Task management tool to help teams collaborate without clutter. Allows you to share tasks, communicate in real-time, and synchronize work across multiple platforms. Integrates with various apps for seamless workflow.
Features
Centralized Workspace
Organizes your tasks and communications in one place, reducing clutter and noise.
Real-Time Collaboration
Allows multiple users to work together simultaneously in real-time.
Simplified Task Management
Makes task management intuitive with easy-to-use tools for creating and organizing tasks.
Integrations with Popular Apps
Connects seamlessly with apps like Google Drive, Slack, and others to enhance functionality.
Workspaces
Organizes your entire organization by allowing users to create dedicated areas for different teams or projects. Within these workspaces, you can see all related tasks and resources in one place.
Topics
Enables capturing and organizing information on specific subjects or projects, making it easier to keep track of discussions and files related to those topics.
Comment Threads
Facilitates easy, chat-like comment threads that help in communicating and giving feedback on various topics or tasks, reducing the complexity of email chains.
Planner
A comprehensive tool that gathers tasks and information in one view, allowing users to plan and manage their workload more effectively.
Search Functionality
An advanced search tool that helps you find specific information quickly by querying all records and files across the platform.
Task and Project Structures
Flat's core concept is one-board-fits-all compared to Asana's task, portfolio, and workspace separations. In Flat, a single view shows all tasks at once, facilitating full project oversight.
Workspace Management
The individual or group workspaces in Flat allow for specific task viewing, making collaboration smooth across different projects within the same space.
Task Prioritization
Flat simplifies task prioritization with a single, unified view, improving time and focus management compared to Asana's task categories and numerous list options.
Centralized Workspace
Flat offers a centralized workspace that integrates tools like boards, whiteboards, and Gantt charts. This setup helps streamline team workflows by providing a single platform for collaboration.
Flexible Task Management
Flat provides flexibility in organizing tasks either through boards or a Kanban-style system, allowing more customization to suit different team needs.
Discussions and Comments
Flat allows for rich discussion and comments on tasks, ensuring all conversations are centralized and easy to access. This feature is designed to prevent project bottlenecks by always keeping team members informed.
Integrated Planner and Calendar
Flat includes a built-in planner and calendar, which lets you see every task's owner and its deadlines, helping teams keep track of tasks and prioritize effectively.
Pages versus Topics
Flat allows you to view work as boards quickly, with no complex configuration, as it's based on workflow topics. Notion requires creating a database and connecting it to a data source to view pages as boards.
Comments and Discussion
Flat's threads facilitate open discussions about topics without being tied to specific text pieces. Notion's comment threads are specific to text within a page.
Tracking Conversations
Flat uses 'All Updates' to keep team members updated. It tracks a thread for responses, ensuring the conversation's status is transparent. Notion keeps users informed with follow-ups but doesn't centralize conversation context.
Blockers
A unique feature of Flat that tracks and displays a thread explaining what is blocking progress on a topic, ensuring no unresolved issues are overlooked.
Personal Planner
Flat includes an in-personal planner to help users view and prioritize work topics. Notion lacks a built-in mechanism for prioritizing work.
Communication and discussion tools
Flat offers built-in communication tools to ensure seamless collaboration within teams, reducing the need for external integrations. Unlike Trello, which requires separate apps for communication, Flat integrates chat and comments within its platform.
Flexible project management
Flat provides more flexible project management approaches compared to Trello. It supports not only Kanban-style boards but also other management methodologies to cater to diverse team needs.
Integration with external tools
Flat integrates seamlessly with various external tools, enhancing its functionality and allowing teams to use their preferred software without friction.
Efficient task handling
Tasks in Flat are designed to be handled more efficiently, with features that facilitate easy prioritization and tracking compared to Trello.
Comprehensive user interface
The user interface of Flat is designed to be more comprehensive yet intuitive to use, offering a more user-friendly experience than Trello.
Simple Assignments
Flat allows you to indicate who is responsible for a topic by adding them as the topic "owner" with optional collaborators, ensuring clear responsibility. In contrast, ClickUp may have overlapping responsibilities as it allows multiple task assignees.
Blockers
Flat has a special feature called Blockers, which lets users record messages explaining what's blocking progress. This feature isn't available in ClickUp and helps identify issues like 'Is this blocked?' to keep track of project hurdles.
Threaded Comments
Both Flat and ClickUp support assignable comment threads, making it easy for users to follow up on conversations and ensuring messages or balls aren't dropped.
