Qatalog work hub aligns sales, marketing and the wider organization. Achieve your sales goals, increase sales efficiency and become a high-performing sales team.

Align sales with marketing and the wider org | Qatalog

<h1>More closed-won, less admin</h1>
<h4>Don&rsquo;t let the new remote world slow down your sales. Connect your teams and tools to a dynamic single source of truth.</h4>

<h2 style="text-align: center;">All your leads, meetings, and customer notes. In one place.</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f;">Qatalog integrates with all your tools to enable real visibility</span></h3>

<h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #292929;">No more silos</span></h1>
<h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #292929;">Qatalog helps you collaborate seamlessly with product, engineering, marketing, and finance.</span></h4>

<h1 style="text-align: center;">Transparent updates</h1>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Qatalog amplifies important updates &mdash; no need for constant pings or worrying about missing key announcements.</h4>

<h1 style="text-align: center;">Real visibility</h1>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">See critical info like product roadmaps, marketing campaign plans, and engineering timelines.</h4>

<h2 style="text-align: center;">Sales does its best when it flies together</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f;">It&rsquo;s okay for sales to be at the tip of the spear. It&rsquo;s better when sales can see what the spear&rsquo;s made of.</span></h3>

<h2 style="text-align: center;">Let Qatalog unblock you</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f;">Connect your tools in seconds, and watch your blockers fade away forever</span></h3>

Find any lead or contact across all your tools with one simple search bar. Finally.

Search: Bye bye black boxes

No more loosey-goosey goals in docs and sheets. Qatalog gives everyone a simple, automated way to assign and track goals.

Goals: If you can measure it, you can manage it

Qatalog lets you share cross-team updates to the right channels, so they actually get read.

