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Cloud collaboration is an efficient way to bring your team together in one place and enable them to seamlessly work on projects, documents, designs, and other files. 

Many organizations nowadays allow their employees to work remotely. This not only provides an opportunity for them to hire talents from across the world. 

However, it can be hard to collaborate and manage all the communications and files when working from different locations. 

Moving the work to the cloud is a great solution to this. And now, it’s no longer an option for organizations but a necessity, especially if you have a distributed workforce. 

Cloud collaboration is affordable, scalable, and accessible for the teams to interact, collaborate, and manage workload. And the power of cloud collaboration multiplies if you use suitable tools. 

In this article, I’ll discuss cloud collaboration in detail, how it can reshape your business, and the best cloud collaboration tools you can use. 

Here we go!

What Is Cloud Collaboration?

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Cloud collaboration is a method that enables employees to work together and easily access files stored in the cloud with appropriate permissions.

Using cloud collaboration tools, enterprises can allow employees to view and edit documents from any location at any time and work simultaneously on a given document. When edits are made, and changes are synced, all the team members can easily view the changes and access the same version of the project. 

Furthermore, cloud collaboration tools enable you to visualize who is viewing the document. You can communicate with your team members while working on a project using a chat or comment function. It helps your teams work together and achieve the goal without being physically present in the workplace. Thus, it’s beneficial for both hybrid and remote workforces.

Cloud Collaboration vs. Traditional Collaboration 

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Cloud collaboration  Traditional collaboration 
With cloud collaboration solutions, you can work remotely from any location and collaborate efficiently with your team members without being physically present around them.  In traditional collaboration, you need to physically meet with your team members to discuss the changes in a document or file. 
It enhances productivity and efficiency. It can improve productivity, but efficiency can be lower.
The office expenses in cloud collaboration are lower than in traditional collaboration. Traditional collaboration requires higher investments in office expenses like infrastructure, power, water supply, systems, equipment, regular maintenance, etc.
The administration and licensing costs are more flexible. The administration and licensing costs are less flexible.
It provides an expandable workspace for additional collaborators.  It can accommodate a fixed number of collaborators in the workspace.
It centralizes all document updates and edits, keeping a record of the changes. Version control is an issue in traditional collaboration as it is complicated to know who made the changes at what time and in which draft.

Core Components of Cloud Collaboration

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A cloud collaboration system can have the following components:

  • Document sharing and storage: Cloud collaboration allows you to store and share documents using any device through collaborative editing features. You can allow access to your team members so that they can perform changes and update them from any location at any time. 
  • Project and task management: With cloud collaboration solutions, you can manage projects and tasks easily and flexibly. In addition, you can monitor progress by reviewing each task and tracking objectives all the time to finish the project in the given time. 
  • Communication and messaging: Communication and messaging become easy with cloud collaboration. It includes video conferencing, instant messaging features, group chat, phone systems, and more. You will get a wide range of handy functions for better collaboration through effective communication. 

Benefits of Cloud Collaboration

#1. Enhanced Team Collaboration

When all the project-related documents are stored in a centralized place, it is easier to find, access, and edit them. There is no longer a need to constantly email your team members about the updated version of a file. 

While your team members have access to the right file version, discussions between members become smoother, ensuring everyone in the team is on the same page and improving team collaboration. This gives an equal opportunity to all the team members to actively engage in the project. 

#2. Supports Remote Workforce

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Cloud collaboration allows enterprises to hire talents from worldwide who can work remotely. In addition, it makes it easier for remote teams to collaborate from any location at any time. This will increase flexibility in their work along with productivity and efficiency.

#3. Faster Data Access

Many email servers fail to handle larger files of 20-25 MB. In order to share those files with your team members, you need to share them via external hard disks and USBs. This is a time-consuming process.

Cloud collaboration allows your team to share large files quickly without any delay. Once you upload your document online, you can share the link with your team members and let them access it. 

#4. Streamlined Workflow

Cloud collaboration helps your team work more efficiently and faster by streamlining the workflow. It gives the flexibility to schedule the work and share it between collaborators with their preferred working hours in different time zones. Using the cloud means every member has access to the documents and the capability to share files from any location. 

#5. Real-Time Updates

When any member of your team edits or updates a document in the cloud, the changes will appear in real-time in that file that others can access and view. Cloud collaboration tools offer an alert system to help you get instant alerts when a document is updated.

