7 Best Practices for Sharing Information in Work Groups

Collaborate and communicate effectively with these tips.

The Work Groups feature in Pinnacle Series allows project teams — including outside contractors — to collaborate and share all of the vital information they need to keep their work on track. If you’re a Pinnacle Series administrator within your organization or a new user within a Work Group, you may have some questions on how to effectively use this feature to help your teams learn and collaborate.

We’re here to help! This article will go over some of our top best practices for sharing information through Work Groups in Pinnacle Series.

Tips include:

1. Have a purpose in mind for each group
2. Include all relevant team members
3. Share training assets from Pinnacle Series
4. Build custom resources for the group
5. Grant users the necessary permissions
6. Use notifications effectively
7. Keep the discussion tab open

Let’s explore these best practices for sharing information with our Work Groups feature.

Have a purpose in mind for each group

There are a variety of ways you can use Work Groups — and the more specific you can be about a group’s purpose, the better. For instance, you could have groups for:

• New employee onboarding
• Specific project collaboration
• Upskilling certain users
• Preparing a group for certification testing
• And more!

The information shared in a training-focused Work Group will look very different from information shared for a project bid, for example, so it’s essential to have clarity around this from the outset. 

Include all relevant team members

As you create the Work Group, think about specifically who will be involved in the project or would benefit from the training you plan to share. Sometimes, your list of people will include contractors or subcontractors who are integral to a project. Fortunately, Work Groups come with the ability to add external users who don’t have access to the rest of your internal Pinnacle Series content. You can also decide whether to make it a closed group limited only to the people you choose to add, or open it up to other users/grant invitation abilities.

Share training assets from Pinnacle Series

If a given Work Group is focused on training or there are resources that would be helpful for the project the team is tackling, we make it easy to connect them with the right content. Simply locate any training asset across the entire Pinnacle Series platform, click the share icon, and choose the desired Work Group from the drop-down list. Following these best practices for sharing information is incredibly easy within Pinnacle Series – it’s just a click of a button.

All shared resources will appear in that Work Group’s “Assets” tab, where all members can easily access them. You can decide whether to formally assign the learning to members (with or without a due date) or just have it there so it’s accessible. Administrators can use the Dashboard area to view reports about the Work Group’s usage and completed learning over time.

Build custom resources for the group

In addition to sharing Pinnacle Series’ built-in learning assets like courses and videos, you can also share custom content into a Work Group. If you create a document, workflow, or video that would be helpful to the team involved, you can share it in the same assets tab. This might include a list of best practices for a project, information necessary for creating a bid, or meeting notes.

Grant users the necessary permissions

Instead of having one person be responsible for all the group content, adjust the user permissions to ensure others can contribute. You can decide whether to let the whole group (or select users) perform actions, including:

• Managing content
• Inviting other users
• Assigning learning
• Viewing reports
• Accessing sensitive information

In project groups, for example, it might be helpful to allow everyone in the group to manage content, so they can share assets they’ve created too.

Use notifications effectively

It can be easy for users to miss key information if they aren’t checking the work group every day. That’s where notifications help. Notifications can be sent to group members when content is added (or removed), when discussion comments are posted, etc. These can be adjusted on the group or user level.

Keep the discussion tab open

Lastly, collecting and sharing information is only part of the puzzle. You also want to make sure users can discuss it, ask questions, brainstorm together, and collaborate on work. In Work Groups, the area where this happens is the Discussion tab. Make sure visibility is toggled on for all users and that the group administrator is willing to moderate comments.

Following these best practices for sharing information within Pinnacle Series is easy, and can help your teams function more effectively and with fewer errors. If you’re an existing Pinnacle Series user, you can log into the platform to find tutorials on using Work Groups, starting with Introduction to Work Groups here. 

For those who aren’t Pinnacle Series subscribers yet, contact our team to learn more about the platform and how your organization can participate in a free pilot program.