Introducing Bubbles for Teams

The HQ for Async Teams

Say goodbye to Zoom-fatigue, and hello to Bubbles for Teams!

The abrupt transition to remote work in 2020 revealed new potential for freedom and flexibility. However, it also brought about meeting fatigue, burnout, and considerable obstacles in achieving our best, most focused work.

Today, we're thrilled to announce the launch of Bubbles for Teams — empowering teams to make meaningful progress together while apart.

Ditch the Calls, Embrace the Bubble

Our #1 goal with Bubbles has always been to eliminate live meetings.

Teams often rely on Zoom calls and Slack threads to emulate working side-by-side and facilitate idea sharing. However, these tools create problems like missing context, distractions, and misinterpretation, leading to chaos and rework.

Many of Bubbles’ core features were designed with the goal of avoiding these issues, and are already loved by tens of thousands of active users today:

• Bi-directional async video conversations with screen sharing
• Comment and annotate at the right time and place
• Record from anywhere with our Chrome extension
• No-signup guest sharing and e-mail based mentioning

But while our requests may be crystal clear - how can we be confident we’ll receive a response on time? Live meetings communicate a clear date and time at which you can move forward, but async conversations do not — that is, until today.

Assign and set expectations

Our most significant update ensures no one misses ideas, requests, or questions.

Now, assign bubbles to team members with clear expectations on response times, keeping projects moving. If a response isn't needed, just share the link or mark it as FYI. Simplicity, our primary design principle, shines in Bubbles for Teams.

Eliminating uncertainty in async communication is crucial to reducing reliance on disruptive live meetings. Bubbles for Teams addresses this challenge head on, marking a significant evolution in asynchronous collaboration.

Teamwork. On your time.

With Bubbles for Teams it’s easier than ever to invite your teammates and guests to collaborate on any kind of project.

Now Bubbles shows you who’s involved in each conversation, as well as their review status, without having to resort to pings and check-ins to confirm receipt.

Security and access control

By default, bubbles are secret yet easily accessible through shared links. While this works for most situations, Bubbles for Teams provides advanced access control for extra security. You can precisely determine who can access your team, shared spaces, and individual bubbles, ensuring the right people participate in conversations, even if links are mistakenly shared elsewhere.

Shared spaces

Shared Spaces provide a new way for teams to organize their conversations around projects and designate specific team members. They give you a focused area to hold conversations in-context and create alignment.

Unlimited guests

Whether a space or a bubble, you can invite contractors, clients, and vendors as guests so they can easily participate in conversations of your choice. You can invite as many guests as you like at no additional cost.

Screen sharing enables you to discuss content in any app, without having to invite guests to your internal or private systems.

One concise overview

In our conversations with users we’ve identified a real need for a single, centralized dashboard providing greater visibility into who is waiting on what and from whom.

Rather than wrangling together pings and prods across all of your work platforms, the new Activity feed provides a running list of team activity relevant to you. It is built in such a way that you don’t need to stop what you are doing for every new message. Rather, focus on doing deep work, and check out your activity feed when it is convenient for you.

Chrome & Slack integrations

If you install the Bubbles Chrome Extension, you can stop depending on live notifications and instead simply glance at the bubbles icon whenever you have some time in-between tasks. If there’s an activity dot, click on the extension to see where you’re needed. If you're looking to be updated in Slack, that's possible too. Simply install our Slack integration.

Prioritize and deliver

Bubbles for Teams introduces desired timeframes and reminders to help coordinate async conversations, giving users confidence that they’ll get a response on time.

This allows team members to better prioritize and schedule their work, and provides a deeper understanding of how their tasks impact others.

For example, you can ask Frances in marketing to provide language for the latest email campaign and let them know that you need a confirmation from them within the next 24 hours.

When enabled, Bubbles uses automated Smart Reminders to nudge your team members to complete their action items without requiring senders to do the following-up themselves. Simply let each team member know what they need to do by when, and Bubbles handles the rest. Furthermore, if they’re unable to meet your desired timeframe, recipients can easily request more time.

Stay in the loop

Not everyone needs to participate in every meeting, and the same holds for bubbles. But often, you do want a couple of stakeholders to stay in the loop. For example, you can assign certain stakeholders the task of giving feedback on creative work, while looping in others who just need to be aware of the latest draft.

Teams Pro is Free for 30 Days 🎁

The launch of Bubbles for Teams marks a huge step forward in asynchronous and remote work.  We want teams around the world to experience the power of having a centralized HQ for their async collaboration. That is why we are letting everyone enjoy Bubbles for Teams for free, forever. 

Furthermore, teams who are serious about remote or async work will want to upgrade to Teams Pro – which offers granular access control with private bubbles and spaces, unlimited spaces and conversation history, instant transcripts, and the ability to download videos. Starting today, everyone who signs up for bubbles will get a free 30 day trial of Teams Pro — no credit card required.

Teams is Bubbles' big step towards our vision, where work and life can co-exist harmoniously, enabled by async work that offers greater freedom and flexibility. We hope you'll join us on this journey towards better systems and processes that tame the chaos and stress of remote communication, so that we can focus our energy on the work that matters.

Tom Medema

Founder and CEO, Bubbles

Entrepreneur.com, Twitter, LinkedIn