Hello there,
My name is Oscar Miralles Jaime and I want to welcome you to this new adventure called CollaboraZon!
In order understand the true nature of this platform, it’s best we go back to the place where it all began:
The first bump on the road
It all started a long time ago, while I was working for one of my clients. I realized that things weren’t done the right way. We were working for a project that required communication with an external contractor company and many other external stakeholders who will become the future users of our software.
This external contractor had to write a lot of functional documentation which was later on delivered to us, then we had to review this documentation, make our corrections and comments and send it back to them to create a better version. Many times, this documentation had to be shared with other stakeholders, expecting their feedback or just to show them a preview.
The light at the end of the tunnel
All this exchange information was done via email and obliged everyone to save all the versions in their local file system. This was giving us a lot of headache. The issues kept emerging – documents lost in the middle of emails, duplication of files, difficulty in finding conversations, stakeholders talking about different versions of the same document, etc.
This situation inspired me and I came up with an idea for a practical solution to this problem:
To store all of the documents in a central storage, share them with all stakeholders and discuss about these documents in a centralized place which everybody can easily access and contribute to.
Crafting the perfect recipe
On top of that – writing of documents, delivery and revisions always had deadlines. These deadlines were often not known by everyone or even forgotten. So, why not include a calendar with reminders for everyone as well?
Following the success of the cloud storage servers, which was still starting at that time, along with many social networks around, I decided that this was the right direction to take.
Why not both?
With this vision in my mind, I started to develop this software by myself, in my free time. The first version was really focused on the idea of revision of the documents. But as time passed, I realized that my vision was a bit narrow.
I had the same problem with my accountant. We exchanged many emails for accountability issues and I had to send him my invoices by email so he can account them for me. So I thought again – why should I focus only in this particular problem of documents revision?
Everyone has documents and files like pictures, invoices, drawings – anything that needs to be stored somewhere and needs to be shared with someone else – be it for the reasons of reviewing, accounting or simply sharing.
At that moment, I decided that I have to rewrite my software according to the new recipe:
“It needs to be a social network, with cloud storage, calendar and a collaboration tool.”
Getting the required know-how
After taking care of the concept – I figured out that it would take a lot of time to be developed, and that, with my full-time job and my private life, I will not able to do it myself.
So, I decided to outsource the development to someone else. I found a team of professionals at Sentinel who understood my idea, acknowledged the problem and were eager to help me.
After a long period of development time, choosing the right name, the right logo, the right pricing and many more administrative headaches – I am proud to introduce you to CollaboraZon!
The final packaging
When the bell rang and the last task was done – we had a platform where you can easily:
- Create your network of collaborators
- Store your files in the cloud (the same way you do in your preferred file system)
- Share them
- Collaborate on them by posting, commenting, and creating events.
Standing out from the crowd
Even though there are other products out there that do similar things like CollaboraZon or just some of them, you will notice that there is a key difference to the way each one of them is created.
Due to it’s extremely user-oriented interface and it’s foundation being based on real life experiences, CollaboraZon is looking to solve genuine problems that regularly arise throughout our daily work. This platform is not meant only for professionals – on the contrary – CollaboraZon can be used by any person who wants to share anything with anyone, or simply needs to store files in the cloud for later use.
Stand-by for bloom
Please know that this is the first version.
Despite having covered the most vital parts of this project – we will not stop here.
As the time people spend on their mobile devices exponentially increases (i.e. in public transportation, at home, while waiting in the line), it’s slowly becoming a great opportunity for catching-up on missed communication and collaboration. That’s why we are actively working on a mobile app that will help our users be more productive on the go.
After talking to possible clients, we have also discovered that one of their biggest fears is to store their important documents in the cloud, which is why we are also working in a version of our software that will be fully installable on their premises with storage in their own data centers.
Many more functionalities will be added soon that will enhance your experience and make your daily collaborations as optimized as they can be. One of those features will be a distribution list functionality which will greatly reduce the time needed for adding many collaborators to the same project or sharing a single file to the same group.
Also, we will improve links between files, posts and events, to allow you to assign a deadline to a file or add attachments to an event. We’re also looking forward to add a like/dislike button, so you can easily set up voting polls (i.e. 10 people share a document, 3 like it, 7 dislike it, meaning the document is not accepted). After-all, all of this is just the beginning, there will be many, many more new useful options coming your way!
Now that you know how it all came to be,
do not hesitate and give CollaboraZon a free try!
We hope that you’ll love it as much as we do!
Oscar Miralles
CEO of CollaboraZon