Microsoft brings to Brazil Kaizala, a tool for large group communication and work management

For organizations, connectivity with their teams and partners is increasingly crucial to their performance and results. This need is already evident in every industry, from construction, manufacturing, insurance and healthcare to retail, and the key among them all is to do it in a safe and reliable way. Aware of this need, Microsoft launched Microsoft Kaizala in Brazil. The new app makes it easy to securely connect and coordinate work with the entire value chain, including internal and external employees (from the president to the field worker who doesn't have an email account or a computer) to suppliers, partners and customers.
 
In addition to enabling chat, Microsoft Kaizala enables the management of large groups – up to 1 million people – integrated with Office 365, Microsoft's suite of productivity tools. “Kaizala came to connect the disconnected parts of organizations – whether they are large and small companies or government. We know that even in unstructured communication tools like chats, people look for some level of structure, as this is essential for them to be more productive and perform their work activities better, and Kaizala has this characteristic in its DNA”, explains Loredane Feltrin. , director of productivity at Microsoft Brazil.
 
With a simple and intuitive chat interface, Microsoft Kaizala allows for greater productivity, as it promotes interaction between participants through tools such as questionnaires, training, tasks, meeting scheduling, geolocation sharing, among other actions. In addition, the application makes it possible to efficiently assign and track tasks through the use of “action cards” and integrations with usual customer systems through already available connectors and open APIs. It is also possible to promote interactions and receive information from people or large groups even if they are not from the company. The solution also provides insights through analytics and reporting, while meeting industry best security and compliance practices – Kaizala is based on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform.
 
The novelty is available for Brazilians in the free and PRO versions. In the free version, the download is free and it is possible to have individual or group conversations, in addition to creating hierarchies with groups and subgroups focusing on the most appropriate communication for each team in the company, including third parties. The tool also allows the use of media resources and the sharing of documents, internal actions for research and announcements, work management and offline support.
 
The PRO version, part of the Office 365 suite, includes access to the Microsoft Kaizala Management Portal, which has resources for management (users and groups), security and compliance. An administrator can create managed groups through the Portal, which supports removing a user from the entire community (all groups and subgroups they are a part of) in one go and remotely locks data when a user leaves or is removed. This feature ensures, for example, that employees do not collect data from the organization when they leave the organization. IT administrators also control groups of companies and who can receive and send information, as well as backup traffic activity.
 
It is also possible to apply rules for communication to be more structured and organized, so that it does not harm the exchange of information in large groups without the members getting lost in the midst of thousands of responses. For example, a company can send an announcement to all its employees in which responses/comments are restricted within this topic – such as responses to a particular post. Another benefit is to restrict responses or make them visible only to the sender.
 
In addition to the benefits of the free version, the PRO edition also allows the creation of public groups, custom actions, advanced reports and analysis, and system integration using Kaizala APIs (programming interfaces).
 
A differential of the tool is the group policy and communication. Its administrators can control the information by establishing rules according to the user's or group's profile. In this way, it is possible to moderate who can replicate, copy, save published content or comment and see the comments of other participants.
 
It is not necessary to have an Office 365 account to use Microsoft Kaizala, because to access, the user can connect using their own cell phone number and does not require a specific email login. However, Office 365 users with a PRO account can access and use the company directory to find people in your organization.