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PBworks Announces Real-Time and Voice Collaboration

"While PBworks has been an ideal tool for asynchronous collaboration, organizations such as law firms and consultancies have told us that they would rather not go through the hassle of setting up a separate web and telephone conference session to work together in real-time," said PBworks CEO Jim Groff. "With this update, PBworks gives customers a single suite that covers both asynchronous and real-time collaboration. This release will allow our users to know which of their colleagues are available, message them in real time, and broadcast a live editing session. And shortly, Voice Collaboration will allow them to trigger and manage impromptu conference calls using their current phone service."

Alternative real-time collaboration tools (i.e., web conferencing), are generally standalone products for "appointment" collaboration. The typical use case for these tools is when a user needs to schedule a meeting to review materials in another application such as PowerPoint. In this instance, a user arranges the meeting, sends out links and dial-in information to all interested parties, usually via email, waits for acceptances, and finally, waits for all parties to arrive.

In contrast, PBworks is making real-time collaboration a natural extension of its existing tools. When a user needs to connect with one or more colleagues to gather their feedback, he or she simply calls them to the relevant wiki page using the built-in instant messaging, and available users can see edits being made in real-time and chat about them. When a telephone conversation is necessary, available users can be added to an ad-hoc conference call with a single click that initiates an outbound call to the user's regular telephone.

"With PBworks' latest release, the convergence of collaboration of many types becomes even tighter and 'in the flow' than ever before," said Dan Keldsen, Co-founder and Principal at Information Architected, Inc. "For those times when classic wiki check-in/out is not enough, now there is real-time wiki collaboration (Live Editing). For when a separate bridge line or concall would be necessary to talk live with colleagues, there is now real-time voice (Voice Collaboration) as well as integrated IM Collaboration (rather than as a separate screen/page, as with MediaWiki and others). The silos of collaboration are suddenly dropping away as Enterprise 2.0 providers embrace the needs of real-time, converged interfaces."

The Real-Time Collaboration Update announcement covers four new features in the PBworks suite:

    --  IM Collaboration
    --  Live Notifications
    --  Live Editing

    --  Voice Collaboration

IM Collaboration allows users to see who else in their organization is actively using PBworks at that moment, and enables them to send them instant messages from within the product. In addition, users can summon others to the workspace page they're working on if they'd like input using the "send a link" function built into the IM system.

Live Notifications alerts users to activity within their organization in real-time, rather than requiring them to await an asynchronous email notification. Users can select which notifications they want to receive, based on their preferences (known as "starring" or "following" particular pages) and other users, and the system will stream relevant notifications to whatever page a user is viewing.

Live Editing will eliminate the need to use other web conferencing services (such as WebEx, PlaceWare, GoToMeeting, etc.) to share a PBworks editing session. Whenever a user is editing a workspace page, other users viewing that page see the edits appear in real-time. When combined with IM Collaboration, Live Editing makes it easy to convene an ad hoc meeting for working synchronously.

Voice Collaboration is the fastest and easiest way to set up a conference call with other members of the organization. Rather than setting up a conference line in advance and asking attendees to dial in, PBworks Voice Collaboration allows a user to initiate an instant conference call by dialing the desired participants. He or she can add new participants at any time, and each conference call is recorded and stored for later review. Voice Collaboration can even be triggered using an iPhone, making it the first conference calling application that works on that platform.

Putting it All Together

If a user is editing a page and realizes that he or she needs the input of other team members, he or she can summon them to the appropriate page using IM Collaboration, start a Live Editing session, and use Voice Collaboration to initiate an instant conference call, all in a fraction of the time it would take to set up a web conference, set up a conference call line, and communicate the details to the intended participants.

"Our global team of social media strategists are working together, often around the clock," explained John Bell, Managing Director of 360 Digital Influence, Ogilvy's social media practice. "The introduction of real-time collaboration in our PBworks platform will make it our new 'office.' It's not just where we share files or even manage projects--it's where we work everyday."

Pricing and Availability

IM Collaboration, Live Notifications, and Live Editing will be available to Project and Legal Edition customers on November 17. There is no charge for this free upgrade.

Voice Collaboration will be available in early 2010.

About PBworks

PBworks (http://pbworks.com) is the world's leading provider of hosted collaboration solutions for businesses and education. Leading companies and organizations like FedEx, DePaul University, and the FDA choose PBworks to help teams work more effectively across geographic and organizational boundaries, including teams that span employees, customers, partners, and vendors.

Over 50,000 businesses have chosen PBworks to share knowledge, interact with customers, manage, projects, and support other forms of teamwork. We host over a million team workspaces, serve several million users each month, and 96% of users would recommend PBworks to a friend. PBworks investors include Mohr Davidow Ventures, Seraph Group, Sippl Investments, and Ron Conway.

PBworks is a trademark of PBwiki, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE PBworks