Posts: Showcase your impact

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Truly sync up your sales

<p>Documentation apps play a key role in your virtual workspace.</p>
<p>Tools like <a href="https://www.google.com/drive/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Google Drive</a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and</span> <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/paper" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Dropbox Paper</a> offer secure cloud-based storage for all your important files, which can then be shared with the whole team. These tools allow you to store documents and work on them at the same time, making them core business solutions that most of us have been familiar with for years.&nbsp;</p>
<p>There are hundreds of these apps and tools that allow teams to get things done and share work from any device. The idea of these apps is to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-performance-management-software/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-documentation&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">level up performance</a> and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/collaboration-software-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener">collaboration</a>, and many do. However, the interconnectivity of these tools can still be a friction point for teams. For example: when was the last time a member of the sales team could easily view a design file?&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<h2><strong>Importance of documentation</strong></h2>
<p>Documentation commits the expectations, boundaries, and consequences of teamwork, so that hire <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/company-culture-and-documentation-culture/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">number 500 can have the same perspective as hire number five.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/raise-your-work-standards/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Productive knowledge management</a> starts with documentation, which drives clarity and conviction &mdash; and is the reason why documents, spreadsheets, and slides are the lifeblood of knowledge workers.</p>
<p><span>Problems with documentation start with inconsistencies. If your company is working with multiple tools,&nbsp;</span><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/work-management-tool-vs-work-hub/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">different teams might create files in each of them</a><span>. When Design creates tasks in Asana, Engineering works in JIRA, Operations writes notes in Confluence, Marketing stores business contacts in Hubspot, and the Sales team uses Salesforce, things can get out of control quickly. That's how knowledge silos begin.</span></p>
<p>That being said, you need to start with the best documentation software in the game. Below you&rsquo;ll find a list of documentation software the Qatalog team loves.&nbsp;</p>
<h2><strong>Best documentation apps</strong></h2>
<h3><b>1. Google Drive</b></h3>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;">&ldquo;Document management is the cornerstone of knowledge creation, and the reason why documents, spreadsheets, and slides are the lifeblood of knowledge workers. It&rsquo;s not a coincidence that in 2020, <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-g-suite-now-has-2-billion-users/#:~:text=Google's%20office%20productivity%20suite%2C%20G,users%20of%20products%20beyond%20Gmail." rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">over 2 billion</a> people are using Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides every month. That&rsquo;s 25% of the world population!</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">With Google Drive, we can easily shape our thoughts, by flexibly using bullets, free-text or tables. We love to organize our docs, slides and sheets in shared folders, so everyone can access them right away, without the need to &lsquo;request access&rsquo;. Best of all, when <a href="https://qatalog.com/integrate/google-drive/" rel="follow">Google Drive files we use often are linked to our Qatalog teams or projects</a>, it&rsquo;s dead easy for anyone in the company to locate them. And when information is that visible and flowy, you know that work works!&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Matteo Tittarelli, </span>Growth Operations</p>
<h3><strong>2. Dropbox Paper</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: center;">Dropbox Paper provides a real-time collaborative space for project creation and coordination. It has different use cases for different teams and includes templates for you to utilize depending on your project needs.&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Dropbox Paper is extremely useful for creators, as it has many applications and the ability to customize your document/media in any way you want. As a collaboration tool, it works similarly to Google Drive with invitations and sharable links.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>3. Notion</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: center;">&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that I&rsquo;d be able to keep up with all requested work and growth experiments without documenting it into Notion. Seeing my tickets and being able to organize different projects and where they&rsquo;ve progressed helps keep my team organized and efficient.&rdquo;</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Kameron Tanseli, Growth Engineer</p>
