PBworks Launches Integrated Voice Collaboration with Click-to-Call Conferencing

SAN MATEO, Calif., Feb. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- PBworks, the leading provider of hosted collaboration solutions for business and education, today announced the release of Voice Collaboration with instant click-to-call conferencing. Rather than setting up a conference line in advance and asking attendees to dial in, a user can initiate an instant conference call by simply clicking the names of the desired participants. In addition, users can add new participants at any time, and each conference call is recorded and stored for later use and review. Moreover, Voice Collaboration can be triggered using a desk phone or iPhone, making it the first conference calling application to work on this platform.

"When teams work in the same office, so much work gets done during on-the-fly cubicle or hallway conversations," said PBworks CEO Jim Groff. "But when teams are geographically dispersed, those conversations aren't possible. Online collaboration tools help, but real-time voice is unbeatable for rapid brainstorming and decision-making. Our new Voice Collaboration features let business people initiate these instant conference calls while working on the PBworks platform. It allows for the free flow of information, invaluable feedback and immediate decision-making necessary to get work done."

Traditional conference call services are most useful for "appointment" collaboration. A user must set up a meeting, send out dial-in information to all interested parties, usually via email, and then wait for all parties to arrive. This overhead generally limits usage to scheduled calls.

In contrast, PBworks has made voice collaboration a natural extension of its collaboration suite. When a user needs to connect with one or more others to gather valued input, he can add a colleague to an ad-hoc conference call with a single click that initiates an outbound call to the colleague's regular phone. He can call anyone who already has a PBworks user profile, or manually dial any other telephone number of a person he wants to include.

"The promise and delivery of affordable real-time collaboration continues to improve with the integration and convergence of many forms and styles," said Dan Keldsen, Principal at Information Architected. "With their Voice Collaboration rollout, PBworks continues to rapidly evolve their suite to allow useful combinations of asynchronous and real-time collaboration."

"PBworks has done it again," said Tracy Campbell, CEO of Simplicated LLC. "The product offers intuitive functionality, tight integration, and affordability. With this version, I can just tell people to go to the PBworks workspace page and launch the call. I don't have to set up anything in advance. It's single-button functionality that accelerates team collaboration."

Pricing and Availability

The Voice Collaboration beta will be available to all Business and Legal Edition customers, as well as Business Edition free trial users, starting February 17. During the beta period, Voice Collaboration will be free, with a cap of 200 call minutes for free trials. The calling area is limited to the US and Canada.

After the beta period ends, PBworks Business and Legal Edition customers will receive 200 minutes/month at no extra charge. Those who need more minutes can upgrade to Nationwide 300, which costs $5/user/month and provides 300 minutes/user/month. Heavy users can upgrade to Nationwide 2000 for $20/user/month and receive 2,000 minutes/user/month.

About PBworks

PBworks (http://pbworks.com) is the world's leading provider of hosted collaboration solutions for businesses and education. Leading companies and organizations like FedEx, DePaul University, and the FDA choose PBworks to help teams work more effectively across geographic and organizational boundaries, including teams that span employees, customers, partners, and vendors.

Over 85,000 businesses have chosen PBworks to share knowledge, interact with customers, manage, projects, and support other forms of teamwork. We host over a million team workspaces, serve several million users each month, and 96% of users would recommend PBworks to a friend. Investors in PBworks include Mohr Davidow Ventures, Seraph Group, Sippl Investments, and Ron Conway.

PBworks is a trademark of PBwiki, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE PBworks