Jive Releases Circle, a New Collaboration Tool
Jive Software, a provider of communications and collaboration solutions for business, yesterday introduced Jive Circle, a secure mobile app for employees to search and discover other employees within their organizations.
Jive Circle gives employees "ubiquitous access to everyone within their company, packaged into a mobile app," says Colleen Jansen, vice president of global marketing at Jive Software. "It's a great mobile directory, a way for employees to see everyone within the company and get in touch with their contacts within the organization."
According to Jansen, the app is designed for the increasingly mobile business world, where workforces are more dispersed than ever.
Jive Circle is available for iOS and Android devices and will officially launch Aug. 31. It will offer the following:
- A dynamic employee directory for search, discovery, and connection. Employees can search a visual organization chart and identify subject matter experts across the organization. A simplified browse feature allows employees to filter and find information about their colleagues. Once a colleague is identified, a press-and-hold feature prompts connection icons for immediate contact via click-to-call, email, or Jive Chime. In the coming weeks, Jive Circle will also feature a new calendar sync function that gives insight into who within the organization is joining meetings.
- Enhanced security with the ability to add, edit, and deactivate users. Jive developed Circle with industry security best practices, such as third-party testing and leverages the security of the Amazon Web Service environment. Additionally, IT administrators can import employee information to create accounts and build out their organization for the app. Jive Circle is built as cloud-based software.
Jive Circle presents information in three views, letting employees see individual employees, organizational charts, and the best way to contact them, Jansen says. "It's a quick way to find people and get in touch with them," she states.
Jive Circle seamlessly integrates with the Jive Chime real-time messaging. Together with Jive Daily, a news app, the three round out the Jive-w product suite.
Along with the Jive Circle release, the company has been tweaking Jive Chime, which it first launched in April. Ongoing updates to Jive Chime include features for IT administrators managing company-wide deployments and for employees connecting with one another.
With the new Jive Chime, users can do the following:
- Invite colleagues to both Jive Chime and Jive Circle: With the latest admin release, IT teams can directly paste expanded distribution lists from Outlook into the admin console and, with one-click invite, all employees within the organization to use the apps. At the same time, employees can invite colleagues to join Jive Chime via the mobile app by simply searching contacts from the address book on any device.
- Hide conversations: Employees can remove and hide conversations whether from the mobile app or desktop.
Jive Circle, Jive Chime, and Jive Daily are currently geared toward internal business users, which, according to Rian van der Merwe, product designer at Jive Software, was where the company "found the greatest need."