<h3><strong>3. Slite</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: center;">The workplace for async teams. This documentation app is up-and-coming and provides helpful templates to ensure all your information is organized to perfection. Their "catch up" feature also provides a newsfeed of updates and new files.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Benefits of documentation apps</h2>
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Collaboration </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">&mdash; Documentation software allows for async collaboration across projects through comment features, sharing, and the actual work being done.&nbsp;</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Ownership</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> &mdash; Editors can control access and decide who has permission to view, comment on, or edit a file. This allows for transparency within your team (or whoever you give access to).</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Discoverability </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">&mdash; Search features in documentation apps allow each document or project to be discoverable. These tools also make recent edits or changes easier to see.&nbsp;</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Documents in one place</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> &mdash; Team members can access information regardless of location and time zone. All documentation is quickly and easily accessible.</span></li>
</ol>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Storing, sharing, and accessing files is crucial for keeping the wheels of your business well-oiled, but these apps don&rsquo;t always make it easy. For one, accessibility can create silos within specific teams if permissions aren&rsquo;t open. Here are some other challenges with documentation apps:</span></p>
<h2><b>3 challenges with documentation apps</b></h2>
<h3><b>1. Lack of a ready-to-use framework</b></h3>
<p>File storage apps don&rsquo;t offer a systematic process for naming or storing documents so that they are <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-search-tools-vs-work-hub/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-documentation&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">discoverable to everyone</a>, making document management difficult. If you&rsquo;re not the file creator, you&rsquo;ll often find yourself repeating questions like <i>&ldquo;where is that doc,&rdquo;</i> <i><span style="font-weight: 400;">&ldquo;what&rsquo;s the name of that doc,&rdquo;</span></i> or <i>&ldquo;can I have edit access?&rdquo;</i></p>
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<p>This becomes especially true across different generations of employees. When a person leaves, you inherit a Google Drive full of randomly named documents, and all the important documents that you need got lost who-knows-where, and you need to waste time recreating them.</p>
<h3><b>2. Docs are out of context</b></h3>
<p>Documents kept in your cloud storage app are often separated from their relevant team members, teams, or projects. Yes, you can look at who edited last &mdash; but that doesn&rsquo;t tell you who <i><span style="font-weight: 400;">owns</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that doc, or to which project or team.</span></p>
<p>When someone comes to look at a document for the first time, it&rsquo;s more difficult for them to understand it<i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span></i>Lack of context adds further complexity and challenges to the workday.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><b>3. Finding files is painful</b></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With a lack of process for storing files into folders or categorizing them with the right names and context, it&rsquo;s difficult to search for and find a document when you need it.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>Yes, Google Drive search is good &mdash; but it doesn&rsquo;t include filters, and you might not always have the right keyword at hand if you&rsquo;re out of context. Even if you created or collaborated on a spreadsheet or slide deck, there&rsquo;s no guarantee you&rsquo;ll easily find it in a couple of weeks&rsquo; time.</p>
<p>Plus, you can&rsquo;t search for files outside of Google Drive from within Google Drive, and you aren&rsquo;t <i><span style="font-weight: 400;">always </span></i>uploading everything you do to the drive.<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-digital-workspace/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-documentation&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener"> A work hub allows you to connect</a> all your search functions between documentation apps.&nbsp;</p>
