What's new in Workplace?
October 2019

All the latest Workplace product announcements and feature releases.

October is a big month for Workplace. We host our annual conference, Flow, where we announce exciting new features, many of which are already available to you now! Below are some of the new additions to Workplace and a recap of product updates announced at Flow that are coming soon.

Introducing "thanks" to power peer-to-peer recognition

Introducing "thanks" to power peer-to-peer recognition

Employee recognition is a crucial component of employee engagement. But it's difficult to achieve at scale – in the moment and in a visible way. Thanks enables 360 degree recognition for a job well done, directly on a person's timeline, so employees can highlight the meaningful contributions of their colleagues!

Want to shout out to a colleague for closing that latest deal? Or their leadership on your latest project? You can send "thanks" to anyone in your organisation and notify their manager in the process. Start by visiting the profile page of a colleague who you'd like to thank and clicking the Send Thanks button below their cover photo.

Learn how Workplace can help you boost employee engagement through recognition.

Recognise your colleagues with thanks

Set a custom status on Workplace

Set a custom status on Workplace

Whether in a meeting, setting aside time to focus or catching some sun on holiday, you can now set a custom status on Workplace to let your colleagues know what you're up to (and if you're in Do Not Disturb mode).

You can now set a custom status on Workplace paired with an emoji of your choice. On the web, click on the smiley face icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. On mobile, go to the Workplace Chat app, tap on your profile picture and then tap "Set a status". You will then be able to set your emoji, write a status and determine how long you want to keep the status. Plus, you can set Do Not Disturb at the same time to block incoming notifications.

Set a custom status to let your colleagues know what you're up to.

New file viewer and annotations on all your files!

New file viewer and annotations on all your files!

Last month, we completely redesigned our file viewer experience, providing a high-fidelity preview and the ability to annotate straight from a Workplace post. This new file viewer and annotations are now available for all major file types on Workplace.

When you attach a file to a post, Workplace will automatically render the new viewer. Click on the viewer to see a rich preview with easy navigation. To add an annotation, simply click on "Place a new comment" and then click anywhere on the file to place the annotation. The annotation will be indicated with a letter on the file and in the comments thread of the post for easy discovery. Annotations can only be added on the web, but they can be seen on Workplace mobile apps as comments.

New additions to surveys

New additions to surveys

To improve survey participation rates, we're introducing two new features! First of all – optional questions. Admins can now specify the questions that recipients can skip via an "Optional question" tick box in the survey creation process.

We're also introducing two new types of reminders. We've added a Remind me action, with options for "In an hour" or "Tomorrow" so that people can set their own reminders. In addition, if a recipient has neither completed the survey nor scheduled their own reminder, Workplace will send a follow-up message 24 hours after the survey invite was originally sent. Read our Help Centre article for more information.

Survey updates include optional questions and two new types of reminders.

Seen by is being expanded to groups of all size

Seen by is being expanded to groups of all size

Seen by is a useful way to understand the reach of your posts and we are happy to share that it's now available on posts within groups of any size.

Please be aware that posts from before 20 September 2019 will still retain the previous limitation of only showing "seen by" if less than 9,000 members are in the group. Moving forwards, you can expect "seen by" to appear for all posts within a group page.

More news from Flow

More news from Flow

In addition to the news above, we shared other upcoming product improvements that you can learn about below. These all revolve around our theme at Flow, Why the future belongs to connected companies.

Connecting the frontline

The power of Workplace lies in connecting everyone across an organisation. This includes frontline employees as well as knowledge workers.

  • Learning helps group admins easily curate, organise and share knowledge with group members: from how to make the perfect coffee to improving safety in the factory floor (available later this year).
  • Goals helps teams set and track short-term targets. Whether it's identifying who can make a pizza at lightning speed or who's sold the most of the new cosmetic product (available later this year).

Empowering people with new video tools

Connection is the first step. People also need to be empowered with information and video is one of Workplace's most powerful features.

  • Automatic video captioning lets you easily add captions to videos uploaded to Workplace, increasing reach and engagement. People can choose how to consume video: watching with audio only or reading the captions. This is now available.
  • Enterprise Live streaming allows large audiences to watch videos on Workplace, maintaining video quality and protecting an organisation's network (Contact the sales team for availability – Workplace Enterprise only).
  • Workplace on Portal gives people the ability to connect with colleagues and truly feel present, combining a consumer grade experience with all the power and security of Workplace (available later this year).

If you'd like to explore our peer-to-peer solution for your organisation, contact your Workplace team. Workplace on Portal will be available later this year; you can register your interest here.

Measuring the impact

When your company is connected, the next step is to measure that impact.

  • Insights brings more ways and new ways to cut admin reporting data, understand how "connected" your organisation is, identify "engaged" users and collect engagement at the post level (available later this year).


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