What is Workplace from Meta and how can it help your business?

Workplace from Meta is an online platform for business communication and collaboration. It’s operated by the parent company of Facebook, and was formerly known as Workplace from Facebook.

What’s the point of Workplace from Meta?

Businesses are become more global and more distributed. Communications that used to happen by the watercooler are all too easily lost, creating silos. As such, the need for efficient and seamless communication tools has never been more evident.

Enter Workplace from Meta: a powerful and versatile platform designed to transform the way businesses communicate and collaborate.

Essentially, it’s Facebook but for the workplace. With features such as instant messaging, live video streaming, and project collaboration, Workplace enables people within businesses to stay connected and informed with colleagues (and projects). Just like they use Facebook personally.

What are the key features of Workplace?

Here’s an overview of some of its key features:

  1. News Feed: The News Feed is the central hub of Workplace, where employees can stay up-to-date with the latest company news, announcements, and updates. It functions just like the News Feed on Facebook, making it easy for employees to engage with the content through likes, comments and shares.
  2. Groups: Workplace Groups enable employees to create dedicated spaces for teams, departments, or projects. Within these groups, members can share updates, files, and resources, as well as collaborate on tasks and projects.
  3. Chat: The Workplace Chat feature allows employees to send instant messages to one another, either individually or in group conversations. Chat also supports voice and video calls, making it easy for employees to connect and collaborate in real-time.
  4. Live Video: With Live Video, employees can broadcast live video streams to their colleagues, enabling real-time communication and collaboration for events, meetings and presentations.
  5. Events: The Events feature allows organizations to create and manage events within Workplace, complete with event details, guest lists and RSVPs.
  6. Knowledge Library: The Knowledge Library is a centralised repository for company resources, where employees can access, share, and collaborate on documents, presentations and other files.

What are the benefits of Workplace from Meta?

Because Workplace acts as a central noticeboard and messaging system, it helps teams stay in touch and informed even when members are working in different locations. It even includes an automatic translation feature for businesses operating across multiple countries.

Workplace aims to encourage engagement and participation by using a social network-style interface. As mentioned above, it offers a main news feed for the whole company, and allows users to join subgroups with their own feeds.

Updates, images, polls and surveys can be created and shared, and an AI algorithm is used to prioritise and order content. Company-wide webinars and multi-user video meetings can be hosted on Workplace, with invitations circulated in advance using the “Events” feature.

Workplace also includes a Knowledge Library, where companies can publish shared documents and links to useful resources. Templates and WYSIWYG editing tools are provided to help users create and share documents without requiring specialist skills.

Is Workplace the same as Facebook?

Workplace has many of the same features as Facebook. Users can set up a profile page with their photo and other personal information, and communicate and share information with other users by adding comments to posts. They can also have text and video conversations with each other.

However, Workplace accounts aren’t linked to Facebook. Users’ professional identities are kept wholly separate, and employers and co-workers cannot access users’ personal Facebook accounts via Workplace.

How do businesses access Workplace from Meta?

Until 2021 it was possible to use basic Workplace features for free, but that’s no longer an option. A standard subscription now costs US$4 per user per month, which includes access to the full feature set. For $2 a month extra, businesses can take advantage of priority support and multiple single-sign-on providers. An additional $2 unlocks enhanced peer-to-peer video streaming features.

Once a user is enrolled in Workplace, they can access the service from a web browser, or use a dedicated mobile app for Android or iOS. Meta claims that Workplace’s use of familiar social networking interface elements means that no employee training is required.

Does Workplace include productivity applications?

Workplace doesn’t have word processing, spreadsheet or presentation tools, as included with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. However, it does support integrations with those services: users can post and share links to cloud documents within Workplace environment.

Integrations are also available for numerous other applications and services, including Dropbox, SharePoint and Salesforce. Companies can write and deploy their own integrations to use Workplace with bespoke tools.

This feature was updated and expanded upon on 26 April 2023.

Summary

  • Workplace from Meta is a subscription-based online platform for communications and collaboration. 
  • It provides a social network-type interface, with text and video chat plus integrations with third-party apps and services. 
  • Workplace accounts are fully separate from the public Facebook service. 
  • The Workplace Knowledge Library provides a central repository for company documents and resources. 
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Darien Graham-Smith

Darien is one of the UK's most knowledgeable technical journalists. You will find him in PC Pro magazine, writing reviews for a variety of sites and on guitar with his band The Red Queens. His explainer articles help TechFinitive's audience understand how technology works.

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