<h2><b>Work hub vs. documentation apps</b></h2>
<p>So, what are the crucial differences between a Work Hub and a documentation app?</p>
<h3><b>1. Create and collaborate</b></h3>
<p>Pages and Posts allow for documentation that sits in context, relevant to each Project. Once published they appear in the Recent Activity feed of the Project, granting instant status updates at first glance.&nbsp;</p>
<p>However, documents aren&rsquo;t always created in Qatalog &mdash; instead, all the documents that you create or store within your different file-sharing tools are gathered together in one convenient place.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This allows for flexibility, so each team can keep using whichever tool is best for them whether that's Google Drive, Dropbox Paper, or another doc app &mdash; and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/collaboration-software-vs-work-hub/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-documentation&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">still benefit from collaborating</a> and accessing powerful knowledge together.</p>
<p><img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/VnZYkGL6TXy7NcSF36oS" alt="undefined" /></p>
<h3><strong>2. Link files to specific teams, projects, and people</strong></h3>
<p>Attach your documents, sheets, slides, or any other link to the <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow">relevant context in Qatalog</a>, so all information is tightly linked, easily retrievable, and transparent at every level of the organization.&nbsp;</p>
<p>No need to waste any more time creating workarounds such as docs listing various links, becoming a bookmarking pro, or keeping 10 tabs open on your browser.</p>
<p><img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/HJr8jmEQpu6iaQOiznHg" alt="undefined" /></p>
<h3><b>3. Full-text search for finding things quickly</b></h3>
<p>If you don&rsquo;t remember the title of a doc, you can still think of a keyword in the body text. Our search cuts across both Google Drive and Dropbox, both titles and full-text, to find any keyword in any doc.&nbsp;</p>
<p>You can also refine your search with powerful filters &mdash; by people, teams, projects, date, and more to further dig into the context of the doc.</p>
<h3><b>4. Keep track of doc activity from one place</b></h3>
<p>When you&rsquo;re waiting for a team member to comment or edit a doc, you might want to ping them more than once until they do, or just open the doc hoping that feedback magically appeared in there. Needless to say, this is a killer for your focus and productivity.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When you connect Google Drive or Dropbox to Qatalog, you can check a feed of what each team member did on any of these apps. You&rsquo;ll know if a member of the design team created a new slide deck on Google Drive, or if the head of growth edited a new doc on Dropbox &mdash; all in real-time.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So you stay on top of the activity in each and every document at any time, tracking who made what change, and when the edit occurred. Without pinging anyone.</span></p>
<h2>Add structure and transparency to your workplace with a work hub</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When you integrate your cloud documentation and storage apps with <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow">a work hub in one virtual workspace</a>, all your files are always right there where you need them.</span></p>
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Search for all your docs, slides, and sheets from one unified workspace</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, without needing to switch between apps, rely on faulty search engines, or pinging anyone.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /><br /></span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Put all your docs into context</b> by tightly linking them with source, owner, teams, and projects, so you can find things quickly, and always get hold of a file in its latest version.<span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /><br /></span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Retain visibility on any file created by one of your teams</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, without the need for an account on each tool (accessing or editing the file would still need an account).</span></li>
</ol>
<p>Boost team collaboration and bring people together in one workspace where they easily can find files, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-team-instant-messaging-apps-slack-teams/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-documentation&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">messages</a>, project links, and goals. With this type of platform, you can unlock hidden productivity and keep remote/hybrid teams aligned.</p>