GitHub Integration
Tight integration with GitHub makes Flat perfect for coding projects, allowing students to manage their work seamlessly within the platform.
Free for Student Teams
Flat is free for student teams, ensuring that students can access the platform without costs.
Immediate Signup for Students
Student teams can skip any waitlists and sign up immediately, providing quick access to the tools they need for their projects.
Explicit Priorities
Allows topics to be given explicit priorities such as low, high, and urgent. This helps ensure the most important topics are focused on first. Use explicit priorities to highlight exceptions rather than relying on rank-ordering alone.
Sorting and Highlighting by Priority
Enables sorting topics by priority and highlighting urgent topics that haven't been completed. This feature adds additional capabilities to the built-in priority system.
Workspace Priorities Setup
Users can turn on explicit priorities in their workspace to keep the view clutter-free. The feature needs to be activated through the workspace's setup dialog in the Options tab.
Calendar View
Allows users to see everything that's coming due or overdue as a monthly calendar. It is designed to provide a big picture of upcoming deadlines and help users stay on track.
Workspace Calendar Access
Users can view the calendar for a specific workspace by clicking the calendar icon in the top-right corner. This helps manage deadlines across different projects.
Personal Workstream Calendar
Users can view the calendar for their personal tasks by selecting the Calendar tab at the top of the page, ensuring personal deadlines are met.
Due Date Display
The calendar view shows only topics and tasks with due dates and is only available if those are enabled in the workspace options. This ensures that only relevant deadlines are tracked.
Real-time Collaborative Editing
Allows multiple users to edit topic descriptions simultaneously, similar to Google Docs. Changes are automatically saved and synced across users, removing the need for a 'Done' button.
Capturing Meeting Notes
Enables all meeting participants to view and edit notes in real-time, improving accuracy and engagement.
Cross-functional Collaboration
Facilitates real-time, collaborative editing to help teams create shared understandings from diverse perspectives.
Retrospectives
Empowers teams to collaboratively edit and add to retrospective notes in real-time, enhancing team knowledge base.
Private Workspaces
Allows the creation of workspaces that are private, making them accessible only to members who are explicitly added. This feature is useful for topics with sensitive or confidential information.
Workspace Visibility Settings
When setting up a workspace, you can choose its visibility to be either public (visible to everyone in the organization) or private (visible only to specific members). Private workspaces cannot be made public once created.
Initial Membership
The creator of a private workspace is automatically made its initial member.
Adding Members
Additional members can be added by clicking on the workspace's name and visiting the Members tab in the setup dialog. Members can be searched and added from an input box.
Workspace Identification
Private workspaces are indicated by a small lock icon next to their name, serving as a reminder that the workspace is private.
Quick Edit
Allows users to make light edits to a topic without leaving the workspace view. Useful for attaching labels, changing owners, and more, all from the topic card.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Use shortcuts like 'E' or 'Shift' + click to quickly access and edit topic cards.
Suggested Edits
Automatically provides suggested edits when you type in the input box, like changing a label or due date.
Multi-Topic Editing
Select and change multiple topics at the same time, streamlining larger workflow adjustments.
Edit Topic Elements
Modify labels, owners, collaborators, due dates, and sizes for each topic directly from the workspace.
Move Topics
Move topics between workflow stages or different workspaces easily.
Archive or Trash Topics
Provides options to archive or delete topics effectively.
Change Topic Title
Easily change the title of a topic by typing a new one.
User's Mental Model
Flat emphasizes the importance of the user's mental model of the app’s concepts by maintaining simple structures. This helps users interact easily, utilizing their pre-existing knowledge.
Interaction Design
Flat aims to minimize cognitive load by presenting information clearly and ensuring consistent interaction patterns. This helps users process information efficiently, reducing the learning curve.
Visual Design
Flat provides a consistent visual language and surface design that encourages calm and clarity. This is intended to reinforce simplicity and ease of use, promoting a relaxed user experience.
Topic-Based Organization
Unlike traditional chat apps organized around channels, Flat organizes around topics, centralizing discussions to help achieve team objectives and ensuring crucial information isn't lost.
Asynchronous Communication
Flat uses asynchronous communication with threads that stay open until resolved, allowing team members to focus without interruptions.
No Notifications or Alerts
Flat minimizes disruptions by not using distracting notifications or alerts, allowing team members to attend to their tasks in their own time.
Discussion Threads
Flat provides discussion threads that allow teams to work together closely without breaking each other's focus. These threads are instant and frictionless, ensuring that the amount of real work everyone gets done is maximized.