sufficient to cater to only one of these categories as the entire team needs to be connected, coordinated and Unified to achieve common goals. Keeping this in mind, Convo accommodates both desk and non-desk employees, unify them in a single space, and provide state-of-the-art communication as well as collaboration features.
Sign Up With Ease, Without Email
Most non-desk workers are either seasonal employees or work on a project basis. Due to this, many businesses hesitate to provide them with a company email. At the same time, employees look for easy ways to communicate within the organization. To achieve this, Convo now allows users to sign up with their personal mobile phone number or personal email address.
Enabling Sign Up is super fast and easy. Your Convo network admin can upload a CSV file containing all the contact details of your company’s registered users. These include their first names, last names, mobile phone numbers, or personal email ids of non-desk employees you wish to bring into your Convo network. All the users present in the latest CSV will be eligible to sign up to network. Once a user has signed up, any subsequent CSVs that the network admin uploads won’t remove them from Convo, even if their information isn’t in the CSV. The only way to remove a user that has signed up is from the Team Directory. This way the Network Admin doesn’t have to worry about the entries in the CSV, every time new people join the organization.
What happens after the CSV is uploaded? The network admin can send an Invite SMS (in case of a phone number) and Invite Email (for a personal email address) to users in the CSV. The link in the invitation SMS/Email takes the user to sign up page, where they can easily sign up to network via mobile phone number or personal email address.
This feature is an easy way for everyone to stay connected on the network. Companies having to create and disable email accounts for every new employee that joins the network. It also allows flexibility for existing users to change their signup email from their work email to mobile phone number or even a personal email account. Apart from making it easier for seasonal employees to join a central platform and stay engaged with the company, this new feature will also reduce the cost of handling email for all such employees for the company and improve communication within the non-desk and desk workforce all in all.
Try it Out Today
Want to improve productivity and create a more connected, engaged and unified workforce? Come on board to Convo and start using for free today. Signup with your personal email, your work email or your mobile phone number. The choice is yours.
Fast Decision-Making
The Power Of Polls & More
Newsfeed on Convo serves as a centralized medium for getting the network wide updates and interacting with them from the same place. It’s the home view for users which allows them to skim through content shared with them, in groups they’re a part of and post they comment on.
Posts which appear on the newsfeed are customizable. Users can hide posts from specific groups from showing up on their newsfeed. This ensures that the feed is not cluttered and users can always focus on the important stuff.
Introducing Feed Sorting
‘Currently’ the newsfeed on Convo auto organizes itself based on the recent activity on posts, regardless of when the post was created. This helps bring the most active posts on top and keeps them in the user’s view.
When using a mobile, tapping on the feed view or group name on Group view will show two options – Latest Activity and Latest Post. By default, Latest Activity is enabled, however you can switch to Latest Post which sorts the feed by latest post in all views.
The retail workforce relies heavily on efficient communication and it requires a platform that can help retailers connect and collaborate effectively. To cater to this, Convo designed a platform designed specifically for retail. This enables retailers to connect their desk and non-desk teams and sign up using only their phone numbers, without needing email.
Convo is thrilled to announce that H&M, the fast-fashion, global retail leader, has deployed our new mobile-first, retail social collaboration platform! With more than 15,000 employees across the United States, H&M is using Convo to connect and keep its employees in the loop across 500+ stores throughout the country.
Convo brings consumer tools to the enterprise, enabling fast, flexible and secure communications and collaboration throughout the organization, helping everyone perform at their best.
Using Convo, H&M enables its desk and non-desk workers to stay continuously informed. Enabling effective, two-way communication and collaboration is critical in retail environments, where store associates are largely young workers who grew up on social media, operate on instant information, and rely on their mobile phones. They expect employers to provide them with tools that they know how to use to stay up-to-date, share information and engage with co-workers regardless of location, department, or region.
Using Convo, H&M can continue its commitment to enhancing the customer experience and maintaining a strong brand affinity with employees. Employee experience is critical for retailers to create engaged and inspired frontline brand ambassadors that can deliver the best customer experience possible.
Research shows empowered, engaged employees are more loyal, and deliver better customer service, which in turn boosts customer experience, loyalty and sales. According to Quantum Workplace, organizations with engaged employees have, on average, 24% lower turnover, a 20% increase in sales and 10% higher customer metrics.
Concurrent with announcing H&M as a major global retail customer, Convo, also formally unveiled and announced general availability of the first enterprise social collaboration platform designed specifically for retail. Convo’s Retail Social Collaboration platform takes the form of a social feed that enables desk and non-desk employees to communicate and collaborate securely in real-time. This is possible without them having to use corporate email. By simplifying group-based communication across departments, stores and regions, Convo unifies the workforce, empowering employees to become the retailer’s best customer facing advocates.
