Cliq - Get connected with External Users

Scenario:

You are part of the admin team in your company and incharge of interior decor for the new block coming up. You collaborate with your furniture vendor - FurnSquare (FS) . Numerous round table meetings take place within your team to arrive at the design theme - Ethereal nature. Now you being incharge of this decor, is the mediator between your team and FS team. As always email is the mode of communication. Based on your theme, the designers in FS come up with few sample designs and send them over to you. Guess what happens next? Yup, you are jam packed with back and forth email threads of design change requests from your team to the FS designers team. To and fro round table discussions with your team and then endless emails to FS team for each tiny requirement and change, phew! You're so done.

Now let’s get down to business and analyse why this process taxes you!

# The primary mode of communication email, is not instant. At times the reply to the previous mail is after hours.

# When sharing design attachments along with the numerous existing back and forth conversations, it becomes difficult to keep up with the mail threads.

# You are the mediator between your company and FS. For a project like this, which involves major work, i.e. agreeing on a design, changes in minor details, ideas of each team member, etc... you have to convey all this to FS team.

# Each time designers from FS send you designs, you need to get to your team about it.

Throw in a few more calls and basic onsite meetings with designers from FS and you are tied up (well not literally). This whole process is demanding and leaves you with very little time for your other works.

How would you feel in a situation like the above one? You may not exactly be the mediator of a design project, but you will for sure establish communication with other people like vendors, distributors, clients etc... Would you like to go about it in the old fashioned way of sending emails to and fro or would prefer to have instant communication?

Instant communication it is!

Instant communication is achieved by Cliq - the Team messaging software within your organization, but what about the users who are not part of your Cliq organization, say your vendors, clients, etc... We at Cliq know the importance and necessity of workplace communication of our clients with external users and hence we offer External Channels and 1-1 chats. Let me brief on how this can be useful for you.

For the above scenario with FurnSquare, an external channel #vendor-furnsquare can be created. (psst.. if you are new and wondering what a channel is, then head over here ) In this channel the designers from FS can be invited as participants and your team can collaborate seamlessly in a single chat window. Through this channel, all the designs can be shared, discussions and ideas can be hosted, request for changes can be made and so on. This mode of communication is instant, easy and not taxing. Video discussions can be hosted through PrimeTime and furthermore 1-1 individual chats can also be established with the FS designers if needed.

There you go :) Hope this brief example helped you get an idea of how you can make use of our External Channels and 1-1 Chats for communication and collaboration with users from other organizations. For more info regarding this feature, please refer our help doc on External Users . You can also write to us through comments below letting us know of what you think.

Until next time!

Princy

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