Flock - a secure messenger application for your business
Are you looking for a professional, secure and simple team messenger application for your business communication? Read this review of Flock, the team messaging app for businesses.
Flock is the new buzz word in the team messenger space. You may be wondering what is a new messenger app going to do in a market where Whatsapp controls the personal messaging space and Slack is having a monopoly in the corporate communication world. I've been using Slack in our organisation and thought there is nothing that is going to replace it in the near future. Well, that perception has changed now. I got introduced to a better messaging app called "Flock" and that changed our perception on productivity focused team messenger system.What is Flock?
Before I get into details, let me make sure you know what it is. This is what the company claims about Flock messaging app:
Flock is a simple and efficient team messaging app, making the collaboration between team members easy.
Well, I have no doubts about the simplicity of the app and it is an undeniable fact that the app improves the productivity of the teams through efficient collaboration at work. Well, the simplicity doesn't come as a barrier when it comes to the features. Let's take a detailed look at the features provided by Flock without losing its simplicity.
Watch this video to learn more about Flock team communication app:Who needs Flock
Flock is a chat-based collaboration tool, which comes with a few add-on services including FlockOS. The primary use of Flock is to communicate between teams through a simple, fast, reliable and secure communication channel.
Many small companies are using the free services like Whatsapp for instant communication. While Whatsapp may work as a communication tool, it could significantly affect the productivity of the employees. Whatsapp has evolved into a social network where everyone shares all sorts of social messages, which could be highly distractive in a work environment. Many organisations do not allow Whatsapp and similar social channels due to productivity concerns as well as potential data security issues.
Slack is one of the popular collaboration tool used by enterprises, which is slowly losing its market to Flock. I've no doubt Slack is a great tool for large enterprises but the primary advantage I see on Flock is the simplicity offered by Flock.
Features
Some of the core features of this app are:
1. Create multiple teams: If you are associated with multiple teams or departments, you can create a separate "Team" within your Flock space and organise all of your documents, conversations and discussions within the team.
2. Create channels for each project: Within Flock, each project in your business can be organised as Channels. Each channel can include all or selected members from the channel. Channels are the simple way you can organise all resources of a project within a workspace.
3. One-to-one and group chats: You can chat with any other members of your team. Also, you can do group chats within your channel to discuss common topics related to your channel. Private channels allow you to create small restricted groups for individual projects. Public channels allow you to create channels where anyone from the team can join.
4. File sharing: This is one of the features that help you organise all assets of your project and share them with the members. Unlike other chat based messenger applications, Flock has an efficient system to organise and share files.
5. Audio & Video calling: The built-in audio/video calling facility allows your team members to communicate efficiently with the team without leaving the Flock interface.
6. Flock OS and custom app development: This is one of the strong areas of Flock where your company can integrate third-party productivity apps or build custom apps. Eventually, a Flock marketplace is going to come up where you can buy various productivity apps. This is going to open a space for app developers to build and sell apps.Switching to Flock - easy learning curve
We recently switched to Flock as our official communication tool in our digital marketing company and all our employees absolutely love the way it works. As a first step, I created my account with Flock and then used the invitation form within my dashboard to add my team members to Flock. We allowed all staff to play with it for an hour and then asked everyone to come up with their questions to the meeting room. Our team were already playing with the features including setting the status, sending attachments, organising the documents and so on. To our surprise, nobody had any questions on how to use the available features. Instead, everyone came up with interesting suggestions on what else they want to see in Flock. The user interface of Flock was simple enough for everyone to start using it right away.
Simple interface of Flock desktop edition
Supported platforms
Flock comes in 3 forms:
1. Mobile app (Android and iOS versions available as of now)
2. Desktop app for Windows/Mac
3. Web version
All of the above apps have pretty much the same interface and you won't feel out of place if you switch between mobile, desktop or web versions. We use the desktop version in our office but all of the staff members have installed the mobile version as well.
Currently, Flock can be used on the following platforms:How to get started with Flock
To get started, you can install the desktop or mobile versions. Alternatively, you may access web version of Flock using a browser by visiting the website https://flock.com.
Download Links:
Desktop app: https://flock.com/in/download/
Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=to.go&hl=en
iOS app: https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/flock-team-communication-app/id879007584
Once you launch the Flock app on the web, desktop, or mobile versions, you will be prompted to enter your email address. If your email address is associated with a Flock account already, you will get the PIN (passcode) to your email and you can use that to log in. If you are a new user, you will get the welcome email along with a PIN to set up your new Flock account. Once you are logged in, you can invite your team members and you are all set to explore the new productivity app.Pricing model
Flock can be used as a free tool for team collaboration. If you like to use the full potential and take advantage of advanced features, there are premium plans available.
One of the major limitations of the free plans is, the search of message history is limited to the most recent 10K of messages. Also, the free plan offers customer support through their normal Helpdesk. Premium plans offer premium customer support and unlimited message history search.
Cost: The premium plan costs US$3 per user per month. In the case of large enterprises with several employees, the company will offer custom solutions and pricing. Check out the plan details.Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Can I replace Whatsapp with Flock?
Answer: Not really. Whatsapp is more for personal and information communication. Even though you can use it to share photos and videos, you can't really organise your chat as teams and channels as you do in a formal corporate environment. On the other hand, Flock is made for teams and businesses for simple and secure team communication.
Question: Is Flock a mobile-based chat system like Whatsapp?
Answer: Whatsapp is a popular instant messaging app, that works primarily on smartphones. As of now, there is no desktop or web version of Whatsapp, even though you can mirror your mobile chat window on a web browser. Flock comes with fully developed desktop, mobile, and web versions, each can be operated independently.
Question: What are the advantages Flock have over Slack?
Answer: While Slack is a mature team communication app, it has become a pretty complex system. The learning curve of Slack is relatively high. Flock has a very simple yet powerful interface, allowing companies to start using with a very small learning curve. FlockOS allows companies to extend the app according to their custom requirements. A detailed comparison of Flock vs Slack is available in the company website.Overall review of Flock
It has been just a few days since our team started using Flock and we are still exploring some of the add-on features and app integration. So far, our team enjoys using Flock and I believe we are going to stick to it as our official team communication app. Our most interesting part is its seamless integration with Google Drive. We use Drive extensively to store and share documents and now we can do all of those work within the interface of this app. Channel-based group chat is another important feature for us. We have several projects within our organisation and we have now started using channel-based group chats to discuss each project.
I would recommend Flock for any organisation looking for a collaboration tool or a team communication app within the organisation.
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It is really important that such apps should be simple to use but versatile in their applications then only the employees will accept it easily.
There is always a resistance for complex softwares or office tools and in this respect if flock is a simpler tool it is worth welcoming in ones organization.