Changelog
September 2023
Skills Survey
At Zipteam, we’re here to help organizations collect and utilize skills data to build dream teams. We gather skills data through a networking portal where individuals connect with others based on their skills. This distributed data is then organized using a graph database and AI.
We’ve been considering using skills frameworks to introduce a centralized method of collecting skills data in addition to our current distributed approach, which is effective for finding internal experts but not ideal for measurement.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce our new feature: Skills Survey. With Skills Survey, you can create and distribute a survey to all members within your workspace, using any skills framework you prefer. You can then collect and export the survey results as structured data to gain insights and make data-driven decisions about people’s skills.
Responding to Skills Survey
You may be used to responding to lengthy, tedious surveys that often end up in local spreadsheets and are rarely used. But Zipteam’s survey is different. We’ve designed it with a modern user interface that minimizes user friction. For instance, we’re aware of all the skills you possess, so you only need to enter any new skills when responding to the survey. Additionally, you can suggest adding new skills to the framework directly from the survey, ensuring that the framework remains up-to-date and relevant.
Creating and managing Skills Survey
Creating the survey is as easy as importing a skills framework. Once the survey is published, users can access it on the homepage or respond to it through the shared link. You can download survey data at any time for reporting and analysis purposes.
By combining skills data with other workforce attributes like geolocation, department, and age, you can gain a detailed understanding of skills gaps and obtain insights on how to address them.
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April 2023
Single Sign-On (SSO)
We’re excited to announce our new Single Sign-On (SSO) feature, which enables users to sign in to our app using their corporate credentials, improving security and streamlining the login process. With SSO, users no longer need to remember multiple usernames and passwords, reducing the risk of account takeover through identity spoofing.
SSO is available for users with enterprise subscription. Please contact our support team to enable this feature. When SSO is enabled, all new and existing users on the domain will need to sign up or log in to Zipteam using SSO.
Other improvement:
- Expert search is now 10x faster.
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March 2023
Team-Up
Building a successful dream team requires diverse skills and experience. Yet, most teams are formed based on organizational chart or personal connections. With Zipteam, you can uncover hidden gems and build your dream team based on skill data.
The new Team-Up feature will help answer questions like:
- Who in the company has the necessary skills for this project?
- What is the skills gap between this team and the project requirements?
- Who on this team possesses the most crucial skills?
You can watch the demo video here.
Deprecation notice:
Chat Record
Chat Record was something users could create after interacting with colleagues, either as an expert or an advice seeker. Our plan was to use the data to identify contributing employees and visualize connections between employees. However, its adoption faced the following challenges:
- It lacked incentives for users.
- It didn’t fit the sporadic nature of knowledge sharing.
- It required deep integration into users’ everyday tools.
We concluded that this data should be collected by integrating with tools that users already use, which led us to deprecate the current Chat Record feature.
Web Clip was introduced in response to feedback from users who wanted to know what content was being followed by experts. We figured if users who personally clip articles using tools like Evernote or Pocket could share them in the Zipteam workspace, it would be an effective way to share knowledge based on topics (and get more people to log in to the app!).
From this effort, we learned that we should focus on the jobs that users currently hire Zipteam for, and they are jobs around skills.
We realized that more development was needed to make Web Clip more user-friendly. But we wondered if it would make us better at solving the jobs that users hire Zipteam for. The answer was no. We decided that we needed to work on the content problems separately, which led us to deprecate the Web Clip feature for now.
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August 2022
Skills Explorer
Skills Explorer merges the skills graphs of all workspace users into a single skills graph and creates a 3D visualization providing you a bird’s-eye view of what skills exist in your whole workspace. You can also double-click on each skill to search for people with the skill. Skills Explorer can be accessed from the total skills count on your homepage.
Other improvements:
- Predefined skill names are suggested when entering new skill.
- Fixed a bug related to password reset. Zipteam now checks if new password contains special character, letter and number.
- When a user accepts an invitation to a new workspace, Zipteam now checks if the user is logged in or has an account with the associated email, so the user can join the workspace with less friction.
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June 2022
Social Web Clipping
What do you do when you want to learn something new? One way is to follow what experts in the field are learning. Social Web Clipping makes this easier by allowing users to share articles with tags and comments with other users in the workspace. You can manage your web clips on “my page” just like any other bookmarking tool.
