Companies of all sizes continue to struggle under current economic conditions. Many must consider strategies such as vendor consolidation while rationalizing IT expenditures. At the same time, they must embrace technological tools that boost productivity and increase customer satisfaction.
Zoho recognized this and has unveiled updates to Zoho Workplace that include a unified communications platform and stronger collaboration technologies, among other useful enhancements.
What is Zoho Workplace?
Zoho Workplace is a unified office platform that combines productivity, collaboration and communications tools in a centralized virtual work hub. The flexible, full-featured business mail and cloud office suite enables users to operate applications seamlessly and collaboratively thanks to its common data model, unified search and artificial intelligence.
The fastest-growing Zoho product, Workplace has grown 30% year-over-year, now boasting more than 16 million users around the world. Migrations from Google and Microsoft products have doubled as the popularity of Zoho Workplace has spread from one small business to the next. Workplace use exploded in 2022, as users sent 85% more messages, scheduled 76% more meetings and converted 150,000 Word documents every day.
“In the past year, Zoho Workplace adoption has accelerated as businesses of all sizes transition to digital-forward, hybrid work,” says Zoho chief evangelist Raju Vegesna. “With a clear focus on continued innovation, Zoho is well-positioned to thrive during this time of readjustment. The goal of Zoho Workplace is to enable businesses to unify their work to a point where the line between apps disappears. It’s heartening to see so many new businesses join the Zoho family, using Zoho Workplace as their customizable center of gravity.”
As a platform, Zoho Workplace can be divided into three suites, each providing its own set of applications:
Mail Suite – As its name implies, the Mail Suite features applications for basic office tasks, including Zoho’s Email, Calendar, Tasks, Notes and Streams products.
Office Suite – The Office Suite of Zoho Workplace provides productivity software application, including Zoho’s Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, File Management and Desktop Sync products.
Communication Suite – The Zoho Workplace Communication Suite is designed to assist small businesses in their collaboration efforts. It includes the Zoho Instant Messaging, Audio/Video Calls, Online Meetings, Company Intranet and Town Halls products.
Of course, Zoho Workplace is more than just a bundle of useful apps. Users experience seamless multitasking thanks to its central collaboration dashboard, where all the Workplace apps are displayed in a single integrated view. Users even can personalize their collaboration dashboards to stay updated on activities in whatever way best suits their preferences.
Zoho Workplace Updates
Although the product is already hugely popular among small businesses around the world, the 2023 Zoho Workplace updates promise to attract even more.
“Business customers are looking for single suite solutions with the communication and capabilities they need in one place without have to use multiple, standalone vendors,” says COMMfusion president and principal analyst Blair Pleasant. “Zoho Workplace is making it easy for customers to access all of the key capabilities they need, and by creating a ‘center of gravity’ or central dashboard, Zoho brings all of these capabilities together in one easy-to-access interface. Zoho Workplace, with its newest applications Trident, Webinar within Zoho Meetings and Phone systems within Zoho Cliq and Zoho Meetings is helping users do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, without context shifting and losing focus.”
What’s new with Zoho Workplace? The following additions are sure to thrill both users, both new and experienced:
Zoho Trident
In a move away from individual product experiences, Zoho provides its customers with a unified platform in Trident. The brand-new collaboration, productivity and communication experience combines mail, messages, audio and video calls, a calendar, tasks and even more all in a single location. Trident also features Zoho’s first native desktop app for email and chat, as well as a powerful and intuitive smart assistant. With Zoho Trident, users even can transform notification emails to view live data across various Zoho services for quick access and instant actions.
Zoho Voice
The Zoho Voice platform has been updated, and it’s now a full phone system integrated directly within both the Zoho Cliq and Zoho Meeting apps. Now, employees can make direct line calls, send SMS messages and even answer inbound calls across the apps,.
Zoho Webinar
Zoho Workplace now allows users to broadcast webinars and engage attendees. Zoho Webinar, a new feature located within the Zoho Meeting app, allows users to broadcast themselves to hundreds of viewers while holding viewers’ interest with interactive polls and Q&A sessions. They also can present to audiences using virtual file sharing without sharing their screens to preserve bandwidth.
BluePencil
The latest updates to Zoho Workplace also include BluePencil, an AI-based writing assistant for the web. The grammar assistant provides Workplace users with writing suggestions and a text editor that can be used on any third-party webpage. Just summon BluePencil’s pocket editor to access a full-blown editor wherever you are on the internet. The tool even provides readability scores and writing style suggestions including gender bias, tone and more.
Productivity Elevators
Zoho’s universal drag-and-drop functionality saves time for users as they perform tasks across multiple Workplace products. A user could, for example, drag an email attachment and drop it in a colleague’s chat to send it directly. Likewise, Workplace users also save time when they preview emails and documents. Just hover over an email or document from Workplace and get a quick look at its content without opening another document.
Security Enhancements
In accordance with its focus on security, Zoho has added mobile device management capabilities and OTP-restricted emails to the suite of products. Mobile device management updates allow users to add restrictions to screenshots, forwards, downloads and more. Meanwhile, Secure Pass provides OTP-based access and enables restrictions on downloads, copy and print functions, as well as supports expiration dates.
TrueSync
In the newest updates to Zoho Workplace, TrueSync has been added to Zoho Workdrive so users need no longer worry about limits on hard drive storage. TrueSync creates a mirror of all Workdrive files and folders on the users’ desktops, so they can switch between the cloud and computer with ease. Users even can access files locally and make changes to them without using any hard drive space.
Zoho Workplace Pricing
Zoho offers multiple affordable editions of its Workplace products to meet the needs of an assortment of businesses. The Standard version costs just $3 per user, per month, while the Professional edition of Zoho Workplace costs $6 per user, per month. Those interested in trying only Zoho Mail can do so for just $1 per user, per month.
The Professional plan is available for a 15-day free trial with no credit card requirements. Interested in mixing and matching different plans for different users within your organization? Zoho offers flexible pricing to meet those needs, as well.
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