Organizations with team comprised largely of non-desk workers have a special set of challenges. For starters, the management must foster a a corporate culture aimed at maintaining a highly motivated workforce. If employees feel that companies are not keeping them informed about what’s happening, their morale drops, affecting their performance.
According to an ongoing Gallup study, disengaged employee costs you 34% of their salary because of lost productivity, missed shifts, chronic tardiness, and disrupting others by spreading negativity throughout the company. Left unaddressed, unengaged employees also negatively impact the customer experience and erode the brand’s sales, loyalty, and profitability.
With today’s workforce increasingly dispersed, it’s critical that employees are equipped with efficient communication and collaboration tools.These tools must support fast, continuous updates, answers, and employee feedback between and among teams, departments, regions and throughout the company. However, the tools should also improve the employee experience, delivering the workforce a sense of teamwork, camaraderie and even pride.
Convo is a tool specialized in helping companies with non-desk employees stay connected and work easily from wherever they are.
Rise Of The Non-Desk WorkForce & Need For Simple, Effective Collaboration Tools
According to a recent study, 75% of today’s workforce is made up of non-desk workers. These are the people who work on the store floor, in warehouses, the field, or on the go. A non-desk workforce serves as a company’s frontline brand ambassadors, so it is pivotal that they are motivated and inspired to deliver the best customer experience possible.
Despite the availability of numerous collaboration platforms and communication tools, there is still a huge communication gap between traditional desk-based workers and frontline workers. A number of challenges that have a direct effect on company productivity and revenue. A collaboration platform designed to connect the non-desk workforce and enable easy, secure conversations between desk and non-desk workers. This accelerates company productivity and employee engagement.
Promoting Cultural Affinity Among A Non-Desk Workforce
85% of non-desk workers have complain about management’s. Poor communication tools prevent management and employees from being better informed so they can improve their job performance. This disconnection alienates employees and keeps them from embracing the company’s values and culture. When employees become less engaged, productivity gaps begin to surface.
Employee engagement within a company is crucial to successfully accomplish long term goals. Fostering a social connection is key to creating engaged employees. Convo allows you to do just that. It combines the ease of social networks with rich collaboration capabilities to simplify and optimize work interactions for all employees — no email required.
It gives the same look and feel as social networks and offers employees a simple way, regardless of location or device – to stay connected with peers, get answers immediately, share inspiring stories and work efficiently.
Engaged Employees = Satisfied Customers = Increased Revenue
Perception is crucial when it comes to a company’s success. In any industry, whether that be retail, healthcare, technology etc., the one thing that always differentiates companies is the way their customer is made to feel. Better customer experiences improve revenue and the bottom line. When a customer’s experience is good, they give repeat business which helps cement customer loyalty.
The connection between the consumer and the company always lies in the hands of the employees. According to a recent study, highly engaged businesses see a 20% increase in sales.
Convo helps bridge the gap between companies and employees. It promoting the feeling of being one by sharing achievements with peers, using polls to gather popular user opinion, and making sure that everyone is heard. and offering social media like information sharing where people can contribute their ideas.
Streamline Team Communications
Convo works in sync across all devices on Android, iOS, Web, Mac and Desktop app and helps companies engage, empower and motivate employees by providing easy access to company information and offering real-time contextual collaboration.
We invite you to get started on Convo today so you can test out and experience improved productivity and engagement throughout your team.
Communication within teams is one of the most basic foundations for the key to success. However, the standard of work is changing and it’s not simply about improving productivity, but how well a company can enable their employees and teams to adapt to situations and circumstances. Imagine if you had to walk in for a work presentation, and your team calls you to confirm some important numbers in the powerpoint. Yet you only have your mobile on hand and realize that you have to shuffle through several reports, which are scattered across different platforms, with only 10 minutes left on the clock. You waste so much time trying to find one specific page in your mountain of resources that you lose precious time, leaving you two choices: walk in late or give the presentation, questioning the validity of the numbers you just presented.
Searching for documents across a myriad of different platforms, whether looking on the company’s server, Google Drive, DropBox, laptop, etc., can be a real drain on one’s time, reducing efficiency and often creating a feedback bottleneck. Ideally, having all work-related information in one single platform would enable an individual to focus on the quality of their work rather than wasting valuable time searching and gathering the right documents and pieces of data. Work should be easier. At Convo, we give your business an easy platform to collaborate and share information all in one place.
