Discussions are one of my favorite features in OnePlace. We use them in our daily work here at Riverock to discuss anything from development issues, to marketing strategies, to what everyone likes for snacks in the office. They have become an indispensable tool in the office.

Here are just a few of the ways that OnePlace discussions benefit our business:

• Helps keep remote workers in the loop throughout the work day. One of our developers works from home quite a bit. He uses discussions to post questions, provide feedback and stay informed of the daily goings-on of the business.

• Collaborate with our vendors and clients. For example, we use discussions heavily with the marketing agency that is helping us market OnePlace. Because their team and our team are in different locations and managed by different people, the need for good communication increases considerably. Quite often one team will upload a document or design into OnePlace that results in a back and forth process of both teams as we hammer out the final result. Discussions do a great job of facilitating this type of work flow.

• Reduces the amount of face-to-face meetings that are required throughout the day. One of the problems that have plagued businesses for, well forever, is way too much time spent in meetings. Because we hold lots of online virtual meetings in OnePlace, this has really helped increase our productivity by keeping us out of the conference room and at our work stations.

So beyond these benefits, why else do I like using discussions so much? To me, they provide many of the benefits of instant messaging (IM) and email, but for teams rather than a few individuals. Instant messaging is typically used by two people to hold a real-time discussion online about something. Some IM tools will keep an automatic record of conversations that you can search later to find out what someone said and when. Email on the other hand is great for asynchronous communication. I can leave you an email, and you can respond when it's convenient for you. Meanwhile as I wait for your response, I can work on other things. Email allows you to communicate with many people at one time, and some email clients even do a great job of combining multiple related emails into a single thread, making it easy to manage many threads of conversation. Plus I can save off emails in a private folder on my hard-drive or company network which I can search later. All great stuff.

So, if IM and email provide all these great benefits, why then do we need discussions in OnePlace? Well for starters, if you've ever had a new person join your team, and you wanted to quickly bring them up to speed, you may have experienced why these communication tools leave something to be desired. Suppose I had a conversation in IM with a colleague last week. How do I let a new team member take advantage of that conversation today? Email suffers from a similar problem. If someone new joins my team, and I want them to be privy to past conversations that were held in email, I need to 1) have saved the emails, 2) be able to find the relevant emails, 3) forward the emails to the new team member. Then I have to repeat this process for each new person who joins the team. Not exactly low friction.

OnePlace discussions provide many of the benefits of IM. As you chat with others in a discussion, OnePlace will automatically display new messages as soon as they are posted. It even sounds a chime when new messages are available, allowing you to switch away to another application and not miss when someone posts a new message. OnePlace also shows you when team members are online and active within a discussion, by displaying green/yellow/red status icons next to each discussion participant's name. Very handy for knowing that a question you post will be answered in a timely fashion.

OnePlace discussions also provide many of the benefits of email. You can post a message in a discussion, flip away for awhile, and then come back and see what others have posted in the meantime. You don't miss a beat. OnePlace also automatically shows you how many unread discussions you have, much like how email clients often let you see you have new mail in your inbox. You can also attach files to messages in a discussion (images are even shown inline in the flow of the discussion), just like in email.

But perhaps best of all, OnePlace keeps a history of all your discussions, organized by workplace, and shared by all members of the workplace. Bringing a new team member up to speed is as easy as adding them to a workplace. Instantly they gain visibility to all information in that workplace, including all past discussions. No more forwarding of emails or sending documents over IM.

Discussions also provide these additional benefits:

• Filter a discussion by participant. See just what Sally said, or Joe said, etc.

• Filter a discussion by date. Quickly see what's been said today, yesterday, or any date where something was said in the discussion.

• Join or leave a discussion at any time. After you join a discussion, OnePlace will automatically keep you informed when new messages are posted to that discussion.

• Search your discussions. Quickly find a past conversation where you know something had been said.

• Email the discussion. This is useful for when you need to let someone outside of OnePlace follow along with a discussion.

So, if you're new to OnePlace, or perhaps a user who is just starting to use the collaborative features within OnePlace and not sure how to take advantage of them, why not begin by moving discussions with your teammates out of email and/or IM, and into OnePlace? We think you'll quickly grow to love this feature as much as we do!