Microsoft continues releasing mobile apps for the iPhone first before they eventually trickle down to the “other” operating systems. The latest example: Forum, a new iPhone application born out of Microsoft’s Garage division responsible for skunkworks projects.
It was conceived to help employees within an organization speak their mind and state their opinion on any topic.
Fellow workers can then vote on your favorite posts (and optionally flag them) and find out what everyone else is really thinking about any given topic. Forum is a free download and available primarily to businesses.
“Forum lets ideas thrive, facilitates open dialogue within organizations, and enables employees to freely express themselves,” as per release notes.
To vote on your favorite posts, just swipe right to upvote a post or left to downvote it. And when you flag a post, it will “spend some time in the naughty corner,” according to the feature’s description. In addition to posting, voting and flagging, Forum also lets employees join Q&As, perfect for asking bosses burning questions.
“Leaders get a way to engage with employees in a comfortable, non-hierarchical setting through capabilities like facilitating Q&As and open forums on specific topics.”
The best part about Forum is that anyone gets a say, argues Microsoft.
Availability
As mentioned, this app was designed with work environment in mind though regular consumers, ad-hoc team, non-profits and just about anyone else can use it as well.
Forum requires an iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 8.1+ and is English-only.
Grab Forum for iPhone at no charge in the App Store.