Convofy Enables Comprehensive Collaboration Through Enterprise Social Networking
by Bill Ives
Convofy is a new collaboration tool that I am using myself with my colleagues at Darwin Ecosystem. It builds on the micro-blogging activity stream but adds additional features to enable more comprehensive collaboration. Convofy works within the privacy and security of a company network and, as the web site says it, “promotes a culture of sharing and open discussion which fosters deeper engagement by everyone involved.” This has also been my experience.
Recently, I spoke with Tad Staley, their VP of Business Development to better understand the firm and their offering. The firm behind Convofy is Scrybe founded in 2005 and funded by Adobe Ventures. The initial product was a calendaring and personal productivity suite that was one of the first web apps that also worked offline.
Scrybe launched Convofy in April 2011 after more than three years of development. It is built on the Adobe platform and integrates two distinct realms: person and group-centered social networks and collaboration on digital content. This integration allows for more comprehensive collaboration. You can post a document in PDF format within the Convofy activity stream and then add on page markup, annotation, and notification as shown below.
When you click on the annotated image in the activity stream it will take you directly to the point in the document where the annotation was made. Then you can start a chat session with others that is held within the specific space as shown below.
We have found this to be a great boost to online collaboration around documents. The same can be done with video. You can add a note to video and a snap shot of the video can be attached to the activity stream. Clicking on this image will then take you and/or others back to that spot in the time stamp of the video to see your mark. Below you see the video in the activity stream.
Here is the video itself as seen within Convofy and the associated chat.
You can even collaborate on a web site. Clicking on a link in the activity stream takes you to the actual web page in Convofy’s built-in web browser. Here again, a discussion or chat session can be started in this context as shown below.
I have written before that I think the activity stream is one of the biggest innovations in the new social enterprise tools. This collection of features built on top of an activity stream brings enhanced collaboration into the activity stream capability.
Convofy also offers unlimited storage for files and images. You can delegate, assign and manage projects with task lists and milestones. There are also employee profiles. When you have someone in your chat window, Convofy posts their profile info and suggests your conversation partner’s most relevant groups.
Permission levels allow you to have control over who sees the content you share. You can create private groups for teams, projects and topics and invite relevant coworkers. You can also invite people who are external to your organization to join a group. This allows cross-organization collaboration. These external people can’t see or participate in activities elsewhere in your organization’s network, but have full sharing and collaboration functionality within the group.
There is also a presence indicator within the chat feature described above so you can easily find who is online and chat with them or you can send them offline chat messages. You can start a private chat with one person or, when you want to discuss work with all the people involved, you can chat within a post, as mentioned above, so all coworkers are on the same page.
There are usage metrics as the presence indicator size reveals how active your coworkers are; the more they contribute, the bigger the indicator next to their name will be. Your contacts and groups are ordered based on their relevance to you.
There is also mobile, as Convofy works well on popular phones like your iPhone, Android and Blackberry and is designed to work on any modern device. All networks are SSL protected (the same as online banks). You can also restrict usage to an IP ranges, or restrict guest domains. You can also customize password and usage policies.
I am really enjoying our use of Convofy. It has improved our intra-company awareness and collaboration. I recommend that you check it out. There is both a free version and an enhanced licensed version.
