Collaboration and Offline-online sync nailed

By Vivek | May 9th, 2007 at 02:59 pm ET         

Success of any application in Office20 space eventually depends on enabling collaboration. Emphasis is on  collaborating without loss of data and without making user go round in hoops. I think Peepel has nailed this aspect in the office suite that was launched just over a month back. In a set of significant upgrades to the collaboration suite, Peepel has enabled as many people to work on a single document at once.

The collaboration approach followed is unique and different from what has been implemented at Google Docs/EditGrid/Preezo/Coventi. In Peepel anyone having access to a shared document can get access to edit the document anytime he wishes. What that means is no more locking of documents, or waiting on release of locks, or one of the other reasons. You can just click on “Take on Edit Control” from “Sharing” tab to start working.

On it’s end, Peepel makes sure that it saves the changes made by the last person editing the document so that there is not loss of data. So in any multi-user editing session, host makes the changes, time-to-time hits cltrl+S, and those updates automatically get pushed out to other users watching the document. Again, watch the words - it is a push based system instead of pull. No screen refresh required to receive updates.

Besides the  collaboration piece Peepel has made it easier to collaborate with other Peepel users via the Contact Manager. Once a person is added as a contact, it makes subsequent document sharing much easier that can be handled within the webwriter or websheet itself. You can infact limit the sharing by giving out read only or read write access to your documents.

Peepel also added another smart feature to the suite- Browser. Although not a technically challenging feature to build ’cause it just an IFRAME, but it does save you from opening extra browser tabs since everything gets managed within the Peepel tab itself. Still ’cause of the iFRAME dependency, the browser state is not persistent.

Besides all the changes on the front-end Peepel has made an important change to it’s offline support functionality that places it among the leaders in the emerging offline-online app space. Consider the case when you actively making changes to few documents your workspace and suddenly loose your network connection. Peepel handles this situation well since it supports offline mode editing and you can keep working on. Next time you go online, Peepel automatically saves your data on the server. With the new changes in place, even if this offline-online switch happens umpteenth number of times, Peepel will make sure the next document in queue gets backed onto the server without you having to do anything. Sounds like automatic call handover concept we have in the mobile space. Nevertheless good use of idea.

On the whole, real innovation happening downunder that competes effectively against Google Apps and ShareOffice. Stephen@Peepel is all this cricket world-cup adrenaline effect ?

Related:
Exclusive:Peepel takes on Google Docs&Spreadsheets
Exclusive:ShareMethods beats Google to finish line; Launches EditGrid+Preezo+iNetword Mashup
Google announces pricing for Google Apps

Links:
Peepel