Project Description

xspera employees work in three continents across four different time zones as dynamic teams with customers from five continents and virtually all time zones.

It all revolves around tasks, communication and collaboration. Agile working in this form is the heart of xspera – the solution we offer to our customers. It is exactly what defines us.

Quick facts

industry: software development
solution: xingate, xspera task manager
title: unified task manager

benefits: agile collaboration, transparent communication, synchronized tasks, increased productivity, increased customer loyalty

About xspera

With solutions by xspera companies are enabled to support their agile business effectively while maintaining compliance. xspera provides the intelligent platform and tools for your real-time communication and collaboration needs in the agile business era.

www.jelmoli.ch

xspera task synchronization

Situation

Here at xspera we have been cultivating the dynamic cooperation of people, teams and projects with partners and customers for a long time. With our own product xingate, we are able to map this dynamic without restrictions. In contrary, the communication platforms involved such as Teams, Outlook, Planner, SharePoint and Kaizala synchronize only to a limited extent or not at all. Data silos in applications, lack of transparency, inefficient communication and „forgotten tasks“ were the consequences.

Example:

We collaborate with the customer right from the start including creation of the offer and additional documents. This alone requires an initial platform, which later on transformes itself into a full fledged communication platform once a project starts.

How is all this supposed to work if Outlook, SharePoint, Planner, Kaizala, mobile phone (iPhone, Android,..) do not have synchronized tasks? How much time, files or simply information is lost through this procedure? What happens to the data and files in the next phase right after project completion?

The idea

All these questions required answers. Consequently, it was obvious to combine all involved platforms to a dynamic solution, which includes xingate (Microsoft SharePoint Solution), Outlook, Kaizala, Planner, Teams and other applications as needed. All that for a simple goal:

To provide a seamless, highly integrated connection between all platforms which is up-to-date and synchronized at all times.

With this solution xspera now works together seamlessly and dynamically across Teams, Kaizala, Planner, Outlook and SharePoint. Further platforms like Jira, Azure DevOps will be integrated in the future. Unstructured data will be transferred directly into structured data more easily than ever before.

Reto Voegeli

„As CEO the productivity of employees and seamless processes are among the key areas, which I care for personally. So it comes to no suprise that we made it an internal project once this integration was suggested internally. The positive customer and employee feedback after completion was still a surprise to me.“

Reto Voegeli, xspera

Daily work

With this solution, a new phase of cooperation and communication began:

  1. When a new SharePoint portal is created, a new Teams group, an Outlook group and a Kaizala Announcement group are created.
  2. All news from the xingate (SharePoint) portal are published directly in Outlook, Teams and Kaizala. This includes number and username of all impressions, likes and comments.
  3. For new tasks xingate creates an Outlook subgroup, in Teams a team channel and in Kaizala a task with chat channel.
  4. At the time as a new task is created, this task of this member is also synchronized to Outlook and to Planner, which in turn is added to the Teams channel.
  5. All tasks are synchronized and updated in near-time.
  6. Outlook emails can be attached directly to a task.
  7. Documents or attached e-mails are automatically stored in the connected portal in the document or media library. Each task creates its own folder with the name of the task. Each sub-task creates its own sub-folder.
  8. Once a task is completed, the Outlook (sub) group, the Teams and Kaizala channels are closed (hidden) to avoid visual overflow on all platforms. Included data is stored in xingate‘s Task Manager on SharePoint.

Future enhancements include the integration of Project and Project Server, Azure DevOps, Jira, Monday.com, Jenkins, SalesForce and many more. In addition, Power BI dashboards will make collaboration even easier and more transparent. In the daily environment, collaboration begins on ad hoc tasks with external participants in Kaizala. With the creation of a (project) portal, teams, Outlook and Planner are directly integrated and previously exchanged information is synchronized. All communication and collaboration always takes place under the respective task as well as the portal channel. All information is stored centrally, but is available decentrally on all platforms within a structured system.

Benefits

Today this integration sustainably supports the dynamic of xspera. Especially the task-based cooperation has been strengthened. Central advantages:

  1. Communication and collaboration is more structured and transparent than before, while being 100% task-based.
  2. The entire process: Task to Project to Completion is always transparent.
  3. Unstructured data from emails becomes structured data and tasks – just by a single click. This saves time and data silos cannot be formed in the first place.
  4. All parties involved can view all relevant information and search for it at any given time.
  5. The seamless integration of all platforms increases each users trust in the underlying technology. This is an important prerequisite for consistent usage.
  6. The email flood of all participants was drastically reduced.
  7. Prompt and targeted communication with less misunderstandings increased customer loyalty.

Nowadays customers provide testimonials in which they emphasize that xspera delivers to their complete satisfaction – even before the agreed time. This seamless and full integration improves productivity and customer satisfaction noticeably.