Documentation and productivity apps play a vital role in the workplace. Learn how a Work Hub connects your existing apps.

Work hub vs. Documentation apps | Qatalog

Documentation apps come with organization and context-switching challenges. Solve them with a work hub.

Best documentation software for modern teams

<p>Instant messaging apps or chat solutions replicate the casual flow of ideas that can happen in an office context while connecting team members across countries and time zones for more effective online collaboration.</p>
<p>However, research from <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qat</a><a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">alog and Cornell University</a> shows that instant messaging apps, along with the other tools in your arsenal, actually contribute to disorganization. 54% of people say that apps can make it harder to find information, and cycling through different messaging, collaboration, and productivity tools wastes almost an hour per day.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Our reliance on messaging is a double-edged sword. Hybrid teams need an avenue for communication, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow">but a case could be made for instant messaging apps</a> not being the full-proof solution for modern work.&nbsp;</p>
<p>They do have their pros, though. Team messaging apps allow teams to:</p>
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Separate team conversations into channels for different people and projects</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Start voice or video calls</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Share <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-documentation-apps/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">files and documents</a> to collaborate on them</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Communicate with your team across time zones and locations</span></li>
</ol>
<p>Here are a number of instant messaging apps that we love:</p>
<h2>The 5 best instant messaging apps for hybrid teams&nbsp;</h2>
<h3><strong>1. Slack</strong></h3>
<p><a href="https://slack.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Slack</a> has, without a doubt, defined the team chat space. It was developed for the user, and packs in delight through audio calls and custom emoji capabilities. For all that Slack has done for the instant messaging space, it makes sense that it&rsquo;s the frontrunner for everyone&rsquo;s favorite. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">However, there is a lot to be said about the impact Slack</a> has had on remote office communication &mdash; which we&rsquo;ll get into in a little bit.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>2. Microsoft Teams</strong></h3>
<p><a href="http://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Microsoft Teams</a> is part of the Office 365 offering and creates a chat-based workspace. Teams offers instant messaging, video, and audio calls. Teams, as well as the Office 365 offering, is optimized for larger teams who can have a dedicated IT staff to assist with the rollout.</p>
<h3><strong>3. Google Chat</strong></h3>
<p>Google offers a lot of work software, including a free instant messaging app. <a href="https://mail.google.com/chat/u/0/#chat/welcome" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Google Chat</a>, rebranded from Google Hangouts Chat, breaks conversations down into chat rooms, similar to Slack&rsquo;s channels. The ease of Google Chat comes with how easily it integrates with the rest of the Google suite.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>4. Discord</strong></h3>
<p><span> </span><a href="https://discordapp.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Discord</a> is similar to Slack or Microsoft Teams, but its interface was developed to be more gamer-friendly than business-friendly. Huge pros: most of the features that you&rsquo;d need are included in the free plan, and its audio features are an interesting benefit for async communication. Cons: its lack of threads could make file sharing a little chaotic.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>5. HipChat</strong></h3>
<p><a href="http://www.hipchat.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">HipChat</a> features the classic instant-work-messenger capabilities including 1-on-1 instant messaging, group chat rooms, and file sharing. They also include screen sharing and video conferencing.</p>
<h2><b>What makes a great work messaging app?</b></h2>
<p>Workplace communication is vital to creating a healthy, happy, cross-functional team. Especially in the era of modern work, communication has to be a frictionless experience across all sorts of barriers. Your instant messaging app shouldn&rsquo;t be one.&nbsp;</p>
<p>A great instant messaging solution for hybrid teams:<b></b></p>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1"><b>Enables organized communication and collaboration. </b>Team instant messaging apps should enable communication, that&rsquo;s a given. The important part here is <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/collaboration-software-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"><b><i>organized </i></b>communication <b><i>and</i></b> collaboration.</a> It&rsquo;s one thing to shout into a void of singular updates that aren&rsquo;t attached to the context of work, but collaborating requires both organization and context.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1"><b>Offers a search feature. </b>With instant messaging comes the ability to chat about things unrelated to work. So finding that design file you sent a co-worker on Friday afternoon might not be the easiest thing to scroll for on Wednesday morning. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-search-tools-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Being able to search for files and messages</a> based on keywords, channels, or who the message was sent to is a necessity for work IMing.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1"><b>Provides a user-friendly interface that the whole team actively uses.</b> According to our research with Cornell University, <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">58% of people report</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that not all departments use the same online apps. Obviously, this leads to silos and creates organizational roadblocks. Instant messaging should be not only accessible to everyone in your company but utilized by every team.&nbsp;</span></li>
</ul>
<h2><strong>The three main challenges of team messaging apps</strong></h2>
<p>Of course, the things that should make a team chat app great are expectations, not reality, and there are a lot of things that can become overwhelming when you&rsquo;re expecting an instant response from your coworkers throughout their 9-5 workday.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>1. Information overload</strong></h3>