Turn boring team meetings into fun visual discussions
Picture this familiar scenario: your work is being shared among your team while you wait for approval. This waiting period often seems like one’s work drafts fell into a black hole. Now, envision having all feedback given to you at ONE place. Convo allows you to do JUST that.
Using Convo’s real-time collaboration features, you can not only create content but also add attachments to turn your team meeting into a highly-interactive feedback mechanism. You can even inject some fun by using some of Convo’s entertaining features that are also available in the commenting system. Attachments within your posts enable your team to visualize your idea in real-time. Convo’s platform supports a broad range of content from documents you have to finalize, a presentation you want to share, a graphic design you need feedback on, or even video projects you have in development. All you have to do is click on the attachment icon and select the files you want to upload or simply drag and drop them on the post. You can also directly import files from Dropbox or Box to your posts.
Now, rather than plodding through another project review meeting with your team, using Convo, your team has a new level of flexibility previously unavailable. You can receive each team member’s feedback faster and more efficiently via their edits, comments or annotations to your work. Providing their collective knowledge on different aspects of your project, enables the entire team to work together virtually yet still create the best possible outcome. It’s a win-win, because the level of efficiency for all involved is maximized so the project can proceed to its conclusion.
Reduce the back and forth on document collaboration
Convo has a revolutionary feature called annotations. Convo’s annotations enable employees and teams to do a range of things: markup files, provide instant feedback and have conversations over files and documents as if you’re in the same room as your entire team or customers without ever losing context. You can have highly productive, effortless conversations with your team in no time at all.
Imagine having a mockup shared with you for feedback. Rather than sending this same document back and forth via email or say Google docs among your team, you can simply post the draft on Convo, and everyone can see the collective feedback and chime in as needed.
The annotation feature allows you to pinpoint the areas that need work and will take you exactly to the location on the document that need to be revisited and fixed. All you have to do is click the annotation snippet and it takes you to the exact spot. This way, all members of the team can get an overview of changes, mistakes, and adaptations being made to the mockups in real-time while providing their feedback as well. Everyone now knows exactly what is being talked about and can mark their approval accordingly.
Bring everything related to a project in one place
Convo not only reduces your burden of email for internal collaboration but integrates external communication as well. The outside world of your email and all projects are brought together in one unit using a feature called integrations.
Convo integrates with over 400 widely used apps like Gmail, Box, DropBox, Salesforce, Twitter, etc. By linking these apps, you get all your communication and information in one place on your newsfeed. Imagine never having to pop in and out of multiple applications, endlessly searching for one document attachment that was emailed, one stored in Google drive, the other in shared as a DropBox link, etc.
And the most important thing that makes Convo the ideal choice for teams is that it offers the same collaboration features on Web, Desktop and Mobile devices. If your team is not on Convo yet, it’s time to bring them aboard and begin to inspire them.
As we reach Q4, let’s take a quick look back on all the good things that came to the Convo platform this year.
Geo Tagged Posts
Convo introduced Geo tagging of posts to help connect the non-desk workforce with the workers in offices. It enabled them to share their location with their teammates, whether they were logged in from mobile or web, with just a click. The feature helps managers keep track of their teams and makes reporting easier for field workers.
User profiles on a work platform are great icebreakers, giving groups an easy way to initiate conversations and help teammates get to know each other. They are also a good way to exchange contact information like phone numbers, addresses, etc., in case someone needs to reach out to a teammate when they’re not available in the office.
Convo’s custom user profiles were added to give users a more personalized view of their Convo networks. Network admins are allowed to create as many custom fields as required to fit each company’s individual culture and needs.
Advanced Group Settings
Groups have always been an integral part of the Convo platform. They help keep conversations organized and give you a central place to capture team or project discussions. To give you more power over the content being shared in groups, advanced group settings were also introduced in Convo.
Group admins now have the ability to restrict users from leaving groups and allow only specific members to create posts. Restricting post creation for other members means, they will not be able to create, edit or tag the the group in already created posts. This preserves the integrity of the information shared and allows only select users to make changes.
Advanced Network Settings
Along with advanced group settings, Convo introduced the ability for network admins to restrict group creation. This allows admins to control the number of groups being created on the network and helps keep track of information a lot easier.
The platform also now supports sending out SMS notifications across the network, enabling admins to send important messages and alerts to people within the network.
Default Notifications and Trending Topics
It’s important to stay on top of all activity happening on your network. Recognizing this, Convo introduced two new features to make activity tracking easier for everyone. The default notification settings made it mandatory for users to get notified about select activity preferences set by the network admins.
The trending hashtags, on the other hand, allow users to see what are the most popular posts on the network, and making them easier to obtain.
