Bluescape vs. Coda

This digital version of a pin-up space is absolutely an improvement to my workflow. The input is so robust. What you do with it is where the magic happens. This program is best suited for team collaboration. It helps to discuss how/where the team will contribute information to it--whether that is discussing the templates or a plan of action. Otherwise, the workspace can tend to get messy. I like the idea of having a presentation mode, where some of the markups could be hidden. The idea of a working session with consultants or clients sounds appealing, but at the same time, there is a desire for a cleaned up, clear shareout.

Incentivized

Coda is great to build a place for your users to go to and see information. It is easy to navigate through and the variety of content creation is great. However, it is not always easy to create what you want and there is a lot of playing around and learning. Coda also sometimes misses some functionality which is expected. For example, downloading a list of users that have access to the platform. Being able to send push notifications when a new page has been created etc. Overall it is a good tool to use just be prepared to invest time!

Incentivized

• Allows for a high volume of images and sketches to be put into the canvas
• Lets you drop in text, freehand sketching, and shapes quick and easy
• Can connect images and texts together using connectors, which can be customized

Incentivized

• Flexibility. It's easy to get started on a small scale, but add more complex organization strategies as needed.
• Integrations. It's simple to ingest data from sources like Zapier for time-saving automations.
• Useful components. View table data across different formats like cards or custom detail views.

Incentivized

• You can use Zoom with Bluescape but it requires solid bandwidth and memory by users.
• A breadcrumb trail would be nice to watch students performance.
• I would like individual user analytics for each of my students to see where they’ve been and what contributions each has made.

Incentivized

• It takes getting used to in terms of how the formulas per column is implemented, in contrast to how we build tables in Excel. For organization/team purchase, it would be worth considering having a training for the core team of users. Right now, we do a lot of self-learning.
• Inability to email charts or image without these objects being hosted on a third party. The community has been great in providing workarounds but it would be much more convenient to be able to have such ability natively.
• APAC Support. I'm based in Malaysia, due to timezone differences, even with a livechat implemented, the support for each step and conversation takes up to 24 hours per response. Having some hours covered in our timezone would greatly improve customer support experience.

Incentivized

Coda is definitely something that has been proven to drive positive impact in our organization. We have many divisions that can benefit from this that we have yet to explore. It would definitely be worth renewing.

Incentivized

Coda can seem either really useful or really useless. The extremes of both ends is driven by what our own understanding of what we want to implement. If we lack this understanding, it will be easy to misunderstand Coda's usability especially in the wrong context.

Incentivized

So far in the past year, we haven't had situations that Coda has gone down for us which is great.

Incentivized

We haven't done any integrations - the initial part of our experience we found that for docs with complex formulas, the page tends to load slowly but in recent months, Coda has improved and optimized the loading times in general and we generally don't find any problems in terms of speed anymore.

Incentivized

Mainly due to timezone differences. I think Coda's support in general is well implemented and executed. They know their stuff and are helpful. But since I'm not in the same timezone, solution rates are slower for me, and that's not something I prefer. I work in customer service, too, and more often than not, time is important. Shortening the solution time would be a much greater experience.

Incentivized

I'm relatively inexperienced but this experience is meaningful. It would have been nice to have some guidance from Coda so that we understood more on Coda's purpose and potential.

Incentivized

We have Workware installed on different computers in our office that were supposed to be great for presentation but we had issues after a user connected their laptop then they no longer had access to our server. If they had files they needed for the presentation they had to save them to their desktop to make sure they were accessible.

Incentivized

While all of the products listed have great features and platforms, there was always one thing missing from them that I would need to get from another application. Coda was the first one we used that really combined some of the best parts of those products and allowed us to use it in one place. I also appreciate the flexibility of creating your own framework and workflow, unlike in other tools where you have to follow how they capture data and organize projects.

Incentivized

I think scalability is definitely good here since it's based on number of doc makers. Implementation into each dept becomes simpler. That being said, due to the nature of our work, we find it easier that we have a "super user" and then a team of other doc makers. This would make the doc creation and management more efficient.

Incentivized

• Especially in a remote work environment, Bluescape helps us continue collaborating without missing a beat

Incentivized

• Increased insight for all stakeholders involved--both in terms of overview and details
• Better grip on issues and escalations--reduced friction, confusion, and higher clarity on status, next actions, and ownership.
• Reduced time required by those who need to maintain all information. Record (a detail) once and use multiple times.

Incentivized