<p>With the endless number of conversations taking place on your team messaging app, the tool can start to look increasingly like the mythical Hydra &mdash; sprouting new heads (or threads) the more you try to get it under control.</p>
<p>As an individual team member, it becomes harder to know which information is relevant to you, so you might end up missing a crucial project update.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Or, if there are too many messages, team members might feel discouraged and decide not to read them at all. Once those little red notifications take over, it can be hard to get them to disappear.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>2. Short information shelf-life</strong></h3>
<p>The ease and speed of team messaging might be a benefit, but it also has the side effect of devaluing the information that&rsquo;s shared.</p>
<p>Team members get used to messages being swept away in the thread, so information distributed in this way might lose significance. Fine for a quick emoji &mdash; less ideal for important weekly team updates.</p>
<h3><strong>3. Diversity of formats</strong></h3>
<p>In team messaging apps, information is shared in diverse formats &mdash; messages, voice calls, document links. When everyone has their own way of writing updates, setting meeting agendas, or naming links, it&rsquo;s <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/work-management-tool-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">hard to navigate the complexity.</a>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Details of a project can be spread across multiple messages and/or calls, making it difficult to monitor progress.</p>
<h2>A work hub is a vital addition to your team&rsquo;s instant chat</h2>
<p>Instant messaging isn&rsquo;t sustainable as the sole vehicle for workplace communication. <span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-digital-workspace/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Information overload</a> can be a huge added burden to employees trying to shuffle through the noise of the day-to-day.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>Adopting a work hub in addition to your instant messaging tool helps adds context to the information constantly being sent back and forth. It also gives you a place to connect the work being done with your instant communication, resulting in cross-team collaboration you didn&rsquo;t have to dedicate time to sync on. Plus, it makes all your work <span style="font-weight: 400;">inextricably linked.</span></p>
<h3><b>Adopt longer, context-driven async updates with a work hub</b></h3>
<p>A work hub breaks down silos by cascading updates and comms automatically to the right channels, for a feedback loop that doesn&rsquo;t require a pingback. By integrating a work hub with your instant messaging tool, you can send structured updates (complete with context, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/work-hub-vs-performance-management-software/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">goals</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-company-wiki-notion-confluence/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">files</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">and the teams involved</a>) to the right messaging app channel.&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Threads in <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qatalog</a> allow everyone to comment on projects in an organized way. You can follow threads and stay aligned with all your critical conversations. Plus, with our smart feed, you</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> get a personalized dashboard of important updates across posts, threads, projects, and goals.</span></p>
<p>The async messages of a work hub keep everyone in the loop of things without intrusive, focus-breaking noise and red badges &mdash; whether it&rsquo;s a project update, <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/team-updates/" rel="follow">team weekly</a>, or personal news shared with the team.</p>
<p>And when adding a work hub to your existing tool stack, it takes the reliance on instant messaging down a notch. Now you don&rsquo;t have to panic about finding that one file that was sent in the chat before you started talking about the movie marathon you had this week.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Search for information, easier</h3>
<p>On Slack and Teams, you can have one channel per topic, but when there are tons of messages on each channel, it&rsquo;s hard to retrieve the right one &mdash; especially if you don&rsquo;t have the right keyword or when search doesn&rsquo;t deliver as quickly.</p>
<p>Qatalog doesn&rsquo;t replace your synchronous messaging app but rather complements it. When you integrate your messaging app with Qatalog, you make every single message retrievable, through a powerful, custom-built, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-do-you-search-for-files-at-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">full-text search</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. You add context to the messages being sent back and forth. And you cut through the noise.&nbsp;</span></p>
<h3><strong>Keep work together with a Slack integration</strong></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sometimes in-depth project discussions end up happening in Slack, when they really should be visible to everyone. Keep track of decisions and feedback by easily adding a thread from Slack directly into Qatalog. Your content stays together and your team stays updated and informed.&nbsp;</span></p>
<h2>Team instant messaging apps vs. work hub</h2>
<p>There are remote teams that have ditched instant messaging apps entirely, citing <span style="font-weight: 400;">addictive qualities, disorganization, and the inability to conduct in-depth conversations. Some have even argued (myself included) that reliance on instant messaging detracts from a true async-friendly working model. Because if your team has to be ready to respond to a message at all time, who is getting the deep work done?&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>Some teams still rely on instant messaging as their only form of direct communication. By now, you know that we think this is a mistake and it&rsquo;s keeping your company from advancing to modern work. Instant messaging might still feel like the future, but in reality, it sits with the rest of your legacy tools keeping you in the &ldquo;old way of working.&rdquo;</p>
<p><a href="https://qatalog.qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">A work hub</a> isn&rsquo;t a replacement for instant messaging, it&rsquo;s an important addition that gives you context and enables you to connect with your team. The new way of working is communicative and people first, so stop being distracted by the endless notifications.&nbsp;</p>

