Quip

Avantages

Quip is a great collaboration tool that is something similar to Slack, Google Docs and Google Sheets all wrapped up into one.

My favorite feature is the collaboration tool which allows you to edit documents and discuss them in real time with other users. You can send messages to other users and Quip has a nice way of letting you know whether a user is online or offline. The messages can be sent to individuals and within a group chat setting.

When commenting on spreadsheets, you can annotate cell by cell which is something helpful especially if you are reviewing spreadsheets with a lot of information.

File management is a charm. You can easily upload shared documents to folders and limit who can see the documents as well as who can edit/view the documents.

One gripe about collaboration apps that I have had in the past is the amount of notifications you get if you have multiple people working on documents/projects etc. Quip solves this by giving you the option to prioritize the notifications you want to this. You can also @ specific people which makes communication easier. Similar to Slack, there is an option to notify everyone with an @everyone option to send messages to a whole team.

Quip integrates well with Salesforce, so if you are using Salesforce, this is a good option.

Inconvénients

If you want to test Quip before deciding, you may not like the requirement for a work email.
You need constant internet connectivity to make Quip work, if you find yourself in a place where there is no internet, you may be out of luck to use Quip.

While Quip is good for communication, editing and collaborating on big spreadsheets slows the app down and you can find it slows down performance. You are better doing light to medium size documents/spreadsheets.

When collaborating documents, versioning and edit history are important. It gets hard to revert to an older copy of a document and it can create some confusion if there are a lot of people looking at the same document.

Avantages

It's super easy to start using and is great for shared documents where you need to have multiple people providing input and updates. I like that two people can be simultaneously working on a document without a problem.

Inconvénients

My annoyances with this software stem from the features - what is there and what is not there. One of my biggest gripes is that Quip believes it is "distracting and not necessary" (their words) to have the option of changing the color of the text. I disagree. As a business professional for the past 25 years, I can tell you there are instances where you need to color code text. I recently had a huge, very collaborative project that I wanted to base out of Quip and THE ONLY REASON I couldn't use Quip was because it had to be color coded and Quip doesn't do that. I've tried appealing to them but so far, no luck. Yet, one apparently "necessary" feature is that you can add an emoji or animated meme to your comments within a document. Really? And that is more important for business communications? I'm guessing this software is being created by a bunch of millennials. I don't begrudge millenials or the "fun" elements that are included, but give me the useful business functionality we have all become accustomed to over the past couple of decades if you truly want to compete for our word processing and spreadsheet needs.

Avantages

1. I love quip as its the only good version controlled platform for taking notes that I have found in my industry experience of over 5 years.
2. Its easy to create public/private versions. I could easily create documents that are public (i.e. outside the firm) and private to me.
3. It is so easy to mark your favorite folders and share it across teams.
4. Its fast. I have found Google Docs to be a bit slower than quip.
5. You could easily import the content into a wiki or a word document with all the formatting intact.
6. You can create an excel sheet (or multiple sheets) in quip itself.
7. Onboarding and gettting used to the platform is really easy.

Inconvénients

1. It behaves odd when creating tables and adding pictures (like indentation sometimes screws up).
2. If you are looking for a platform to create animated documents, quip might not be your friend. It supports basic data representation objects like tables, pictures, worksheets but if you want audio etc, you want to goto powerpoint.

Avantages

Simple user interface and easy to onboard my employees. Quip keeps us very organized and is great for tagging each other in comments and collaborating in single documents. They have a number of workflow features that we've used several times to help manage project timelines, etc. I also love that I can share links to documents so clients can pop in and review without having to be added as a full user. We've reached out to customer support several times, especially during the onboarding process, and they have always been extremely helpful.

Inconvénients

Notifications are a little overwhelming and difficult to manage. Very rarely we've had issues with pages not updating or saving, especially when there is a lot of text that has been copy/pasted.

Avantages

- Good for documentation
- It creates links to any part of the document for easy referencing
- The WYSIWYG editor works pretty well
- The keyboard shortcuts are good
- Embedded spreadsheets are neat (though I don't find I use them that often)
- Comment functionality really neat, including the ability to "resolve" comments.
- Edit History works well

Inconvénients

- I really hate how embedded images work. It's bordering on impossible to make it look how you want and you'll have to compromise on it looking sort of crappy
- The search could use some help
- The auto numbered or unordered list stuff is annoying as hell and takes some finagling to get around. If you have a "1." then an image, if you type "2." it'll change it into "1." because it thinks you're starting a new numbered list because of the image. Really annoying.
- When I look at the Recently Updated list and click "Mark All As Read" why don't all of them become unread? This annoys me more than it should, but why don't they all get makred Read?!