PBworks adds social networking features to collaboration tools

Includes user profiles, microblogging, and email integration components

PBworks, a provider of hosted collaboration services for business and education, has released a Social Collaboration Update for PBworks Project Edition and Legal Edition, which integrates social media-style user profiles and microblogging to help teams work together more easily.

PBworks said, by tying social networking and microblogging together with wiki-style authoring, document management, and project management, it allows customers to use social media tools within the enterprise and is expected to boost team performance and productivity.

According to PBworks, the Social Collaboration Update includes user profiles component that allow organisations to specify which fields to include (e.g. office location, department, relevant skills and experience, etc.), which is expected to convert a company's PBworks network into a searchable personnel roster.

The company said that, user profiles automatically include a list of user’s contributions such edits and file uploads, as well as tasks each user is working on. The new release also supports real-time Twitter-style microblogging to facilitate unstructured collaboration such as brainstorming and discussions.

In addition, the new release also brings in email-to-workspace integration, which allows authorised users to add wiki pages and upload files by sending email. It creates a corresponding wiki page with timestamp, records the author, and includes any email attachments as links to uploaded files.

Jim Groff, CEO of PBworks, said: The core of collaboration is doing the work. Getting work done is what makes all this Web 2.0 technology relevant to solving real business problems. The Social Collaboration Update makes social media a practical and productive tool for working together.

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