Canopy: The private social network for your company

If you have one of those offices where collaboration generally means pinging a load of emails around and having files saved all over the place then Canopy could be for you.

Billed as like having personal copies of Facebook or Twitter for your business it certainly has the functions to centralize discussions between teams plus you can store documents where everyone who needs access can easily get to them.

There are a lot of collaboration sites out there letting project teams link up but I really like the simplicity of this one. Set up a home page and create groups by inviting selected members to join. You can follow certain people and have followers yourself who will see the posts on your "my page" section which will substantially cut down on the need to write emails, copy the relevant people in and then wait for your inbox to fill up with the replies.

The system also provides a great way of letting the staff of a business get to know who their colleagues are particularly if it’s fairly big and spread out. Photographs can be uploaded with brief resumes letting everybody know who is who and what they do.

The document share aspect of Canopy takes it beyond just a social networking site and allows for real collaboration amongst teams. With the ability to store documents within the confines of a relevant group also means that only the people who need to see them can see them.

The system can be configured to your needs and you can add users and control permissions as you see fit. All data is securely encrypted and backed up regularly.  Plans range from £69 -£199 a month and the more you pay the more users, groups and storage capacity is offered. I think it’s a great way to get the office singing off the same hymn sheet.

Conclusion
If you’re worried about bombarding your teams with a multifunctional collaboration system then this is the one for you. It does all of the basic things you want in respect of sharing information and easy document access but in a format that will be fairly familiar to most people.