Developed in the UK and launched in 2007, Huddle is a well regarded, web based collaboration tool, which provides comprehensive shared working functionality to an increasingly extensive user community. Since 2007, Huddle has gone from strength to strength, and it was chosen by the Financial Times in 2008 as one of Britain's most promising start-up companies.
Should your business get the Huddle habit?
In order to thrive in the competitive small to medium sized business sector, many companies have embraced non-traditional working practices. The Office of National Statistics recently highlighted the increasing trend towards the employment of contract, part / time and home workers. Such employment practices offer businesses the opportunity to increase both capacity and flexibility, along with the opportunity to reduce fixed costs.
Yet in order for those benefits to be realised, businesses have to embrace new practices. That is, business have to support their non-traditional employees with novel forms of administration. The old filing cabinet, half full, and half forgotten in the corner of an office, just won't support the realisation of the benefits that can be accrued from non-traditional working practices. Yet what will facilitate the realisation of such benefits?
To consider that questions, think of a small to medium sized business, employing several non-traditional employees. The business requires that those employees collaborate with one another in order to produce a single document, such as, an end of year report. Yet being non-traditional employees, they only meet face-to-face occasionally (if at all). As such, how will the coordinators or the managers of the small business support their non-traditional employees to communicate, plan and work together effectively? If that problem sounds familiar, then you or your business might consider using shared working software, such as Huddle.
Shared working
One of the most important shared working tasks that Huddle performs is document management. This allows colleagues, who are either individual or corporate Huddle users, to access shared documents (to which they have been granted prior permission). The sharing of such documents takes place within a virtual area known as a workspace (and please note that further information will be provided below about Huddle workspaces.) Yet if the facility to share document were all that Huddle provided, Google Docs would be a simpler (and cheaper!) alternative.
Huddle has taken shared document management a step further, than, for instance, Google Docs. Huddle can track, sequence and undo changes made (by any particular user) to a shared document. Huddle also provides a library mechanism for the coordination of near-simultaneous updates to shared documents. These are important functions, and they may be very useful for businesses employing and supporting non-traditional employees. In addition, whilst Huddle provides greater functionality than Google Docs, it is worth noting that Huddle is more lightweight (and far cheaper!) than a standalone competitor, such as Microsoft's Sharepoint.
(Please note that some aspects of Huddle's document management system are not available to users of the free version of Huddle).
PTO
Along side document management, Huddle offers users a range of web conferencing and messaging functions, which further support the work of non-traditional employees. Whilst the web conferencing functionality will be outlined in greater detail, the user experience of Huddle will be addressed immediately below.
One Huddle, many Huddles?
There is one Huddle web site. Yet there are many Huddles. In fact, there are as many Huddles, as there are Huddle users. Broadly speaking, a new instance of Huddle is created on-line for each Huddle user, because Huddle is an example of an innovate cloud computing web application.
Nevertheless, user's log-on to Huddle via their browser, with their user-name and password. Having logged-on to Huddle, users are presented with their dashboard. This is the user's home page within Huddle, and it contains their shared working information.
The Huddle dashboard provides:
- graphical access to available functionality
- access to a Huddle email / messaging account
- a visual summary of activity in the user's workspace(s). Within Huddle, a workspace is a virtual area, which represents a real-word task or work-stream, and to which Huddle allocates appropriate functionality and memory storage. It is worth noting, that each workspace can be shared across the web with an almost limitless number of other (appropriate) Huddle users.
Huddle suggest that users will learn to use the dashboard quickly, because the dashboard is similar to the graphical desktop environments (from now on GDE), with which most users will be familiar. GDEs have been a central feature of the majority of both home and business computers for many years. GDEs have been, and are present in Apple Macintosh, Linux and PC systems. Consequently, if you or your non-traditional employees have ever used one of the aforementioned systems, learning Huddle shouldn't be a hurdle.
Huddle Web Conferencing
In addition to the dashboard, document management and workspace features, Huddle supports web conferencing. The five key features of the Huddle web conference facility are as follows:
- the ability to share the following between Huddle users: individual documents, dashboards, workspaces and, importantly, desktops
- the ability to broadcast presentations to an audience of Huddle users, who can raise questions (for the presenter) via the Huddle messaging service, or talk to the presenter directly within the Huddle system, using a Huddle Pay As You Go connection.
Summary
Huddle offers an innovative, cloud computing solution to the problems to shared and distributed working.