Best Practices for Cloud Collaboration

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  • It’s important to audit your workflow regularly, collaborate with your team, and make the necessary modifications. 
  • Since security is a major concern, you can collaborate with your security team online to discuss access and permission issues. 
  • It’s recommended to develop a training and onboarding strategy for scalability.

Let’s dig deeper into some cloud collaboration tools and how they can help your business. 

Meeting Collaboration

Doodle

Schedule your meeting in an easier and faster way with the Doodle meeting collaboration tool. It helps you book any kind of client or work meeting with your team members faster. 

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Whether you are a recruitment, sales, education, non-profit firm, or freelancer, Doodle enables you to reshape your business with just a few clicks and simplifies your group meetings by eliminating double bookings. 

Calendly

Calendly allows you to schedule meetings faster than ever with its automation platform, so you can eliminate the unnecessary time in double-checking the scheduled meeting in emails. 

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You can drive more revenue, close more deals, speed up your sales, connect with the right people, and get real results. Furthermore, you can share your availability to allow prospects and candidates to schedule meetings with you. 

Knowledge Collaboration

Coda

Bring your tools and teams together with Coda for organized work. It blends the structure of your spreadsheets, the power of applications, the flexibility of documents, and the intelligence of AI. 

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Coda allows everyone to design applications using automation, buttons, and formulae. You can eliminate the boring spreadsheets into tables, edits, and views. In addition, you can give your team a centralized place to build strategy and schedule tasks.

Furthermore, Coda enables your team to quickly engage in documents or applications, collaborate effectively, and make decisions faster. 

Cofluence

Cofluence brings the right people into the room to form a strategic conversation with the focus of obtaining great outcomes. It enables collaborative, open participation for your team to create and co-design roadmaps and new approaches. 

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In addition, Cofluence helps you design interactive sessions even during uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and volatile times by acknowledging the immediate future context and current circumstances. 

Notion

Experience a connected workspace where you can work faster and better using AI features with Notion. It offers all your work in a single centralized place. You can communicate easily with its next-generation, simple, and powerful docs. 

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Furthermore, you can manage any project without using any separate system. Notion AI gives you access to the limitless power to think bigger, work faster, and write better. You can visualize, sort, and filter any tasks or items based on urgency or priority. 

File Sharing

Google Drive

Google Drive lets you store and share documents or files from your computer, tablet, or mobile device. It also allows you to securely collaborate on your files and folders. The files that you share are scanned proactively to remove spam, malware, and ransomware. 

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You can easily create content and collaborate with your team members more effectively by integrating Drive with docs, slides, and sheets. The powerful search capability of Google is embedded in the drive to offer reliability, speed, and collaboration.

Sync

Get a safe space for all your best work with Sync and stay connected and secure in the cloud. It is a storage and collaboration platform for your files and documents. Sync allows you to access your files from any device remotely and manage permissions to protect your important work.

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You can connect with your internal teams, clients, documents, customers, and external partners easily with Sync. It also lets you connect to your computers, mobile devices, and files so that everyone is on the same page and always up-to-date with changes.

Microsoft 365 OneDrive

Save your files and photos to Microsoft 365 OneDrive to access them from anywhere and on any device. Even if you lose your device, you won’t lose your photos and files when they are in OneDrive. 

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OneDrive offers 1TB of cloud storage, ransomware recovery, document sharing, and more. With your mobile device, you can scan and store business cards, receipts, notes, documents, etc. The tool provides an added layer of protection for your important photos and files. 

Dropbox

Get the full suite of tools with Dropbox to create, manage, share, and track files more efficiently. It gives you the storage you need with security features like password protection, viewer history, watermarking, and file recovery. 

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You can share trackable links to track when someone accesses a given shared file. Also, you can remove access for anyone without affecting others’ permissions. Dropbox helps you collaborate on your work and manage your business with different tools. 

Idea Collaboration

Whimsical

Whimsical is the hub for idea and visual collaboration, where you can combine whiteboarding, diagramming, and more. It brings four powerful formats for collaboration – flowcharts, wireframes, mind maps, and docs. 

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You can get a wide range of building blocks and templates to bring your ideas to reality. Remove friction between designers, engineers, and project managers to build products faster.

Additionally, you can combine diagrams with detailed documentation so that everyone is aligned with the development process.

Miro

Build and design faster with the visual workspace – Miro for innovation. It provides a place for everyone to create together, regardless of location. It helps you capture data-driven insights, structure them with tables and diagrams, and share them in a centralized place. 

