Emails cannot be anymore boring, and more so in an office environment. Can you just imagine how many emails you’ll have to send and receive before you know what your team mates are up to? Umpteen. To add to this agony, you will have to rinse and repeat this charade every single time you need an update or when you want share a tip.

Co-op presents a delightful solution — bringing in a Twitter-like app to enable knowledge sharing. Let’s take it for a spin after the jump.

Overview

Co-op app helps your co-workers stay in sync with each other. It’s a place to share knowledge, ask questions, update status messages and track time — all from a single window. Co-op makes updating your own agendas and staying on top of your colleagues agendas extremely simple.

Overview

Co-op is a free app for everyone to use. Signing up is a breeze and the account is usable only after an email activation. Immediately after signing up, we are presented with the Welcome Screen, letting us know that an email activation is mandatory.

Welcome Screen

Creating a Group

After activation, we need to login again as Co-op does not use the cookie from the sign up like most other apps. After logging in, the app asks us to create a Co-op group to begin the knowledge sharing process.

Create a new group

Creating a group is as easy as entering the name and timezone for the group. You can just copy and paste the email addresses of your co-workers whom you want to be part of the Co-op group you have just created.

Inviting Co-Workers

The Co-op dashboard is easy on the eyes and resembles that of a Twitter page. The entire page is laced with AJAX goodness and all updates appear instantaneously for the entire team to see. Updating statuses, agendas and group announcements is very straight forward; just enter the details and click Update. There aren’t too many features to play with but that doesn’t make the app unusable. Having an optimum amount of features shortens the learning curve and you can jump right into sharing knowledge.

Co-Op Dashboard

The status updates on the Workstream help to keep the entire team on the same page and all the updates are stored in a log on a day to day basis for archiving and future reference.
Status updates don’t necessarily have to be all about work and can be used as a watercooler passing on fun anecdotes, jokes or whatever that makes everyone happy.

Co-op Anatomy

If you have a Harvest app account, it’s easy to track time from the Co-op window. Each and every worker’s timer is appended to their messages if this feature is turned on.

Linking Harvest Account

Co-op also has the feature which allows you read the status updates via RSS feed in a feed reader of your choice.

Final Thoughts

Co-op is very agile and can streamline the conversation streams of the entire team. Appearances are always deceptive; do not judge the app by the bland look when you start a group. The real power and usefulness of Co-op app can be felt once you and your team start using it. Sure, apps like Yammer and Microsoft SharePoint have much more features and can be installed behind a corporate firewall. But it is Co-op that has an unbeatable price — Free.