Planning to Collaborate

Planning to collaborate

The collaborative technology that I will be discussing in the document is Outlook. Outlook is a great tool to use when on a project, both to start the project and to monitor it throughout.

I have chosen Outlook to discuss as I feel this is an integral part of the way we work here and communicating with the rest of my department and the whole of the college. It is a widely used collaborative tool that many people have become accustom to over the years. The simple yet incredible depth of what Outlook has to offer means that most basic of user can use it, as well as the advanced user been able to really squeeze every drop of tools it has to offer.

Outlook is great to use as you can have multiple people in emails so this makes it easy to distribute information to a whole group. Not only to send emails but you can also arrange meetings for discussions and planning, this is perfect for keeping up to date and sharing ideas.

The advantages of outlook is that it is very simple to use and easily accessible, this means that every single colleague has this so you have the opportunity to communicate with everybody in the workplace, all’s they need is a computer to log in. This means that you can communicate regarding projects, updates, meetings and work related information. The limitations to this could be that they don’t check their emails often or are away from their desk a lot.  The disadvantage of this compared to Skype is that it is instantaneous in that once the message is sent it instantly appears on their screen, and the communication can be a lot faster than email, although this is great for instant communication, for longer writing and sending files and information I would recommend using Outlook as it is far more professional and formal.

Outlook helps overcome barriers such as having to communicate with staff over a long distance, making it more time efficient for you and them, you can also make sure that the appropriate people who need to see the information are cc’d in so the email isn’t directly for or aimed at them but they can see it. Another barrier that comes with using Outlook is that when collaborating on a project, sharing files could potentially be easier to send on One Drive. To combat this, when you are sending a file, you can send it to everyone you need, if there are any updates to be made to the document you can resend it in the same chain of email, this way everyone can see what the latest document is and what changes have been made throughout. Outlook is very adaptable to many situations, you can also have your signature at the bottom, which disclose the information you are communicating to be representative of the college and gives your info out which follows the procedure. These guidelines are out in place to ensure that you are aware of what you are saying or sending in these emails and that they follow the policies of your workplace, these also protect yourself.

The guidelines that could potentially be used are arranging your outlook inbox in to different sections and creating folders, this means you could have set spaces for specific emails such as important, to-do and completed. This ensures you can be efficient, by knowing what emails are where and you can keep them if needed once you are finished with them. The college has a strict set of rules on Outlook, to send out non-work related things such as sending inappropriate content and images that are hard to monitor in quick time. If these rules are not followed it is a potential that you could lose your email rights, or even worse, your job. This would make things very difficult especially when working on projects, if you can’t communicate with other team members. To combat this I would make sure that the consequences for carrying out an act like that would ensure that no one would want to do it, and to have a keyword search for anything that is not for work purposes so this would highlight any bad emails.

Integrating collaborative tools is a perfect way to run a project, for instance, you could use skype and outlook together, you could create a meeting with outlook and have a group video call on skype, This cuts out the need to arrange a meeting room if you need to have the meeting as soon as you possibly can or if it’s to update the team. There are issues with this too, Skype calls can sometimes go wrong and there can be an issue with the quality of the call and can even drop. This can be very frustrating when you are trying to discuss issues or potential ideas and having to repeat yourself or having to use another method completely due to the programme. 

Having a set of rules for Outlook is essential, if misused it could become a complete mess. To resolve this issue we all follow the same code of never sending too many emails at once; this can take up lots of space, take lots of time to get through and most of the time multiple emails could just be put in to a single email. Make sure what your sending is clear and concise to avoid confusion and even more emails by having to ask to clarify what you are meaning. Keep everything to strictly work related, there is a time and place for personal conversations and through Outlook at work is not one of them. This also helps work efficiency, as you are not stopping working for invalid reasons. By following these rules, a project can be maximised to its full [potential by getting the relevant information to the right people, make sure documents are all in an organised fashion, meetings and the minutes after them sent out can be arranged and distributed.

Outlook can work great with a wide array of different collaborative tools, to give a few examples;

Outlook and Skype: As discussed further up the mix of Formal and informal chat between a team can further push the efficiency when working on a project. For example, if I am working on a project and I need to know the image that is needed for an eLearning package that was discussed in a meeting; instead of sending an email and having to wait for them to receive it, read it and reply, I can just send a quick Skype message that flashes on their screen and have an instant reply which means I can carry on working straight away.

Outlook and One Drive: Outlook and One Drive collaborate fantastically if you want to edit live and store documents in folders and share them. For instance, if I wanted to distribute roles for an upcoming project and wanted to let the team assign themselves to a role, they can edit the document in browser, which saves straight away, and you can see the changes been made at the exact moment. This can divert the confusion of if people are going for the same role, save the document and send it back, this wastes time as you have to tell them both that there is only one space for that role and one of them has to choose again.

The college internet can be a big issue for Outlook, as experienced, if the internet is down that means that you cannot use Outlook on your computer and preventing any documents you have saved or need to download and send emails is not possible. A way around this is to use another collaborative tool, a smartphone, to download Outlook and sign in to your account on there. As this is using your phones tethered internet and not the college internet system, you are connected online and able to send emails and receive emails from other members who have also done this. To go one step further, if possible, you can tether your phones internet to the computer and carry on using Outlook as you are connected to the internet now.