PBworks launches template store to help companies collaborate

With today’s launch of its Template Store, online collaboration company PBworks wants to make it easier for businesses to use its wikis and other tools.

The San Mateo, Calif, company describes its new feature as an “app store for collaboration templates.” Specifically, these are templates for PBworks workspaces — pages where you coordinate a project or team using PBworks’ different tools. The word “template” might suggest that we’re talking about superficial customization, but the company is aiming for something richer here, because the design and structure of a workspace can shape how your company works together.

For example, the template for a management team workspace includes meeting agendas, monthly objectives and tracking, weekly department status reports, and more. By using the template, the customer doesn’t have to build the wiki themselves, and in fact can even spend less time thinking about how to structure all that communication. This should be particularly useful for companies new to PBworks and to online collaboration in general. Instead of wondering, “Gee, what can I do with a wiki?” PBworks gives you a basic template to start with.

The templates can include wikis (where you can embed multimedia content), files and documents, folders, and project milestones and tasks. The Template Store is starting out with 25 templates built by PBWorks, its customers, and consultants. They include a deal room, an intranet for a legal firm, and a handbook/FAQ workspace.

For now, templates are free to business and legal edition customers, but PBWorks says it wants to work with template creators to turn this service into a real store, where they can charge for templates.

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