On a bright Tuesday morning in October, we took to the stage at Flow to announce a number of new features designed to make work better, smarter, and faster for people on Workplace.

All these features have one thing in common: they empower people to make connections, work together, and get more done. And they further our mission to help companies and organizations build meaningful communities at work.

All these features empower people to make connections, work together, and get more done

Together with our customers and partners, we’re thrilled to bring these new solutions to market to connect distributed workforces, provide cutting-edge mobile technology, and offer integrated communications products and services for companies and their employees around the world, whether in the C-suite or on the front lines.

Safety Check for Workplace

Making work communities better prepared in a crisis by allowing employers to locate their people and provide assistance quickly.

In 2014, Facebook launched Safety Check, a simple and easy way to let friends and family know you’re safe in a crisis, and check on others in the affected area. In the last four years, millions of people have used Safety Check to provide peace of mind to loved ones.

Today, we’re announcing Safety Check for Workplace, a mobile-first way for organizations to find and help their people in a crisis. Because organizations are stronger when they’re connected, especially in times of crisis.

We heard feedback from customers that the current tools for managing crisis response at scale are too slow and cumbersome for the modern work environment.

With Safety Check, if a crisis arises, organizations can identify who may be affected, send multiple modes of notification, and monitor employee responses. And they can do it fast.

We never hope for a crisis. But we’re committed to making Workplace communities more connected and resilient when they need each other most.

For more information about Safety Check, see our dedicated blog post

Safety Check for Workplace will be available in early 2019. To request early access to Safety Check register here.

Do Not Disturb

Turn off notifications in Workplace and Workplace Chat to let colleagues know when you’re not available.

At Workplace, we believe in connecting employees to work together and build communities. But we’ve also heard feedback from customers that there are times when working most effectively means switching off other distractions and focussing on tasks without interruption.

Starting today, anyone can activate their Do Not Disturb status in Workplace and Workplace Chat. Simply turn off notifications across mobile and desktop at the touch of a button to maintain your Flow, finish that slide, or just take a break.

You can decide how long you’d like to remain undisturbed and an automatic message will make sure that your colleagues know when you’ll next be available.

Mark as important

Make sure high-signal posts reach their intended audience with new notifications and engagement metrics.

As organizations grow, it becomes more difficult to make sure everyone has access to important updates and announcements. We’ve heard time and again from senior executives that they’re struggling to make high-signal comms cut through the noise.

And it’s not for lack of trying. It’s estimated that over 280 billion emails will be sent this year, while executives spend an average of nearly 23 hours a week in meetings. But if information is the lifeblood of a business, we’ve reached the stage where the arteries are clogged and the circulatory system is failing.

That’s why we’ve launched the Mark as Important feature. Rolling out to all customers over the next few weeks, group posts can now be marked as important when their message is high signal.

These posts will show up at the top of the News Feed for every member of the group. We’ll also send email and push notifications, and deliver a simple report to show the post’s engagement metrics.

Multi-company chat

Instant messaging and video conferencing to connect with people outside your organization.

For many of our customers, enabling great teamwork isn’t just about supporting collaboration between their own employees. Being able to communicate and get work done efficiently with partners, vendors, suppliers, or agencies outside of their organization is just as important.

We’ve already enabled this collaboration through multi-company groups. Today, we’re starting to roll out the ability for people who are in multi-company groups to work together using Workplace Chat.