Flock – A Single Platform That Helps Organizations Manage Work Flow Effectively

Most of the organisations operating at a substantial level usually face hurdles in streamlining their team workflow. Some wonder why should they even have a systematic communication channel when they are generating fortunes in the way that they are already operating at. If you run such a company and share similar thoughts, then this article is for you mate.

First things first why should you have a proper communication medium with your teammates? Well, having a robust communication channel among the team will not only make things simpler for you but also helps to boost your productivity. Yes, that’s right, it helps to pass on the information among your team members more effectively and thereby saves times on your hands to work on other stuff.  We usually assign our tasks and share docs through various platforms such as FB Messenger, Hangouts, Mails, Excel sheets etc. But most of us also carry out our personal tasks in these platforms as well. This blend of professional and personal communication on a single medium can be a headache sometimes.

Let me give an example, we at our workplace usually use FB Messenger to communicate within our team and of course, we had trouble in searching for some important info in the chat history. I’m sure most of you can relate to this. So, that is why it is always good to have a separate platform for everything related to work. In the process of addressing this particular issue, we came across a tool named Flock. We skimmed through their product, started using it and experienced tremendous results in terms of speed and productivity.

What is Flock?

Flock is a real-time messaging and collaboration app for teams that speeds up and simplifies communication and boosts productivity. Packed with incredibly powerful features and a slick, easy to use interface, Flock is the ideal tool for organizations looking to move to a real-time communication model. Flock takes all your most used apps and services at work and allows you to integrate them into a single platform to make you more efficient with your organizational tasks.

How does it help our organization?

Here is the list of features that Flock has in store for us. Take a look at them and you will figure out how it will help boost your productivity.

1) A User-friendly UI –

The UI is very attractive to the eye and is also very easy to understand. Here is a sneak-peak into the Flock Dashboard-

The chat screen is also very smooth and easy to use on both Android and IOS platforms.

2) Create Multiple Teams –

Once you register with a mail id, flock enables you to create a Team. We usually create team with our organization name. If you have to manage different verticals say Tech team, Management team, HR team, Security team, Design team etc, flock allows you to create such multiple teams with a single registered mail id. Every team gets a unique URL that members can share for others to discover or join the team.

In the below image, you can see the admin panel of the flock dashboard. Here, the admin has multiple teams such as AD,MW,RV etc.

3) Create Multiple channels –

A channel is a place where we can do our conversations with our teams.Within a team, users are part of two default channels:

• Team Hub – This is a channel where all members can talk to one another, share information, and welcome new members.
• Announcements – This is a channel which is meant for one-way communication only i.e, only team admins can post here.

In addition to these, you can create any number of channels within a team. For example, under the tech team, you can create multiple channels such as Head Techies, Senior Techies, Junior Techies etc. Flock lets users create two types of such channels:

• Public channels – these are open to all, where users can easily discover and connect with like-minded people and join discussions that interest them.
• Private channels – these can be joined by invite only, for more focused and closed conversations.

Users can also add channel attributes, including name, avatar, and purpose, to make it easy for users to identify what the channel is meant for.

4) Flock Appstore –

The Flock Appstore brings external work apps and services together and lets users receive notifications and updates directly in Flock. Some of these external popular apps are Trello, Github, Google Drive, Analytics, Hangouts, Twitter and MailChimp.

You can integrate all such apps into your flock account. For example, take the case of Google Drive. You can integrate your Google drive to your flock account and basically operate your Google Drive from within your Flock account i.e, giving file read/edit permissions, creating docs, spreadsheets or presentations etc. This is how your dashboard looks like when you integrate your drive account into your flock account –

5) Flock apps and Integrations –

Flock comes pre-installed with Flock apps that are built on top of our powerful platform, FlockOS. These apps boost productivity and improve task and notification management. The suite includes:

• Video conferencing via appear.in 

• Shared To-dos App to manage team and individual tasks

• Mailcast App for sending emails to the entire channel right from within Flock
• Reminders App to schedule timely reminders
• Code Snippets App to share codes within dev teams

• Polls App – to take a poll on some issue among the team members

• Rich Notes Sharing App

• My Favorites App to bookmark any important message, including a poll or to-do.

User survey stats –

Over 25,000 companies are using Flock globally and all these clients have given a thumbs up to this tool.
Plans and pricing –
Flock is free to use for teams of all sizes for as long as they want. Flock users can easily upgrade to paid plans to enjoy more features and user controls. Flock currently offers three plans:

•  Free plan

1.  File sharing up to 100 files (100MB each)
2.  Upto 10k of your team’s most recent messages conversation history

• Pro plan

1. File sharing up to 1000 files (100MB each).
2. Priced at $3 per user per month.
3. Unlimited conversation history.
4. Users on the Free and Pro plan use the app’s services that are hosted on secure AWS. Since, Flock is hosted entirely on the cloud, we are able to provide back-to-back SLAs of 99.99999% or better to our customers.

We are using Flock for quite a while now and we have to admit that this tool made life easier for us. With so many features at one place, flock helps communicate effectively and thereby helps speed up your work. You have seen what flock is all about, what are the features that it is offering and the prices at which it is offering. It should only be a matter of time for you to integrate this fabulous tool into your organization.

You can go ahead to the web version of Flock and register your team. Flock is also available on Android and iOS platforms. Additionally, MAC users can also download desktop client for the same.