Feature
The team collaboration software market is a crowded space, filled with options to meet every flavor of team collaboration — from project management to establishing knowledge repositories to working across multiple suppliers via an external-facing solution. Four tools that fall under this broad collaboration workspace tool umbrella — Coda, Microsoft Loop, Notion and Slite — share overlapping functionality, but each have specific strengths to meet team needs.
Categorizing this new wave of collaboration tools is hard because they borrow from so many other classes of software, including wikis like Confluence and even content management systems, to produce an overall platform to support team productivity. For example, Notion and Microsoft Loop combine note-taking, knowledge management, suite of project management tools and collaboration workspace all in one bundle.
In this article we'll explore the characteristics and differences between Notion, Microsoft Loop, Coda and Slite and look at how AI is making them a more compelling proposition.
Table of Contents
- Key Features of Modern Team Collaboration Platforms
- Slite: AI-Powered Knowledge Management
- Microsoft Loop: Collaborative Workspaces for Microsoft 365
- Coda: Bringing Teams and Tools Together
- Notion: The All-in-One Workspace for Teams
- Choosing the Right Team Collaboration Platform
- Future Trends in Workplace Collaboration Tools
Key Features of Modern Team Collaboration Platforms
Different solutions of course have different strengths and unique points. However, these flexible collaborative workspace tools — what some call work processing tools — also share a number of common features:
- Granular permission control to define team member access.
- Highly flexible authoring canvases, which provide a blank page to bring in multiple types of content (think images, tables, text, databases, etc.) and dynamic information types from meeting notes to product documentation to project trackers.
- Pre-set document or page templates, as well as the ability to add custom templates or potentially allow the wider user community to share their templates.
- The ability to structure sets of pages into a team space or a more hierarchical structure to produce what is effectively a wiki on steroids.
- Support for collaboration with the ability for multiple people to contribute to pages and capabilities such as @mentions.
- Project and task management features such as defined tasks, Gannt charts and common data visualizations.
- The ability to structure data into flexible tables and then manage and format the data.
- Generative AI integration to support content creation and optimization, as well as summarization and support for knowledge-based queries across a workspace.
- High numbers of integrations to embed elements from other enterprise applications such as Microsoft 365, Slack, Salesforce and Figma, with extensive libraries of out-of-the-box connectors.
- Integrations to reflect external updates, such as notifications of a new item in Slack or a Teams channel.
- A number of other useful tools sometimes unique to each platform, such as automatic status reports.
Let’s dig into some of the specific solutions.
Slite: AI-Powered Knowledge Management
Slite was founded in December 2017 and has received two rounds of funding, the last being in 2020. The company is currently headquartered in Paris.
Rather than calling itself a team collaboration solution, Slite markets itself as an AI-powered knowledge base and a knowledge management solution designed for use cases such as creating and maintaining product documentation, customer support documents and collections of HR policies. However the platform includes core collaboration features such as commenting, @mentions and restricted permission to help teams work together.
Flexible Documents and Pages
As with the other solutions profiled in this article, teams can use Slite to create, present, structure and maintain discrete collections of pages. At Slite’s center is a highly flexible editing interface where teams can create and collaborate on content and easily add elements such as videos, sketches, charts, diagrams and more.
It includes a variety of different design options to polish the appearance of content and templates for key document types such as project documentation, OKRs and the employee handbook. Customers can also add their own templates.
Pages can be organized wiki-style or as a series of themed channels, accessed by a vertical navigation to the left.
Slite offers content management and related governance tools to keep documentation up to date, including automatic reminders for recurring documents, review dates and AI-powered insights to pinpoint assets that haven't been read for a while.
It’s also possible to add verification labels for trusted documents and set permissions for sensitive documentation. Analytics can show who owns a document, who has contributed and who has viewed a page.
In general, Slite seems well-geared towards supporting knowledge and document wikis, reflecting the product’s positioning.
AI to Support Content Creation and Search
Slite's generative AI assistant corrects grammar, supports summaries, translates content into up to 15 languages and more, based on a standard number of prompts.
"Ask" is its AI-powered search, where users can ask questions and get answers found in the content, for example in verified documents. Answers are security-trimmed based on permissions and it includes methods to further refine responses through filters, choice of channels or set of documents to search. Additional sources can be added (see below) and a Chrome extension allows you to ask questions directly from your browser.
Integrations
Slite has a set of connectors that drive different types of integrations. Some of this involves embedding information from other applications such as Miro and tasks and boards from project management software like Monday.com, Asana and ClickUp.
Other connectors allow you to integrate documents from other applications that the “Ask” AI digital assistant can crawl, including Confluence and Google Drive.
An integration with Slack goes a bit deeper, offering the ability to query the knowledge base via Slack, display Slite documents and also receive notifications. An API is available to build further integrations.
Microsoft Loop: Collaborative Workspaces for Microsoft 365
Microsoft Loop aims to help teams or groups working on projects to “think, plan and create together,” and is available with certain Microsoft 365 licenses (including E3 and E5). Loop is just one of the many Microsoft team and collaboration tools, including Microsoft Teams, SharePoint team sites and Viva Engage, that provide overlapping features and functionality.