How is Qatalog different from team instant messaging and chat apps for teams like Slack or Microsoft Teams?

Work hub vs. Team instant messaging apps | Qatalog

A work hub is a vital addition to your team’s instant chat.

Team instant messaging apps vs. work hub

<p>Companies have a lot of information. Documents. Messages. Files. Decks. Code. Emails. If you keep digging, it goes on and on.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The chaos of information that happens in a company is limitless. This is why we developed tools to help us streamline and organize it.</p>
<p>Sharing information is vital for any company, yet how many of us have wasted time digging through old emails, switching between apps, browser tabs, and folders to find what we need?</p>
<p>In our research of more than 100 software companies, 77% said they have no process for documenting or storing information. According to<a href="https://qatalog.com/remote-work-report/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=remote-work-report&amp;utm_term=2021&amp;utm_content=report" rel="follow"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> GitLab&rsquo;s recent Remote Work Report</span></a>, only 37% of employees say their orgs do a good job of aligning work.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Company intranets</strong> have been traditionally used as platforms for corporate wikis, but in recent years have been replaced by solutions like a work hub.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Here&rsquo;s the thing: information overload is chaotic, and your workday shouldn't have to involve digging yourself out of a trench.</p>
<p>This is why many teams use corporate wikis such as <a href="http://notion.so/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Notion</span></a>, <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Confluence</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, or </span><a href="https://github.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">GitHub</a>&nbsp;to collaborate and spend less time hunting documents down. In this article, we&rsquo;ll explore how a work hub goes beyond team wikis by connecting with them to kill chaos.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Top internal wiki software</h2>
<p><strong>1. Confluence</strong></p>
<p>Confluence is an Atlassian wiki software that enables project management and collaboration. <span style="font-weight: 400;">Confluence offers both cloud-based and on-premise deployment and allows employees to create project documents within the tool.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><strong>2. Slab</strong></p>
<p>Easily create, organize, and discover knowledge for your entire organization, from non-technical to tech-savvy.</p>
<p>Slab has a few interesting use cases but ultimately allows for teams to build a searchable knowledge base to return to time and time again.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>3. Notion</strong></p>
<p>With Notion, you have the tools to build a custom wiki. The benefit here is that you can customize your wiki solution using Notion&rsquo;s building blocks. You can easily attach project documents in a task, link employee benefits, and post company announcements.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>What are the challenges with company wikis?</h2>
<p>We spoke with 150+ teams and found out that company wikis are not without challenges that impact productivity and collaboration of teams, especially when remotely.</p>
<h3><strong>1. Information is hard to retrieve without context</strong></h3>
<p>Information needs to be accessible. If a slide deck that is part of a content marketing project gets shared to the company wiki without providing context, your teammates aren&rsquo;t getting the whole picture.</p>
<p>Let&rsquo;s say you hire someone whose focus is sales enablement. Without the context of that marketing presentation, how is this new hire supposed to see the big picture?&nbsp;</p>
<p>With a corporate wiki, your documents don&rsquo;t have generational value. Without a particular formatting process <span style="font-weight: 400;">&mdash;</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> which we&rsquo;ll get to </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">&mdash;</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that information gets lost in the chaos despite the work you put in initially.</span></p>
<h3><strong>2. There&rsquo;s no standard process</strong></h3>
<p>77% of people said they have no process for documenting or storing information.</p>
<p>This means that even though the adopter of the tool, or People and Ops teams, spend time thinking about how to structure a wiki &mdash; things can still get lost. Chaos is the constant, remember?&nbsp;</p>
<p>It becomes just one more thing to do. And adopting a company-wide wiki in a truly effective way takes a lot of time and consideration.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>3. You don&rsquo;t have access to everything</strong><knowledge and="" access="" is="" scattered="" across="" teams="" it="" only="" takes="" 10="" minutes="" on="" your="" first="" day="" of="" work="" to="" run="" into="" the="" hiccup="" not="" having="" everything="" now="" sometimes="" this="" has="" do="" with="" tools="" limited="" seats="" but="" how="" many="" times="" have="" you="" a="" document="" had="" ask="" permission="" edit="" nbsp="" span=""></knowledge></h3>
<p><strong>Knowledge and access is scattered across teams. It only takes 10 minutes on your first day of work to run into the hiccup of not having access to everything. Now sometimes this has to do with tools having limited seats, but how many times have you run into a document you had to ask permission to edit? </strong></p>
<p>You need to bring it all together.</p>
<h3><strong>4. The ever-present boogie man of a silo&nbsp;</strong></h3>
<p>While more established teams of a company might use Confluence as their main wiki, younger, more cross-functional teams might start using Notion for its different capabilities and more intuitive UI.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Two different internal company wikis mean more to dig through once your company is ready to reconnect your teams and establish centralized communication.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>What&rsquo;s the difference between a Work Hub and a company wiki software?</h2>
