Workplace by Facebook

Workplace is an enterprise connectivity platform developed by Facebook, Inc. and featuring tools like groups, instant messaging and News Feed.

History

Workplace was first announced [1] on January 14, 2015. It launched in beta as Facebook at Work with customers including the Royal Bank of Scotland.[2]

Facebook itself had been using a version of Workplace internally since 2011,[3] when one of its engineers created groups that were only accessible to people inside the company. Alongside Facebook Messenger, these private groups helped Facebook employees work more efficiently together by reducing their reliance on email and other Software as a Service tools.[citation needed]

Workplace officially launched in October 2016. To date, over 30,000 organizations [4] have joined the platform including Walmart, Heineken, Spotify, Chevron, Stanley Black & Decker and Starbucks.

Features

News Feed: The News Feed is a scrolling stream of posts [5] that uses Facebook's machine learning algorithms to keep people up to date with relevant company announcements.

Groups: Groups are shared collaboration spaces [6] where people can upload documents, leave comments, manage projects, and get work done with colleagues.

Multi-Company Collaboration: Workplace enables people to collaborate with external teams, partners or suppliers from within their Workplace account using secure and private groups, chats, and video calls.

Workplace Chat: Workplace Chat is an instant messaging tool that allows text, voice calls or video conferencing [7] with up to 50 colleagues.

Live Video: Live Video enables users to broadcast live directly from their mobile [8] and receive real-time feedback in the form of comments and reactions.

Auto Translate: Auto Translate uses the same machine learning technology that serves up 4.5 billion translations every day on Facebook to provide one-click translations [9] in 46 languages.

People Directory: Find colleagues, build connections, and collaborate more effectively with a searchable database of profiles [10] customized to individual organizations.

Pricing

Workplace has two pricing options, Standard and Premium. Workplace Standard is free, while Workplace Premium is $3 USD per user, per month. Workplace Premium is also offered free to registered non-profits and staff of educational institutions.

Workplace Premium customers act as data controllers and appoint Facebook as a data processor under the Workplace Agreement. These customers own and administer their account data. They can modify, delete or export it at any time.

Security

Workplace holds the following compliance certificates:

  • ISO 27018 – Information Security Management
  • ISO 27001 – Information Security Management
  • SOC 2 – Trust Services Principles
  • SOC 3 – Service Organization Controls
  • EU/US Privacy Shield Data Privacy Practices

Workplace and GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standardizes data protection rules across the European Union (EU). It came into effect on 25 May 2018. GDPR builds on existing data protection law, while also adding new requirements. Most of the GDPR's requirements fall on data controllers. Workplace Premium customers act as data controllers and appoint Facebook as a data processor under the Workplace Agreement. Facebook and Workplace comply with all applicable data protection laws.

Workplace and Facebook

While Workplace accounts are set up and run separately [11] from Facebook accounts, Workplace benefits from much of the underlying technology and innovation that powers Facebook.

Data Centers: Workplace data is stored across 12 Facebook-owned data centers [12] around the world. Because Facebook owns or leases all the land surrounding these data centres, it can monitor the physical integrity of the area and ensure the secure destruction of electronic media containing data after use.

AI: Workplace benefits from Facebook's leadership [13] in AI research.[14] AI makes Workplace “more meaningful" [15] by using machine learning to sort the most relevant information in the News Feed and make intelligent recommendations while 'downranking' less valuable information.

Safety Check for Workplace: In October 2018, Workplace announced the launch [16] of Safety Check. Originally developed by Facebook engineers after the Japanese tsunami [17] in 2011, Safety Check for Facebook is a simple and easy way to let friends and family know you’re safe in a crisis, and check on others in the affected area. With Safety Check for Workplace, organizations can identify employees who may be affected by a crisis, send multiple modes of notification, and monitor responses. Safety Check was the most-requested feature from Workplace customers and has been activated by Delta Air Lines (during Hurricane Florence [18] and the Hokkaido earthquake [19]).

Reception

Workplace has an aggregated rating of 3.9 stars from 802 reviews on G2 Crowd,[20] and an aggregated rating of 4 stars from 103 reviews on Gartner PeerInsights.[21] It has been praised as a tool for internal communication [22] and collaboration, but critics have noted [23] that it lacks some project management functionality.

Customers

Workplace is used by over 30,000 organizations around the world. Organizations using Workplace include Starbucks,[24] Walmart[25], Virgin Atlantic,[26] Heineken,[27] Royal Bank of Scotland,[28] Campbell[29] and Booking.com.[30]

As of February 2019, there are 2 million paying users,[31] but the total number of users, both paid and unpaid, haven't been disclosed.