As always, the overlap potentially may cause confusion, which means governance and change management effort is required to prevent site sprawl and explain “what tool to use when.”
Pages, Components and Workspaces
Microsoft Loop centers around the concept of Pages, Components and Workspaces. The highly flexible Loop Pages offer an authoring canvas where a project team or working group can add or view different elements, known as Loop Components, which act a little like web parts in SharePoint pages. These pages sit within a Loop Workspace which team members have access to.
The flexibility allows a Workspace to fulfill different use cases including a project workspace, an area to support product management, as well as a structured wiki to support knowledge management
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A Loop component might be a set of documents, a whiteboard, a video, a table, a discussion thread, a block of text and more. The authoring canvas for a page allows for multiple contributors to update a project or share a set of resources. Team members can also receive notifications and be @mentioned to get their attention.
This makes Loop suitable to support more asynchronous collaboration. Further features support this style of work, including summaries of recent updates and a “generated workplace status” page which summarize updates from across the team such as progress made against deadlines. The latter feature has the potential to support a stand-up meeting on a project.
Microsoft Loop also supports collaboration with external partners, which can be particularly useful for projects involving multiple organizations.
Pages can be created from scratch — literally a blank canvas — or a business can create custom page templates to fit different users. Microsoft also has a library of standard templates covering document types such as project plans and meeting notes. Additional useful features include the ability to add a “Table of Contents” to link to different sections of the page, which can be helpful as some pages have the potential to become unwieldy.
Integration With Microsoft 365 and Third-Party Apps
A key advantage of Loop is its high level of integration with Microsoft 365, which means users can pull in assets from others M365 tools that are then synchronized in real-time. For example, you can bring in components from Planner which might list project tasks and keep these in sync across both tools.
Other useful Microsoft 365 integrations include Power Automate to create workflows involving Loop, such as an update in a particular Teams channel. Loop Components can also be shared within a Teams channel or pasted into a person’s OneNote.
Loop supports integrations outside of the Microsoft ecosystem, including Jira and Trello Boards, Figma, ServiceDesk and more.
Copilot for Microsoft Loop
As with many other Microsoft apps, Loop has its own Copilot app which brings generative AI into the page so users can:
- Automatically create different sections, for example generating text or code.
- Ask questions about content of a Loop Page or Workspace.
- Summarize elements of the Loop Page.
- And more, similar to the capabilities of other versions of Copilot across Microsoft 365.
One area of concern relates to Microsoft’s commitment to Microsoft Loop. The wariness is based in part on the company's recent discontinuation of Viva Topics and Viva Goals and also based on the observation that Loop feels less integrated than other offerings. Microsoft has given no indication that Loop is headed to the chopping block, having mentioned it as recently as last year’s Ignite, when it announced Loop Workspaces could be an added tab within channels within Teams.
Coda: Bringing Teams and Tools Together
Founded in 2014, Coda went through several funding rounds before it acquired Plato, a software engineering community that was already a customer, in May 2024. Grammarly then acquired Coda in late 2024.
The latter acquisition has been positioned as more of a merger, with Coda co-founder Shishir Mehotra becoming the new CEO of the combined company. Coda headquarters are in the Bay Area.
Coda brands itself as an “all-in-one collaborative workspace” that “brings teams and tools together for a more organized day.” It positions itself as helping reduce the number of documents and applications employees have to access in their working day.
A Flexible Authoring Canvas
At the heart of Coda is Coda Docs, a flexible authoring canvas where users can create documents (pages) that include multiple elements similar to the other solutions profiled, as well as features such as infinite scrolling and collapsible sections.
Documents are assembled into Hubs, essentially team project workspaces. Pages can then be placed into a hierarchy, so it could be structured like a wiki. Additionally, there are multiple document / page templates, and there’s support for custom templates which can also be shared across the wider community via a gallery facility.
Trackers allow teams to embed more project management features that support task management, structured data tables and accompanying data visualizations such as Gantt charts and more classic chart assets. Data tables are flexible so you can add additional columns. With additional integrations, Coda could support a project or team dashboard.
Coda also supports what it calls Applications, which are effectively simple embedded formula buttons, or automation recipes, which could involve integrated systems. So, for example, you should be able to set a conditional workflow or notification to run based on a specific event, such as someone entering data.
Coda Packs
An extensive set of Integrations with other systems are a key part of Coda’s value proposition. These “Coda Packs” are available in its marketplace, with some at an additional but modest price. Coda claims to have roughly 600 integrations available, which will deliver data into Coda, as well as some data going the other way. The Microsoft Teams Coda Pack, for example, allows you to display an active set of Teams within Coda, but then also allow you to post Coda updates to a particular Teams channel. Other integrations include Google Sheets, Salesforce, Dropbox, HubSpot, Mailchimp, GitHub, Figma and Jira.
Coda AI Now, Coda AI in the Future
AI is embedded into the platform but also features heavily in the future roadmap. “Coda AI” is the current generative AI work assistant that performs similar tasks to other GenAI tools including the ability to:
- Generate, optimize and summarize content.
- Brainstorm ideas.
- Ask questions about different pages and extract related insights.
