Microsoft’s GigJam collaboration service is open to all who want invites

 

GigJam is a product Microsoft has built to help people get work done together. It reflects company’s current approach to focus on letting people quickly and independently collaborate across different services while maintaining a secure environment.

Here’s how it works: One user starts a “gig” and then pulls in information from whatever services are needed, like email, Salesforce, Office documents or Asana tasks. That information shows up as a card inside GigJam, where the first user can highlight certain information, edit other information and then send the whole bundle off to someone else for review or editing.

Under the covers, GigJam consists of a set of new Azure services plus a lightweight client for every major operating system. GigJam talks to line of business apps, SaaS, communications services and more using standard REST application programming interfaces (APIs). No other integration technology is needed, says Microsoft.

Examples of the types of tasks users can accomplish using GigJam include showing an email to a colleague without forwarding the mail or handing over a phone; sharing a business contract with someone in sales with sensitive or irrelevant information redacted; or getting help from someone on the procurement team to figure out parts that can be substituted on a customer order. Microsoft has made some GigJam “how-to” video content available on YouTube.