Workplace for Good

Workplace for Good was launched in June 2018 to provide a free version of Workplace Premium for registered non-profits and staff of educational institutions. Organizations using workplace for Good includes WWF,[32] Save the Children,[33] UNICEF,[34] United Way,[35] Boy Scouts of America,[36] Comic Relief,[37] The Continents State University[38] Australian Catholic University[39] and Norwegian Refugee Council.[40]

"Workplace is helping WWF develop a new, more open, transparent, and collaborative way of working; bringing offices and people from around the world together, giving them a voice and showcasing a diversity of ideas and perspectives which are critical to tackling the planet’s most urgent and important environmental challenges." – Kate Cooke, Head of Network Communications at WWF.

Integrations

Workplace integrates with over 50 popular enterprise tools. The growing collection of integrations are designed to help users share, stay current, and simplify complicated internal processes.

At the F8 Conference in May 2018, Workplace announced the launch [41] of the Integrations Directory [42] for Workplace Premium customers. This includes integrations with popular SaaS tools like Jira Cloud by Atlassian, Microsoft Sharepoint, ServiceNow, Adobe Sign and SurveyMonkey.

Partners

Workplace works with a large number of service partners across the globe.[43] These partners help Workplace customers with many elements of their Workplace deployment, including planning, use cases, roll out, change management, training and custom integrations.

Surveillance

Workplace is used by companies to monitor employee conversations using keywords, topic, theme, or even reactions to posts or announcements made on the site.

See also

References

  1. ^ https://www.wired.com/2015/01/facebook-at-work-launch/
  2. ^ https://www.rbs.com/rbs/news/2015/10/rbs-becomes-first-bank-in-the-world-to-launch-facebook-at-work.html
  3. ^ https://www.brunswickgroup.com/workplace-facebook-predictions-i8788/
  4. ^ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2017/10/26/facebook-workplace-spreads-to-30000-businesses-nonprofits/1#334fdf0b1ec2
  5. ^ https://www.workplace.com/workplace/features/news-feed
  6. ^ https://www.workplace.com/workplace/features/groups
  7. ^ https://www.workplace.com/workplace/features/workplace-chat
  8. ^ https://www.workplace.com/workplace/features/live-video
  9. ^ https://www.workplace.com/workplace/features/auto-translate
  10. ^ https://www.workplace.com/workplace/features/org-chart
  11. ^ https://www.facebook.com/help/work/411291142403345
  12. ^ https://datacenterfrontier.com/facebooks-accelerates-data-center-expansion/
  13. ^ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/inside-facebooks-ai-machine/
  14. ^ https://www.forbes.com/sites/samshead/2018/10/01/facebook-plans-to-double-size-of-ai-research-unit-by-2020/#259f94094c4f
  15. ^ https://workplaceblog.fb.com/future-of-work/ai-work-meaningful/
  16. ^ https://workplaceblog.fb.com/product-news/safety-check/
  17. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami
  18. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Florence
  19. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hokkaido_Eastern_Iburi_earthquake
  20. ^ https://www.g2crowd.com/products/workplace-by-facebook/reviews
  21. ^ https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/enterprise-social-networking-applications/vendor/facebook/product/workplace-by-facebook?timeFilter=12
  22. ^ https://uk.pcmag.com/social-networking/88257/workplace-by-facebook
  23. ^ https://www.approachmarketing.com/blog/2017/3/13/our-agency-tried-workplace-by-facebook-and-heres-how-it-went
  24. ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J67sZ7Sgvw
  25. ^ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/26/workplace-facebooks-enterprise-edition-snaps-up-walmart-as-a-customer/
  26. ^ https://www.workplace.com/workplace/case-studies/virgin
  27. ^ https://www.facebook.com/workplace/blog/tips-tech-deployment-expert/
  28. ^ https://www.facebook.com/workplace/blog/rbs-live-video/
  29. ^ https://www.workplace.com/workplace/case-studies/campbell
  30. ^ https://www.workplace.com/workplace/case-studies/booking-com
  31. ^ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/facebook-says-that-workplace-now-has-2m-paying-users/
  32. ^ https://www.worldwildlife.org/
  33. ^ https://www.savethechildren.org/
  34. ^ https://www.unicef.org/
  35. ^ https://www.unitedway.org/
  36. ^ https://www.scouting.org/
  37. ^ https://www.comicrelief.com/
  38. ^ https://continents.facebook.com/
  39. ^ https://www.acu.edu.au/
  40. ^ https://www.nrc.no/
  41. ^ https://workplaceblog.fb.com/news/workplace-integrations/
  42. ^ https://www.facebook.com/workplace/integrations
  43. ^ https://www.facebook.com/workplace/partners

External links