- Automatically generate tables from data.
- Generate images.
Coda is developing a new standalone offering called Coda Brain based on its partnership with AI-data cloud provider Snowflake. The offering, currently in private preview, claims to allow users to ask questions across all of a company’s structured and unstructured data and get "trusted" results. Coda Brain builds on integrations delivered through the Coda Packs and includes links to original sources for users to verify answers.
The Grammarly acquisition of Coda promises to create more of an integrated platform that will “transform Grammarly into an AI productivity platform for apps and agents.”
Notion: The All-in-One Workspace for Teams
Notion arguably has the most name recognition of any solution in this sector. Founded in 2016 and with two investment rounds under its belt, the company has continued to expand through the organic growth of its user base and the acquisition of several niche providers such as Automate.io, Cron, FlowDash and Skiff. The company has since incorporated some of the capabilities from these buys into the platform.
Notion brands itself as a “Happier Workspace” where teams can “Write. Plan. Collaborate. With a little help from AI.”
Teamspaces, Wikis and Docs
Notion's editing interface can incorporate around 50 different content types or blocks including text, videos, dynamic charts and blocks. Similar to its competitors, it offers collapsible sections and tables of content with jump links.
Notion “Docs” — or pages — can be structured into a workspace (“Teamspace”) or more of a wiki-style hierarchy. Notion specifically supports a wiki use case to build up knowledge bases or controlled documentation. Like the other solutions, teams can create document templates and also browse a gallery of over 30,000 templates shared across the Notion community.
Team members navigate to different pages within a Teamspace via a left-hand vertical navigation. Notion’s collaboration features include the ability for team members to contribute to the page (with approval workflow for changes if necessary), add comments and @mention each other.
Notion Project Management, Calendars and More
Another key use case for Notion is project management so there is support for common project tools such as task management, Kanban Boards, data tables and forms. Some of the features are quite extensive here; for example, task management includes tasks and sub-tasks, personalized views of assigned tasks, progress bars and more. Automated workflows, integrations and templates have also been built around typical project management and product management use cases.
Notion includes some stand-out additional tools that in part came through its acquisitions, including a calendar tool that’s integrated with the rest of the platform. The release of the much-awaited Notion Mail email solution is expected in "early 2025," although its currently available to a select few in closed alpha. The product is a result of the company's February 2024 acquisition of Skiff.
One other advanced feature worth noting is the ability to create single page sites for external sharing. This in effect turns Notion into a simple website builder, with the option to link to a custom domain for an additional price. A form builder is also available, which can integrate into your workspace and also be embedded into external-facing sites.
Notion Integrations
Notion has a set of standard out of the box integrations, but they aren't as extensive as some of the other rival solutions. Popular enterprise applications such as Zoom, Google Drive, Jira, Figma, Slack, OneDrive, GitHub and Dropbox are available, but no out of the box integration is available for Salesforce or Microsoft Teams, for example. However, an API is available for bespoke connections. Authentication platforms like Microsoft Entra ID are also supported.
Notion AI
“Notion AI” comes at an additional price on top of standard subscriptions and includes most of the by now expected generative AI features, including content generation, translations, summarizations and style-based content revisions. AI search pulls from across integrated knowledge repositories such as Google Drive and Slack. The ability to filter search by source is useful here.
Final handy features to note are one that allows you to run analysis on data tables and generate flow charts and similar data visualizations. An automatic analysis of both PDF documents and images can potentially extract analysis and insights or produce summaries. Notion AI is currently based on both GPT-4 and Claude.
Choosing the Right Team Collaboration Platform
All four have broadly similar features, so the differentiation really comes in the extras packed into the solution, the strength of the integrations and preferences around the user experience. Notion has some additional features such as a Forms feature, Slite is focused a little more on knowledge management, Microsoft Loop has deeper Microsoft 365 integration, Coda has a vast number of integrations.
Coda and Slite are generally aimed at smaller, busy working groups such as support functions, product teams or agile project teams that may also have a need to store and update collections of knowledge or documentation. Both have a high level of usability, which helps with adoption.
Notion has been noted for its simplicity and usability, although some find the initial set up and navigation intimidating. As the tool has expanded its capabilities, the learning curve for adoption has grown.
Loop, initially billed as Microsoft's "Notion killer," has the home team advantage for Microsoft 365 shops. The deep integrations into the platform are notable and the product has made efforts to increase the standalone functionality.
As always, if you are trying to choose a solution it’s important to dive into the detail, try out the solutions and see what’s the best fit.
Pricing will also be an issue, but it stretches from freemium models to enterprise solutions, so there is some choice here.
Future Trends in Workplace Collaboration Tools
The team collaboration space shows no sign of slowing down. We can expect to see more powerful features and potentially support for a wider number of large language models in the market. Solutions like Coda are actively adding new AI features such as Coda Brain.
Acquisitions will also influence platform evolution. Niche acquisitions may lead to add-on features, while takeovers or mergers of providers may also lead to the evolution of wider productivity suites, similar to the newly combined Grammarly-Coda platform.
Whatever happens, teams are the beneficiary as they'll have more and richer options to how they collaborate and work together.
