This is the fourth in a twelve-part series exploring Why Businesses Don’t Collaborate.
The full research report is available for Download.

Question

Have you sent an email asking for input or feedback on a document from your immediate group of colleagues?

96% of respondents said yes, but the comments show that people feel uncomfortable adding to their colleagues’ inboxes, and recognize that trying to conduct group collaboration and revision by email is not optimal. Those that aren’t using email and attachments are using a combination of wikis, SharePoint, and shared network drives to host files, and sending emails with pointers to the shared files.

Survey Comments

• Now many of us put info on the wiki and send a link. Not everyone is comfortable on the wiki yet, though we’ve been using them for a couple of years.
• We upload most of the files to wiki and ask people to go there and get it. But sometimes we have people who refuse to do that. In that case, I will send a document as an email attachment.
• But of course I feel terrible doing this. Email attachments are tremendously bad usability. You can’t review past versions, you can’t see others comments, you force multiple downloads and risk executable viruses.
• Usually I include a link to a public folder where they can make a copy with their feedback.