Why Should I Use Email and Chat Integrations in Project Management Software?
Why Should I Use Email and Chat Integrations in Project Management Software?
Email and chat integrations in project management software enable you to connect your project system directly to the email and chat solutions used by your team. This allows information to automatically flow back and forth between your project software and the email and chat tools that your team and stakeholders use every day, such as Google Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Hangouts Chat, and Slack.
Email and chat integration options
Email integration allows you to engage with project tasks directly from your email account. Without leaving your inbox, you can:
- Create tasks
- Edit tasks
- Add comments
- Update task statuses
- Set task due dates
Sending essential action items directly to your project management software as tasks means that you and your team can efficiently work on the task together and keep everything organized in one place.
Two-way integration also means that you can receive project notifications of task changes, mentions, and other important information right to your email inbox. So, once a task is set up in your software, you and other stakeholders can receive automatic notifications to keep tabs on your projects' progress without having to log into the system.
Chat integration enables you to have messages automatically forwarded to your project management software and then stored in the system, attached to tasks, projects, or folders that they relate to.
Plus, notifications about events like new tasks, status changes, and date changes can be delivered right from your software into group chats.
Benefits of email and chat integrations in your project management software
Centralized communication is super important, but different people both inside and outside your organization use different communication tools like Gmail and Slack. Office 365 is one of the most popular productivity suites on the market, and chat-based collaboration tools are gaining wider acceptance as enterprises aim to take collaboration out of email threads to get work done quicker. A recent study by Texas-based software start-up Mio found that 91% of businesses use at least two messaging apps to collaborate.
Have you ever been on a team where one person preferred email, one used chat, and another just walked over to your desk to talk? Projects fail when managers get stuck in the minutia of tasks and disorganized communication.
It’s important that your project work plan includes a standard process for communication, setting a rhythm of updates and a process for requests. Inefficient communication and collaboration are two of the top causes of stress in the workplace. When stakeholders have to dig through pages of emails or constantly ask for updates, they get frustrated, and their motivation dips.
But trying to force people to communicate within your project software instead of the other tools they use and love can backfire, leading to resentment, frustration, and a lack of adoption. Integrating your project management software with these tools lets people communicate in a way that's comfortable while keeping everything centralized.
To gain project efficiency and ensure success, you need to streamline communication. But you can’t force your clients and other stakeholders to use your project management software and conduct all of their communication there. Here are a couple of the key benefits of email and chat integrations in project management software:
- By finding a project management tool that integrates with popular communication platforms, you can ensure that even the conversations that happen outside of your software are centralized, rather than being siloed in email threads and chats.
- Not only does this mean that your project team has all of the information they need, it also means they don’t have to dig to find it — or worse, go back to a customer or executive to request information they already have.
Integrating with tools your users already have also reduces redundancies and increases efficiencies.
Email integration
Email integration saves you time checking project updates, creating and updating tasks, and replying to your colleagues' @mentions as you can do it directly from your inbox.
When you get a notification because someone @mentioned you, you can reply via email, and the sender will be immediately notified. Your project management software will not only add your comment under the relevant task but also @mention the person who triggered the initial notification so they're instantly notified about your reply.
This enables you to maintain discussions directly from your inbox and keep track of the whole thread in your project software.
While some people try to minimize the time they spend in their email inbox, for most teams email remains the primary business communication tool, and it looks like it's here to stay for a while. So instead of trying to "kill" email, make it more user-friendly and efficient. This will help ensure that info doesn't get lost and you easily stay on top of your projects.
Staying connected
Providing your team with efficient and easy-to-use software to help them communicate decreases friction and helps your project succeed. The most helpful tool integrates with your other tools so communication, collaboration, asset storage, and sharing are fully visible to the entire project group. This will ensure that everyone has access to the resources they need when they need them.
Technology can make our lives so much easier, but when your project work plan includes multiple tools and teams who are used to different processes, it can quickly turn on you.
One of the most critical elements of project management is identifying and course-correcting when obstacles pop up. If your tools aren't connected and the information your team needs isn’t in one place, you won’t see potential roadblocks.
Employees spend many hours each week searching for and gathering information. When tools aren’t connected, teams waste time digging through email chains and direct messages to get all the details they need.
Not only does this eat up valuable time, but it can knock a project completely off course if people don’t get the most up-to-date assets or information. Email and chat integrations ensure that everything needed for the project is in one place.
Your collaborative project management tool should bring order to the chaos by serving as the “single source of truth.” Conversations drive collaboration. But when your conversation is in chat and your work is in your project software, it can be challenging to remember task details or switch back and forth between tools.
By choosing to receive project notifications in chat, you can stay informed and quickly respond to project changes, even while you’re busy chatting and collaborating outside the software.
With email integrations, you can quickly create new tasks based on emails. This will ensure that work originating from email gets inserted into your workflow as quickly as possible. And by later returning to those emails, you can view the details of the tasks you created.
