Of all the Apple tools available, iMessage might seem like the most targeted for teenagers, friends, and families. The ease it offers in sharing multimedia, stickers, emoticons, GIFs, for example, makes it the ultimate consumer product. But it’s consistently included in a powerful business messaging solution and collaboration tool. You can even think of it as a basic – and free – alternative to Slack or Microsoft Teams. It’s a view that will only become more real with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, which will expand the enterprise capabilities of iMessage when they arrive this fall.
iMessage has been around for over a decade and offers many advantages over standard SMS and MMS messages. It boasts media and file support, group chats, read receipts, the ability to integrate content from a range of other apps, and tight integration across all of Apple’s core product lines.
Some recent additions make it even more useful for business users. Last year, Apple introduced a new Shared with You feature that displays content received in the Messages app directly in a connected app. URLs appear automatically in Safari, for example, and songs or albums in Apple Music. Along with expanding this feature across platforms (including macOS Ventura), Apple will expand support for third-party apps and direct in-app collaboration.
More on that in a moment. First, let’s see what you can do now.
Messages in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and Monterey
While iMessage will receive major collaboration improvements in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura, let’s take a look at how to use Messages on Apple’s operating systems as they exist now.
There are three main parts to any business chat and collaboration platform:
- Secure communication. iMessage is end-to-end encrypted to a degree that meets regulatory requirements for rules like HIPAA in healthcare, as well as FaceTime.
- Group communications support. While one-on-one chats are important, businesses need group communications and message threads, which iMessage has supported for some time. Group chats also allow you to send messages to the entire group or specific individuals, and support built-in replies so you can easily reply to (and see replies to) specific comments in the message thread.
- Status notifications. Knowing that people have (or haven’t) read your message can be critical. Seeing if they are in the process of responding is also extremely helpful. iMessage supports both features.
For a business tool to succeed, however, it takes more than these basics. The ability to pin message threads and the option to mute notifications for specific threads are key features for workers who need to manage business conversations.
The ability to share media, content or files is also important. Although the Messages app for iOS/iPadOS 15 supports photo and video sharing, as well as sharing links and other network addresses, it initially appears not to support file and document sharing.
It can be done though. And even if it’s not obvious, it’s easy. You just can’t do it directly from the app. Use the Files app instead. Touch and hold a file, and then choose to share it from the pop-up menu that appears. You can also share files from the app that created them using a standard share sheet. In both cases, Messages pops up as a sharing option. Sharing on macOS is even easier: Drag a file into a Messages chat. (You can also right-click the file icon in the Finder and choose share. Or you can share from the application that created the file.)
After you share a file with the group chat, everyone in the chat receives the file and can comment and discuss it in the message thread. This provides a basis for cooperation. Everyone can see and discuss the same documents or files in real time. In many cases, this kind of discussion is easier than relying on features like change tracking and comments in a productivity application because the discussion is interactive and avoids cluttering the document with a large number of comments and replies.
To ensure you have easy access to communications wherever you are (and on whatever device you’re using), Apple provides Messages in iCloud. This backs up all of your conversations in iCloud, ensures that your messages are synced across devices (including new devices when they’re set up), and lets you access your messages through the iCloud web interface if you don’t have access to your Apple devices. You can also extend Messages in iCloud into business environments through services like Apple Business Essentials and Managed Apple IDs.
In addition to using it as a business communication solution, you can pair Messages with FaceTime to offer your team real-time video and audio calling capabilities. FaceTime will let you share your screen in real time and show apps like Keynote or PowerPoint. As with Messages, business environments can link it to managed Apple IDs.
Although not generally positioned as such by Apple, this combination of features solves many of the communication and basic collaboration needs of most business users. It’s not as purpose-built as Slack or Microsoft Teams, but the functionality is still there and at no extra cost; making it a viable option, especially for smaller business environments, when used with Apple Business Essentials.
Coming soon… Messaging as an engine for collaboration
Although iMessage as a platform already offers serious options for communication and collaboration, macOS Ventura and iOS 16/iPadOS 16 will expand them in several important ways – especially when it comes to integrating Messages collaboration with third-party applications.
The first extension is in the Shared with you feature. This feature currently allows several standard Apple apps to pull content from Messages and make it easily available in the corresponding app: links in Safari, articles in News, images or videos in Photos, songs and albums in Music, shows in the TV app, and podcasts in the Podcasts app. This makes it easy to view a message without having to worry about storing attachments so you can find them later.
Currently, Shared With You is limited to six apps and a relatively small number of content or media types. However, Apple announced at WWDC last month that this feature is coming to third-party apps. So any developer will be able to add support for it to their app for whatever content types they see fit. The same design will be available on the Shared With You shelf (the area in the app interface where Messages items are displayed).
This has great potential for those of us who use these tools in a business context. During the workday, it’s possible to share a wide range of media and file types through Messages, across multiple threads. The ability to view your messages and easily retrieve shared content through native apps later allows for extremely streamlined workflows and the ability to easily switch between shared content and the message thread it originated from. This makes viewing and directly replying to a message about a piece of content easy. It also helps you not miss content while scrolling through message threads.
The second and even more powerful extension is the integration of Messages directly into applications that support collaboration. When an application with a collaboration feature (say, one that supports change tracking, such as Word or Pages) is integrated with Messages, a collaboration workflow can be launched within the application. The document can be shared via Messages (as well as FaceTime) with individual users or a group.
When a collaboration is shared with a group, each member will receive a copy of the document via Messages. When each person opens the document, their actions will be reported back to Messages as well as the app. This happens on the device(s) of each person in the group. Notifications will notify all users when someone makes a change to the document and provide a link directly to the document where the change was made. Users can comment directly in accordance with the change notice to discuss the edits.
If a user has the document open, they will be able to see all users currently interacting with or editing the document. This allows you to do real-time communication and editing at the same time. If multiple users have real-time access to the document, they can also convert the collaboration into an audio or video FaceTime call that includes screen sharing and group editing.
These features dramatically expand the existing tracking and commenting features that many business apps already support, and combine this functionality with existing collaboration capabilities in Messages and FaceTime. The result is a single, cohesive experience for communication, content sharing, group discussions, and collaborative editing. What’s particularly powerful is that this will give developers who may not have explored collaboration features a relatively easy path to add real-time collaboration to their apps, expanding beyond the somewhat limited set of business apps and productivity that have implemented some versions or track changes like Office or iWork.
Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3667317/apples-imessage-is-looking-more-like-a-workday-collaboration-platform.html