That’s not all that is happening this year. Stay up to date with Convo’s blog to hear about the many new features coming your way before the end of 2018.
Convo believes in bringing you the best toolset for improving your team’s collaboration and helping you do great things together. What’re you waiting for? Switch your team over to Convo today and start collaborating the right way.
Convo is a centralised platform for teams to share, discuss and collaborate on projects in real time from any device. It combines a powerful chat, search and feed that auto organises activity based on activity to give a faster way of working for teams in the office and on the go.
In the past few months, Convo has been focused on delivering power features to its users to improve their collaboration experience and offer more flexibility to their daily workplace communication. To catch up on all the features we rolled out recently, check out our most recent posts.
In the new release, Convo introduced two more features which will help users keep track of what’s happening on their network and always keep them in the loop.
Convo offers remarkable flexibility when it comes to managing data shared on its networks. Network admins are able to monitor all content, define company policies, create custom user profiles, manage users and define their privileges on the network.
With this release, Convo offers more privileges to the network admins to make management easier and improve overall productivity of their teams.
Disable Group Creation Option For Users
Groups provide a dedicated space for having team specific discussions or managing projects you are working on. However, in some cases this leads to a number of outdated and unnecessary groups that network admins must identify and monitor individually. Currently on Convo, all users except guest users can create groups.
By default, everyone who becomes a member will be able to create groups. So this new change will not disrupt the current flow in which existing networks operate. In order to restrict group creation for regular users, network admins need to enable it from Manage Groups section. This feature will also increase team productivity by providing a lesser number of groups to keep track of.
Network-Wide SMS Notifications
SMS notifications are an integral part of staying connected with peers and getting alerts or reminders about different activities taking place. They come in handy when communicating urgent information with people in remote areas or sending out updates to people on the go.
Now on Convo, admins can also use SMS notifications to send out information and alerts to all users on their networks at any time. They can do this by going to ‘SMS Notification’ section in the network settings. Admins will have the choice to add a network name as a signature at the bottom with the SMS. The characters of the network name will be subtracted by the total character limit of the SMS.
This provides a quick way to deliver textual information. SMS notifications will be allowed to carry URLS and text, but currently will not be supporting any attachments.
Sign Up For Free Today
Excited about trying out the new updates? Reload and rejoice. If you aren’t a Convo user yet, this is one more reason why you should get on board. You can also expect more features and updates from our team soon!
Try Convo for free today or contact us at support@convo.com to see how we fit your business needs.
Groups on Convo are an effective medium for sharing information with team members and having detailed discussions on them. They give everyone a centralized place to find team specific information and serve as a knowledge base.
Currently on Convo, post creators decide how people interact base on the shared information. This means that only post creators get to decide whether a post will be ‘read only’ or allow other users to edit and comment on it. By default, all members on a Convo network have the ability to create posts.
Restrict Post Creation In Groups
Now, with the release of restricted post creation feature, we have given group admins the ability to set interacting preferences in groups.
This means that the group admins will be able to choose which members will be allowed to create & edit posts in the group. This adds a new level of control and improves information sharing in closed audiences.
Group admins can select post creators while creating a group. If they select the option to allow only select members to create posts, and don’t add any members in the post creators list, only the group admins will have post creation rights in the group.
If they add members to the post creators list, only those members and group admins will have the right to create posts in that group. Any member who is granted post creation rights will also be added as a member to the group. Group admins can change post creators after group creation at anytime by going into the group settings.
With restricted post creation, groups can be used as a new medium for broadcasting information which only select people in the group can manage and everyone else can view and comment on.
Restrict Leave Group
By default, everyone on Convo is allowed to leave a group they have joined whether it is public or private. This is so that users have the flexibility to leave groups for projects and teams they are no longer part of. However, there are some groups on a network which are used to deliver important information like company news and policy notices etc. With members leaving these groups, it becomes hard for the admins to ensure delivery of important information.
To help with this, group admins can now restrict members from leaving a group at the time of group creation as well as change this setting any time by going into group settings.
This makes it easier for managers to keep track of everyone who joins a group and helps in effective information delivery.
More Coming In The Summer
Convo is all about its users and we try our best to make sure you get all the flexibility you want to make your workdays faster. Enjoy these new features across all Convo apps on web, desktop and mobile.
Keep reading the blog for more updates, there’s a lot coming your way. Meanwhile, if you’re still not on Convo, hop on for free today or contact us at support@convo.com to see how Convo best fits your business needs.
