Boost Your Productivity: Use Facebook at Work with Workplace

By Sia. in Social Media. October 11, 2016.

Office-centric social networking services like Yammer and Slack are a boon for companies, allowing employees from various departments of a company to communicate with each other within a single app or website. Today, after years of internal testing, Facebook has released its own take on the office-based social networking service: Workplace.

Formerly known as Facebook at Work, Workplace is a social network service that is modeled after Facebook’s own internal corporate network. By itself, Workplace will be instantly familiar to those who’ve used Facebook as it comes with a News Feed, Live Stream options, Reactions, Groups and various other features.

workgroup layout — The general layout of Workplace

What separates Workplace from Facebook is in the Workplace-only features. Workplace comes with features like dashboard analytics that is capable of gauging employee engagement levels, integration with single sign-on (SSO), as well as integration with identity providers including G Suite, Okta, OneLogin, Pig and Windows Azure AD, allowing companies to easily integrate Workplace with their existing IT systems.

For employees that are constantly out in the field, Workplace supports a separate Work Chat app that is native to both iOS and Android, allowing employees to remain in touch while on the go.

workgroup analytics — Workplace’s dashboard analytics feature

Apart from the features mentioned above, Facebook has also announced that they will be rolling out “Multi-Company Groups”. As the name implies, this feature will allow employees from different organizations to work together, a useful feature for companies that frequently participate in collaboration projects.

The biggest selling point that Workplace has over other office-centric social networking service is its familiarity — Workplace is very much a reskinned version of Facebook. The pricing system for Workplace is also a boon for startups as well — it charges by the number of active users.

Workplace is a subscription-based service, with a free 3-month trial. The fee kicks in at USD3/user every month for fewer than 1000 users, USD2/user every month for 1000-10,000 users and USD1/user for more than 10,000 active users. Non-profit organizations and educational institutions can use Workplace for free.

(Source: Facebook Newsroom)