<p>Working collaboratively across different teams and tools can result in a chaos of information, with knowledge distributed over email, chat threads, and cloud storage drives. Using a traditional system of files and folders makes it hard to find relevant information, especially as your team grows &mdash; and especially as different teams have different ways of documenting and storing information.</p>
<p>Company wikis organize information all in one place where everyone can access and contribute. It uses the power of internal links connecting knowledge &mdash; just like Wikipedia.&nbsp;</p>
<p>On GitHub, people share code and build software together. It&rsquo;s open-source, and a valuable team collaboration toolkit for engineers &mdash; but not so widespread to non-technical fields. Notion and Confluence are examples of company-wide knowledge bases that can be used by any team. They&rsquo;re helpful for creating a clear knowledge base of notes, processes, and company protocols.</p>
<p>With a Work Hub knowledge is gathered from various sources &mdash; company wikis, messaging apps, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/intranet-vs-work-hub/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-wiki&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">project management tools</a> &mdash; and centrally <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-digital-workspace/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-wiki&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">stored in one searchable workspace.</a> Your teams can access information across the whole organization, see the origin of each document, and understand the context. It provides total transparency and discoverability.</p>
<p><img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/jjE2qXytQ6CiDeWMTJow" alt="Qatalog work hub - product wireframe" /></p>
<p>This idea of an interconnected workforce is essential when it comes to remote and hybrid work. Because employees are <a href="https://qatalog.com/remote-work-report/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=remote-work-report&amp;utm_term=2021&amp;utm_content=report" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">seemingly satisfied with remote work</a>, but feel the pain point of muddling through tools and uncertainty about what their colleagues are doing. As we move into the future of what work is supposed to look like, we can actively choose to eliminate the chaos of misplaced, disorganized, constant information.</p>
<h2>Why you need a Work Hub to live with your wiki</h2>
<p>When creating a unified workspace for your team, you need a platform that connects information intuitively, making your current apps work smarter &mdash; enabling you to compound knowledge without disrupting your existing processes.&nbsp;</p>
<p>A work hub integrates what you&rsquo;re already using in order to unlock hidden potential &mdash; and without you having to start from scratch.&nbsp;</p>
<p>When you connect Confluence and GitHub to a work hub, you can:</p>
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><strong>Use our custom-built, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-search-tools-vs-work-hub/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-wiki&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">full-text search</a> to find any file quickly across all of these tools. </strong>Based on your license and access permissions, you will be able to view anything created in these tools through a work hub, but you&rsquo;ll need a license to read, comment and edit.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Track the activity feed of each team member across any connected wiki in real-time.</strong> For example, a marketer will be able to see if and when a developer pushes a commit for a specific feature to GitHub, even without having a license for it.</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Get a ready and solid framework for teams, projects, and workflows that gets automatically updated.</strong> If you want ready-to-use and scalable spaces for every person, team, project <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/intranet-vs-work-hub/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-wiki&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">or internal workflow,</a> we&rsquo;ve built them&mdash;and they&rsquo;re all tightly linked and nested together. So you won&rsquo;t have to worry about creating a template, uniforming inconsistencies, or recreating lost information&mdash;because if someone leaves, all their projects, updates, and workflows get automatically passed to their team lead.</span></li>
</ol>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Qatalog's Company Section includes a <span>customizable Company page where admins can create and add wiki pages such as the vacation policy or onboarding guides. Admins can also post company-wide updates, and upload important resources or link processes through Workflows.&nbsp;</span></span>So whether you&rsquo;re refreshing your hiring process, reporting on user metrics, or chasing that all-hands note, you&rsquo;ll get more value from knowledge when you don&rsquo;t waste hours searching for it.</p>

Company wikis are used to share information throughout a company. A work hub does the same thing, while integrating other useful tools.

Company wiki vs work hub | Qatalog blog

Companies have a lot of information. Documents. Messages. Files. Decks. Code. Emails. If you keep digging, it goes on and on.

Deciding between a company wiki and a connected Work Hub

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Two minutes. </span>It&rsquo;s just four steps to get started. Set up your account and profile, share it with your coworkers, and connect your tools in one click.</p>

How long do I need to set up a Qatalog work hub?

<p>Qatalog consolidates information from across all your tools. And makes it accessible to everyone through search, profiles and projects. It's the connective tissue that makes all your tools work together.</p>

I want to consolidate our tools, not add more. How does Qatalog help?

<p>You don&rsquo;t need to sign any contract to get the full potential of the Qatalog work hub. It&rsquo;s free for up to 10 people. Beyond that, it&rsquo;s $9/person per month.</p>
<p></p>

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