Facebook has been working on a version of its app for organizations for years, and now it has a new name and out to everyone. The app is called Workplace (formerly known as Facebook at Work).
Announced on October 10th, 2016, the idea for the app is to streamline companies' intranet and reducing their needs to rely on multiple mediums for internal communication. Facebook has been testing the app with more than 1,000 companies worldwide, and during that time, the company has gathered many feedback to finally push it out of beta.
As a start, Workplace is similar to Facebook's social media in terms of updates information and posts. The main difference is that all of those are only from within your company. So your News Feed is personalized and set apart from your Facebook social account.
But similar to Facebook, you can also create groups, post updates, tag people, share files and chat to multiple users.
Workplace also comes with Work Chat, a Messenger-like feature that allows your and your team mates to chat. There are options for one-on-one video calls as well as group audio calls. Facebook also implemented its Live video broadcast which could be handy in meetings or presentations, Reactions, Search and also Trending posts.
Digging it deeper, Workplace offers enterprise-level features like analytics dashboard, single sign-on support and the ability to work with identity providers for security reasons.
Aiming to be the app for businesses, Workplace comes with a price: $3 per users per month for the first 1,000 users. The price goes down to $2 for the next group size of up to 10,000 users and further lowered to $1 for more than 10,000 users. For non-profits or educational institutions however, they can have the product for free.
"People work in different ways, around the world, and Workplace’s mission is to help them stay connected," said Facebook in its post.
Facebook's Workplace is to take a head on against collaboration apps like Slack, Microsoft's Yammer and Atlassian’s HipChat.
The ad-free app is meant for teams inside a company of all sizes. But because it is has social media in its DNA, you can collaborate with other people from any using the app. This is done through Multi-Company Groups where users use shared spaces that allow people from different organizations to work together.
The advantage of Workplace is its creator: none others than Facebook. With more than a billion users, people using Facebook should be familiar with the interface. This advantage means businesses won't need to spend time training their employees to use it.
So essentially, Facebook in introducing Workplace, is like approaching companies and enterprises by convincing them to use the social network.
The downside of Workplace is its integration. Its initial version lacks CRM and project management tools. So productivity is still limited.