MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) from Tactivos (DBA MURAL) in San Francisco is described by the vendor as a digital workspace and visual collaboration tool, designed for creative teams to make the process of design more efficient for distributed teams, working remotely.
$12
per month
Staffbase
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Staffbase is the employee communication platform for communicators in large, distributed organizations. Using a mobile first approach, it allows internal communicators to reach every employee through various channels like news, mobile magazine, chat rooms and surveys. Analytics and reports allow communicators to find opportunities for impactful communications and to show the impact of their work to stakeholders. With integrations to SharePoint it can also act as a mobile intranet.
I've recommended MURAL to a lot of people in a lot of fields. This is a great tool for any group of people that might stand around a white board if they were in person. Even if they are in person, I still recommend it pretty often because, unlike a white board, MURAL is virtual, so it can go offline with you. I've recommended it to other Software Teams, individual software developers, engineering teams, Sales Managers, Office Staff, Manufacturing teams, and more.
Staffbase is well-suited for companies who want to drive and measure employee engagement through meaningful content. I wouldn't recommend it for companies that maintain a complex SharePoint environment with years of legacy content. It is not intended to be a CMS system. It is a dynamic platform that makes it's easy to share information through the mobile or desktop app and email and push notifications. You don't need a large team to manage it.
enables easy for all collaboration especially in the hybrid environment
makes brainstorming better as users can create digital sticky notes, draw diagrams, and add images to visually represent concepts and ideas
it helps to visualize data effectively - users can create charts, graphs, and diagrams to present data-driven insights to team members and stakeholders
Overall, MURAL is really easy to use, but there are a couple downsides. It's really easy to make areas of the board consistent because double clicking adds stickies that match those around the current one. It's really easy to connect the elements. And it's really easy to organize elements. Inconsistent controls, Panning, Line Connections, and latency are the only issues I had. My biggest issue is that the MURAL mouse buttons are very different from most similar software. This always causes me problems switching to a graphics software or 3D modelling software. Because MURAL uses the same button to pan and move elements, it's really easy to move things when panning around. The lines can also be a (sometimes huge) problem because thew will occasionally disappear or connect to things incorrectly. I think this is tied to latency issues which, in addition to causing phantom lines, can sometimes cause confusion to your team.
Mural was easier to use and share compared with Whiteboard. Whiteboard's functionality is limited. It is also integrated into Teams in an odd way that makes it difficult for team members to refer to old whiteboards. Mural as a stand alone web app is better.
Since we selected Staffbase, they are one of a few companies that haven't been acquired or changed its business model. We would have invested a lot of time and money rebuilding our intranet otherwise. We selected them because of the standard features included, the free updates, and the reasonable licensing fees. They understand the value of communicating with non-desk employees and keeping them engaged.
