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Sococo

Score10 out of 10

9 Reviews and Ratings

What is Sococo?

Sococo is a remote collaboration tool with integrations with third-party applications such as Google Docs, Atlassian JIRA, and Box.

Categories & Use Cases

Top Performing Features

  • Visual planning tools

    Includes visual tools such as pinboards, mind-maps, or charts for collaborative brainstorming and/or workflow planning.

    Category average: 7.8

  • Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts

    Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts.

    Category average: 6.2

  • Discussions

    Users can join groups or message boards for forum-style collaboration.

    Category average: 8.5

Areas for Improvement

  • Video files

    Supports video file types

    Category average: 8

  • Audio files

    Supports audio file types, such as .mp3, .mp4, and .wav

    Category average: 8.2

  • Document collaboration

    Users can edit files and attach comments to files.

    Category average: 8.3

Costly, buggy, hard to cancel

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Sococo is based around a decent concept but marred with technical issues and excessive running costs. The straw that breaks the camel's back is that the application requires a written notice of your intent to cancel a subscription at least 60 days prior to the end of your current subscription - and unethical and scammy practice. Good riddance, Sococo.

Pros

  • Video conferencing works
  • The concept is great

Cons

  • Unethical subscription cancellation
  • Poor value for the buck
  • Technical issues
  • UX issues

Return on Investment

  • Gamification is fun
  • Bills arent

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Discord, Slack

Sococo - it's like being in the same room!

Pros

  • Conference calls. No need for formal invites, excellent call quality and reliability.
  • Virtual rooms - see who's talking with who.
  • Instant chat - can also use Slack as a backend.

Cons

  • It would be great if it supported other major browsers. Not everyone has Chrome installed.
  • The ongoing subscription cost is difficult to justify. This is the only reason we stopped using it.

Return on Investment

  • Sococo completely overcame the problem of staying in touch with remote development teams.
  • Enabled daily scrum meetings, sprint reviews, etc.
  • Helped keep everybody engaged in the project.

Alternatives Considered

Skype, Skype for Business and Slack

Great virtual office communication

Pros

  • Visual layout - the virtual office visible was very helpful because it made the organization feel closer and as a whole, much more connected. Further, you can group departments in your layout, so it gave a good visual understanding of who was part of each 'department/team.'
  • Sound - the sound quality was good overall in meetings, and I liked the realistic sounds for opening and closing an office, etc. It allowed for a real office feel, and this is especially important since a lot of companies offer the option to work from home now - this removes the 'disconnect' that usually exists when working from home.
  • Communication options - it allowed for multiple ways to communicate and places to communicate - i.e., in the auditorium, lunchroom, conference room, or a smaller room. Very realistic and a variety in that sense.

Cons

  • Sound quality - the sound was not always great in some settings, and I think Sococo requires high-quality internet speed, which is a limitation for those who live in rural areas.
  • More sharing tools - there need to be more tools to share items. It's not easy to send a colleague something via Sococo. It is limited in that sense.
  • Room limitations - for bigger organizations, it would be hard to hold a meeting in one room due to room limitation capacities. The small virtual offices only hold four people, so if we wanted a bigger meeting, we had to 'book' the conference room in advance. This is limited compared to the limitless meetings you can book if you were using Microsoft Teams.

Return on Investment

  • Expensive communication means.
  • Quality on audio, not good.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Jira Software

Usability

Sococo

Pros

  • Good voice codex. Voices come across clearly and I've never had problems struggling to understand another person due to static.
  • Easy screen sharing. The screen sharing is intuitive and easy to use. In addition, it's easy for multiple people to be sharing a screen at the same time, and viewers can easily hop between the different shared screens.
  • Has a mobile phone application version, web browser version , and stand alone client.

Cons

  • On rare occasions my co-workers have had problems where they open Sococo and it doesn't recognize when they're speaking. However, restarting the program usually fixes it.
  • Users can 'knock' on another's 'virtual' office to come in to talk. Essentially, the same as waiting for a person to pick up when calling on a landline. An option to auto-let anyone in who knocks would be useful.

Return on Investment

  • Overall, I feel that it has positively affected my team, and helped us easily communicate and accomplish our goals.

Alternatives Considered

lync and Skype for Business

Other Software Used

JIRA Software, HipChat, Stash

Sococo is so great!

Pros

  • The UI is more useful than you would expect floating heads in little rooms to be. Being able to get a visual of what's going on is very insightful.
  • Being able to move around between rooms is a breeze.
  • Screen sharing is very simple and an important activity to have streamlined.

Cons

  • Audio quality is often a challenge. People will cut in and out.
  • Video quality can be a challenge sometimes when someone is sharing their screen or camera.
  • Moving between Sococo "Areas" can be a little bit challenging for new users not used to Sococo.

Return on Investment

  • Morning meetings are much simpler with sococo than without. Small powwows with coworkers to work out little bugs are also a lot more enticing since setup is essentially nonexistent.
  • It might be argued that the cost of sococo isn't worth the benefits of simplicity and ease of use.

Alternatives Considered

WebEx Meetings, Skype for Business and Google Hangouts

Other Software Used

WebEx Meetings, Skype for Business, HipChat, Stash