Big corporations and businesses have never grown or thrived by only one person. It is always a team effort. The foundation of a successful organization is teamwork as it has the potential for fostering systematic ways of collaborating.
Collaboration between an organization develops and enhances the skills of team members and helps their employees to be more productive in work. Whereas the lack of communication leads to miscommunication and delays in completing the projects.
Software that enables a group to communicate with one another and share files and information regardless of where they are located is called collaboration software. It also helps people to work collaboratively on the same project on a real real-time basis. (For example: – when you share a file of a project to another person you both can make changes in real-time).
So, whether it’s about sharing information, collaborating, or communicating on a real real-time basis on a different basis.
Key features of collaboration software are: –
Project Management
The collaboration software should allow us to manage projects to check whether the task is completed within deadlines.
Instant messaging
Whether the team is working remotely or in the same building they need a channel to message each other in real time.
Video conferencing
Video conferencing can help you in conducting online meetings, providing training, and many other things.
Document management
Document management helps you access information without any important data.
Creation and sharing of content
Many of these platforms allow you to create blogs, infographics, etc. to share them internally and externally.
Online whiteboard
It is used for using it as a board to write in real-time meetings virtually. Calendar
It allows scheduling meetings and after doing after seeing the availability of the candidates.
So in this article, we are going to talk about the 7 best free open-source collaboration software: –
1. Kolab
It is free and open-source software that has features like scheduling, sharing, and resource management. It is highly secure collaboration software that allows us to send emails, maintain calendars, manage tasks, send and receive notes, tag, and many more activities.
Features: –
- Allows us to share files in any part of the world.
- Can be used to collect, organize, and share contact information.
- It enables us to handle emails quickly.
- Allow us to maintain and schedule a calendar.
- Can be used to maintain task information.
2. OpenProject
It is an open-source and free project management software that allows teams to collaborate from the initiation level to the closing level. It enables us to plan and communicate efficiently. We can share our timelines and prepare and visualize the project plan altogether.
Which results in transparency during the entire workflow.
Features: –
• Allow us to plan projects and task scheduling.
- It enables us to plan, visualize, and communicate our roadmap.
- Helps the team to track the work and be productive.
- Allows us to use agile methodologies.
- Enables teams to track bugs and work to solve them together.
- Generation of accurate reports in providing insight into the project.
3. Openpass
It is free open-source joint effort which assists the group with remaining associated and work calm. It has secure file sharing, video conferencing and scheduling, and maintaining of calendars.
It is known as the best alternative for Microsoft 365 and Google Suite. Features: –
- It has AI – a-based email client that is trained in understanding the context of our emails and communicating quickly.
- It has end-to-end encryption security features to share files easily.
- It allows us to discuss, share, and delegate a task using a single platform.
- Enables us to conduct video conferences easily.
4. GroupOffice
It is a free and open-source collaboration software that allows us to share projects, calendars, and files and email them to clients/teammates.
The basic community version of this software is free but the advance module has a price.
It is extremely easy to use and can be fully customized with versatile features. Features: –
- Allows us to send and receive emails.
- Allow us to create and share calendars.
- Allow us to create and share files.
- Have an address book feature to save the contact information.
- Can be used to sync data in mobile devices
5. Collabtive
It is a free and open-source web-based project management software. It is based on PHP and JavaScript.
It also provides a demo version so you can check and try its features out so that you can download it afterward.
Features: –
- Allows us to manage unlimited projects and tasks with milestones.
- It has role-based management.
- Instant messaging
- File management
- ability to monitor user time.
- Can generate reports in PDF formats.
6. Cyn.in
It is open-source collaborative software that is free and helps teams communicate and share information more quickly. An exceptionally solid stage consolidates the capacities of joint effort devices like wikis.
Features: –
- Permit us to make and share reports.
- Create and share a calendar.
- Has discussion board.
- Allow us to publish audio, video, and images.
- Has a dashboard with visual representation of the data.
7.eXoplatform
It is an open-source tool that offers a free demo, but it is not free collaboration software.
It is an excellent workplace platform that can engage employees and will help them to collaborate in a highly efficient way.
Features:
- Has a modern internal communication tool that allows employees to share information.
- Can create share document.
- Has a tracking of time spent on each task?
- Allows us to customize and manage workflows.
- Can send and receive messages from team members about the latest update.