Personalization is important in making users feel connected to the product. It helps develop a sense of comfort while using the product and adds an intrinsic value to it. Keeping that in mind, we are now adding customization to Convo profiles and making them more informative and easily modifiable according to every organization’s need. Having customers from all verticals, we believe this was an important step in the roadmap, which has now been completed and is ready for you all to give it a go.
All About Custom User Profiles
1. What Are They?
Previously on Convo, the information visible on individual user profiles was predefined and exactly the same for everyone on Convo regardless of their network. Now, along with permanent fields in user profiles (which are imperative to the user profiles and will always be there) , network admins will be able to create company specific custom fields for getting required information from their users.
Users will also be able to add information to these custom fields, which will display in the right sidebar of their profile page and be visible to everyone on their network.
2. How Do They Work?
Network admins will be able to add as many custom fields as they want. They will also have the ability to lock custom as well as permanent fields. Locking a field means users will not be able to enter or edit data in that field. This gives network admins the ability to deliver specific user information like profile links, employee ID, department name etc., to network-wide audience meanwhile ensuring the data remains secure at all times.
3. What Value Do They Offer?
The idea behind this was to make Convo more tailor fitted according to every organization’s needs and make information delivery more manageable and centralized. With that design consideration in mind, these custom fields appear in the user profile as ‘Additional Info’ with the already existing permanent fields. The fields that are locked will display a lock icon in front of them in user profile settings, indicating that users cannot edit information in these fields.
Locked fields are great when it comes to providing untampered and errorless information network-wide. Consider the example of a manager who wants to reach out to employees working on the go. A locked custom field with everyone’s up-to-date contact information saves a lot of time as compared to the alternative of searching for each employee’s number.
Custom user profiles add personalization to individual profiles in multiple ways. Users can share more details about themselves with their teams, get to know each other better, hold ice-breaking sessions, discover common interests, and communicate effectively.
More To Come On Convo’s 2018 Roadmap
Go ahead and tell a little more about yourself to your team or tell us how you like the new features we’ve rolled out. If you have any questions, feel free to write at support@convo.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Note: Custom profiles will be coming to Android in a couple of days and hitting the iOS app right after. Stay tuned.
Update: Custom profiles is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App store now.
In the beginning of this year, We promised a new set of features coming to Convo to facilitate your daily work routines. Now, it is time we start delivering on that promise. Easter is coming soon, but we couldn’t wait that long to share the amazing things our team has been up to these past couple of months. So here’s an early Easter goody for you to rejoice.
Geotagging Of Posts
For all Convo users, posts are the corner stone of their network. They make it super easy to deliver updates and collaborate over various files such as long PDFS, hefty videos, design images, presentations etc., You can also have detailed discussions around links and ideas, record minutes of meetings or welcome new people onboard. Posts let you do it all.
Posts are also interactive and loaded with all fun elements like Emoji and Gifs. Comments on posts allow everyone to add their two cents to the discussions and create annotations on things shared in a post to make in-context collaboration a breeze.
With ongoing work always moving, it is important for everyone to know where information is coming from. Location matters and it is vital for an organization with its team spread all across the globe. This is why Convo’s posts now come with a brand new ability of adding location. This means no matter where it is you’re creating a post from, with a single click or tap, you’ll be able to tell everyone on your network about your location with a single click or tap. And if you’re a manager, it adds a new layer of clarity by allowing you to always know where your team is working from.
As an example, think of a company that has several offices and teams constantly on the move because Due to the nature of their job, they don’t have the time to update everyone about their location. With geo tagging, all they have to do while sharing an update is click or tap on the Location icon to geo-tag the post.
The location icon appears in the post toolbar. Clicking it enables location fetching for the user and the returned location is added to the bottom of the post.
Once a post is created, the location appears on the post. Clicking the blue pin shows the location on a map, and here you can zoom in and out the map to check what lies in the vicinity of the pinned location.
The location will always be fetched based on the current location of the post creator. This ensures that the person creating a post is present where they said they are and this preserves the integrity of geo-tagged post. Meanwhile, anyone viewing the post can easily navigate the location with handy pinch and zoom functionality to make interaction easier for everyone.
Stay Tuned, More Good Things to Come
It’s been a joy having you on Convo and we hope you stick around as more goodies are coming your way. Meanwhile, update all your Convo apps to enjoy the geo tagging goodness and write to us at support@convo.com if you have any questions.
If you’re new here, hop on to Convo for free today and bring your team over for a productive and collaborative team experience.
Note: Geo tagging of posts is also coming to Android in a few days followed by the iOS app.
Update: Geo Tag feature is now available on both iOS and Google Play Stores.
The easiest and fastest way to communicate with your team. Try Convo App out for free!
deemed Convo to be 1 of the