Modern collaboration faces a conundrum.

Teams are constantly on the search for the best software to help their teams communicate, brainstorm, and plan effectively, as well as launch new products, campaigns and process improvements. There are more tools than ever to theoretically make remote and hybrid collaboration easier. But having access to more tools often makes collaboration more complicated, not less.

This is because the concept of “the best tool” doesn’t exist in a vacuum; what’s far more important to figure out is what mix of tools will drive collaboration efficiency and impact—not just activity—on your team.

What you actually need out of your collaboration tool stack

So how can you get more out of your collaboration? When it comes to technology, we’ve found that teams need to invest in several fundamental areas of their tech stack in order to collaborate at their highest potential:

1. Single sources of truth

There are few things more frustrating than looking for a critical piece of information and not being able to find it. Teams need to know which pieces of technology in their stack are reliable stores of knowledge for their team and business, and which tools assist with other functions of collaboration (like ideation, productivity, or evaluation).

2. Living documentation

Work is never linear, and cross-functional collaboration is messy; teams often have to go back to the drawing board or bring new stakeholders in after a project has already started. Prioritize investing in tools that leave a record of discussion and decisions versus relying heavily on live, ephemeral brainstorming.

Tools that leave a trail of documentation as you ideate, plan, and collaborate are valuable because they allow you to repurpose insights for future projects, help educate teammates, and even eliminate unnecessary meetings down the road.

3. Interconnected tools on top of a visual foundation

If the places where you plan, riff, and ideate are drastically separate from the places where you build, write, code, and execute, there’s a greater risk of your ideas getting lost in translation and the end product not living up to what you envisioned.

Too many disconnected tools make procurement and adoption more difficult and slows your team down due to constant switching back and forth between tools. A visual canvas that integrates your tools into one shared space creates a valuable “home base” for collaboration and reduces complexity.

How Lucid enhances your tech stack with visual collaboration

At Lucid, we believe visual collaboration—that is, hosting innovation-focused activities such as brainstorming, process mapping, and systems diagramming on an infinite virtual canvas—is the foundation of a modern collaboration tech stack.

Visual collaboration (versus chat, video, or text alone) offers a common language for understanding company-wide initiatives, communicating complex ideas, and flattening learning curves for new team members—all while allowing you to build single sources of truth and living documentation.

And when it comes to working well with the rest of your stack? That’s where Lucid really shines, offering a rich ecosystem of integrations with other popular tools you’re likely already using to bring the simplicity of visual collaboration to your entire workflow.

In a recently commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Lucid, a composite organization using Lucid cut costs by 32% via streamlining their tech stack,  which equated to $758,000 in operating expenses saved over three years (The Total Economic Impact™ Of The Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite, May 2023).

If you’re looking to level up your collaboration, here are some ways Lucid can act as a force multiplier on the rest of your tech stack.

Note: Integrations for Lucid's FedRAMP offerings (Lucid GovSuite and Lucidscale for Gov) may vary.

Daily task management

For large cross-functional projects, it can be hard to understand where your piece fits in the puzzle—and it’s easy to get bogged down in an overwhelming list of subtasks. With Lucid, you quickly achieve the context and clarity you need to move projects forward.

Integrations to try:

• Lucid Cards for Asana lets you visualize tasks as Cards on your Lucidspark board so you can easily identify next steps and balance workloads across individuals and teams. Look for similar integrations with Clickup, Monday.com, Trello, and Airtable coming soon!
   
• With Smartsheet for Lucidspark, you can easily convert brainstorming sessions in your Lucid board into structured project plans in Smartsheet—and with two-way sync, you’ll never have to worry about working from outdated information.

Strategic and Agile planning

Big ideas and big projects need a place to live. For complex strategic initiatives with various stakeholders, revision rounds, and launch phases, Lucid’s visual canvas offers a central hub for drawing literal connections between disparate documents, ideas, and objectives so everyone is working from the same information.

Integrations to try:

• With Atlassian for Lucid, you can easily edit and embed diagrams right within your Confluence wiki environment, and seamlessly attach diagrams to Jira issues for improved problem-solving.
   
• When planning big projects, Lucid Cards for Jira lets you get visual: Pull Jira issues into a Dynamic Matrix on your Lucid board to filter by priority, import Jira issues to see them on a board versus scrolling through a long task list, and automatically convert brainstorming sticky notes into Jira issues.
   