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You can ensure continuous involvement with company strategy and customer needs by defining initiatives and goals, visualizing dependencies and priorities, and keeping a tab on the plans.

Lucidchart

Experience an intelligent diagramming application – Lucidchart, that can bring your team together to collaborate and make informed decisions. It helps clarify complexity, align insights, and propel your business to new heights. 

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Lucidchart’s intelligent diagramming allows you to visualize complicated ideas clearly, faster, and more collaboratively. You can also visualize the team’s systems, processes, and organizational structure. In addition, you can get everyone on the same page, bring plans to reality, and leverage next-gen intelligence.

Document Collaboration

Google Workspace

Google Workspace gives an innovative and flexible solution for organizations to achieve their goals. It allows you to stay up to date with the events, latest stories, and more. 

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You can even discover new insights about your work future. With the help of Duet AI, you can collaborate more smoothly and boost your productivity, ensuring every member of an organization has control over their information. 

Microsoft 365

Boost your productivity with Microsoft Excel, Word, Teams,  PowerPoint, and more. Microsoft 365 lets you craft social posts, designs, invitations, and more with an AI-powered graphic design application. 

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Whether you want to learn remotely, connect with family and friends, or collaborate with the organization, Microsoft 365 is all you need. In addition, you can bring ideas with classmates, family members, or teammates across your devices with Microsoft applications.

Communication Collaboration 

Google Meet

Google Meet provides a single service for high-quality and secure video meetings and calls on any device for everyone.

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You can get your whole crew in Meet, where you can collaborate on assignments, present business proposals, clarify doubts, or just have face-to-face conversations. 

Zoom

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Make meaningful collaborations with your team members or students through team chat, phone, whiteboard, meetings, and more with Zoom. It lets you collaborate, connect people, and consolidate communications in a classroom, boardroom, operating room, etc. 

Dialpad

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Drive sales, support customers, and collaborate with the team with an all-in-one and beautiful AI-powered application – Dialpad. It offers:

  • The most advanced engagement platform for customers and teams
  • Outbound sales, along with live coaching
  • The world’s smartest phone system for your business 
  • Video meetings with in-built transcriptions

Slack

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Reach your team instantly with Slack and start collaborating, chatting, sending videos and audio, and doing much more. It provides organized spaces for everything and everyone that you need to enable effortless collaborative work.

Project Collaboration

monday.com

Get a platform built for collaborating on different projects for your team with monday.com. It enhances your team’s efficiency, productivity, and alignment by customizing the workflow to fit your working needs.

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In addition, you can make data-driven decisions using high-level dashboards and allow teams to drive impact. 

Smartsheet

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Smartsheet is a single place where you can manage projects, processes, and programs that scale. It helps you capture your plans, schedules, and resources.

You will get a wide range of workflows, dashboards, reports, and views to fit your needs from project initiatives to completion.

Asana

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Experience an easy and flexible project collaboration platform for your teams so that they can deliver efficient work. Asana provides the list view, timelines, boards, and more to give you the flexibility to manage complex projects. 

Secret & Password Collaboration

Passwork

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Leverage Passwork for effective teamwork and let your employees access their passwords quickly in a safe environment. It also empowers your system administrators to supervise all the actions and access rights in an effort to preserve security and privacy.

In addition, you can invite colleagues to manage user rights and shared folders and get reports on every activity. 

Keeper

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Keeper gives you control, visibility, and security capabilities so you can strengthen your organization’s cybersecurity posture. You can set up and remove users quickly, create roles, enforce policies, monitor data security, and maintain activity reports and user logs. 

Design Collaboration

Figma

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Work together and empower your designers to create workflows more efficiently with Figma. This tool lets you design prototypes for quick iteration on states and flows. 

Developers can bring clarity to their designs with its Dev Mode. In addition, you can keep things consistent and save time with reusable assets. 

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud allows you and your designers to create on-brand and high-quality content at scale. It allows you to collaborate better with your teams on a connected workflow, ensuring brand consistency. 

Conclusion

Cloud collaboration tools empower project teams, students, designers, developers, and others to collaborate effectively from any location at any time to achieve their goals and enhance productivity.

I have discussed some of the best cloud collaboration tools that are suitable for different purposes and can help you transfer your business or institution.

Next, check out the best document collaboration tools for remote teams.

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