- September 30, 2014
- FOXITBLOG
An African proverb states that, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” It is this same mentality that drives the collaborative nature of today’s business. According to research from Cisco, 80 percent of businesses use social collaboration tools for enhancing business processes, and social collaboration can improve team efficiency by up to 20 percent. For businesses that understand the value of collaboration, there is no shortage of tools that allow teams to work together on projects, and nowhere is this more evident than PDF software.
In Foxit’s PhantomPDF 7, the PDF software’s most recent version, document collaboration is front and center as one of the most important features in this release.
What is Shared Review
Known as Shared Review, this new feature helps teams create better documents through collaboration by bridging the gap between people working in different environments. Whether they are working on a mobile or desktop platform, they will be able to view and respond to each other’s comments and edits.
Users of Foxit’s PDF software application initiate a Shared Review from within PhantomPDF. Document creators host the review on a network folder, within a SharePoint workspace or shared with users via email. Authors who create Shared Reviews have the ability to manage document reviews they initiate and view the status of each one. Reviewers need only have access to a copy of the free Foxit PDF Reader 7 or the MobilePDF Business app available for mobile iOS and Android users.
How users collaborate with Shared Review
Some environments limit collaborative practices to sharing comments and notes regarding a document over an email thread or through a chat/messaging tool. Documents creators using Shared Review are able to gather feedback and comments from the reviewers in one place. Reviewers have access to a full set of commenting tools that include sticky notes, a highlighter, line and shape drawing tools, stamps, and a typewriter tool to mark up documents created by other team members.
To make this a true team effort, all participants have the ability to view and respond to one another’s comments, fostering a true collaborative environment that helps develop the best documents possible.
In the global marketplace, the need for teams to work seamlessly on projects is essential and companies that have not yet learned to harness collaboration risk falling behind their competitors when it comes to innovation and speed to market. Those who have not yet realized the role PDF software plays in the collaborative process limit themselves to document creation tools that have not change much over the years.
Turning to tools such as PhantomPDF open the door to many features document creators will not find in competing applications. When you add the fact that co-workers have the ability to collaborate using the free Foxit PDF Reader, these solutions become even more attractive.