• Add Azure DevOps work items to Lucid Cards within a Dynamic Matrix on your board to better visualize DevOps data and quickly transform items on your board into roadmaps and customer journeys.

Effective meetings and communication

For diverse, remote, and distributed teams, impactful work can happen at any hour of the day—and not just when you’re in a meeting. Lucid acts as the visual sinew between popular asynchronous communication and collaboration apps, so no context gets lost when you’re sharing information.

Integrations to try:

• Did someone on your team miss a brainstorming session? Record a Loom and embed directly to your Lucidspark board to get them up to speed on their own time.
   
• With Slack for Lucidspark, you can turn off-the-cuff conversations into action. You can start a new Lucid board, edit board permissions, and get notifications when someone adds new ideas to your board—all within Slack!
   
• Add a Lucidspark board as a tab in your Microsoft Teams channel and make changes to the board directly in the embedded editor without ever leaving Teams. If anyone invites you to contribute to a Lucidspark board or makes comments in a board, you'll be able to see those invites and comments directly in your Teams notifications. It's easier than ever to bring relevant information straight to the places your team communicates the most.
   
• With Zoom and Webex for Lucidspark, you can say goodbye to pointless meetings. Keep your team focused and record all your best ideas and next steps on the spot—simply open a Lucidspark board right from within your video call pane so you don’t have to switch back and forth between applications on screen.
   
• Give your team the context they need directly in the meeting invite—with Google Calendar for Lucid, you can attach Lucidchart documents, Lucidspark boards, and Lucidscale models to your invite to provide a rich agenda and help everyone come prepared.

Productivity

When it’s time to go from planning to doing, the ability to make decisions and move projects forward efficiently is critical. Lucid lets you streamline your workflows and cut through complexity by connecting to your favorite go-to apps for getting work done.

Integrations to try:
 

• Embed any Lucidchart diagram in Asana to provide the visual context needed to keep projects moving smoothly.
   
• With Lucidspark and Lucidchart integrations for Google, you can drop brainstorming boards, process diagrams, and more directly into Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets and manage all your Lucid files directly from your Team Drive.
   
• Embedding Figma links in Lucidchart will produce image thumbnails directly on your diagrams, making it easy to communicate UX changes or provide product design updates at a glance.

Data management

Connecting your most important data sources back to your work lets you make informed decisions and accelerates your pace of innovation. With Lucid, you can import and visualize all of your data on a visual canvas to unlock insights in real time.

Integrations to try:

• Send data from Zapier into Lucidchart to monitor metrics in context, create robust performance reports, and stand up a single source of truth for your most important data. Once you’ve connected to Zapier and its more than 1,000 partnered apps, your data in Lucidchart will update automatically.
   
• With Salesforce for Lucidchart, you can import account, opportunity, activity, task, and contact data into your diagrams to build dynamic account maps—and enable sales leadership to quickly and visually assess the health of a deal. Plus, you can visualize your sales architecture even better with the official Salesforce shape library and template library in Lucid.
   
• Experiment with and visualize new reporting structures, generate professional org charts for stakeholder approval, and pull in key employee data into Lucidchart with BambooHR for Lucid.

Documentation

When you need to plan budgets, allocate resources, and improve processes, it’s important to see the big picture at all times—without worrying that any critical information is locked away in a silo. With Lucid, you can build a living blueprint of your business and reimagine documentation into something dynamic, visual, and useful.

Integrations to try:

• Reveal dependencies and redundancies by connecting your ServiceNow APM data to Lucidchart. With this integration, you’ll uncover application usage insights and optimization opportunities within your existing architecture to help administrators budget for new tools.
   
• Use Lucidchart to illustrate your team processes and procedures as diagrams, then embed them in Microsoft SharePoint so everyone has easy access to mission-critical information.
   
• Users can interact directly with your Lucidspark boards and Lucidchart diagrams within a Notion doc, allowing you to access robust, visually engaging knowledge bases without leaving Notion.
   
• Give your team the context they need and let your diagrams stand on their own as documentation by pairing a CloudApp video recording with your Lucidchart diagrams, and eliminate long-winded follow-up meetings and emails.

Improve your workflow with Lucid integrations

Want to simplify your workflow even more? Explore the full offering of integrations for Lucidchart, Lucidspark, and Lucidscale, and get ready to change the way you work.