After using these features of Feishu, I uninstalled Word, Xmind, and OneDrive.

Similar to the social software track, after years of fierce competition, the current enterprise IM market has already formed a stable market balance. For this reason, when ByteDance announced in early 2020 that Feishu would be open to all enterprises and organizations across the country for free and start a new journey of To B, many commentators were not optimistic about it.

But what is surprising is that, with WeChat Enterprise Edition in front and Ali DingTalk in the back, Feishu, which has been online for less than a year, not only did not fail, but instead gained many loyal fans.

In mid-2020, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi, said: "Since the beginning of this year, online collaborative office has become more and more popular, and there are different solutions on the market. Xiaomi has chosen Feishu for some time. Feishu is very simple and efficient in information creation, sharing, and collaborative office. It is indeed getting more and more convenient as you use it." In fact, in addition to Xiaomi, dozens of well-known companies such as China Resources, NIO, and Wumart have also chosen Feishu for collaborative office.

It is undeniable that Feishu’s rapid popularity in 2020 is partly due to the objective promotion of the epidemic, but don’t forget that DingTalk and WeChat Enterprise Edition are also holding on to this trend. Therefore, Feishu can stand out in the fiercely competitive track and gain recognition from many users, which must have its own outstanding features.

Coincidentally, at the end of 2020, one of Feishu's important modules, Feishu Document, updated its related functions on a large scale, which can be said to be a new look. Today, we will follow the footprints of this update and explore the secret of Feishu's success.

This document is not simple

Electronic documents are a product that has been symbiotically developed with PCs. However, due to the characteristics of its basic settings, it still has an extremely stable position in the industry even in the Internet era and is a must-have tool for every "working person". However, after all, "every profession has its own expertise". Compared with the stand-alone office suite, electronic documents have always had shortcomings such as file fragmentation, single functions, and offline data. For example, Word, the most recognized mature document software on the market, has functions beyond text, which is only able to add artistic words and insert pictures. This has largely limited the new era "working people"'s demand for more functions in "Internet documents".

For example, many colleagues working in marketing may need to open a mind map to sort out their thoughts while opening a document to record details. This not only requires additional software costs, but the frequent switching also adds a lot of unnecessary operations, which greatly affects work efficiency.

In response to this practical need, the Feishu Document team has built-in the mind mapping function directly into the Feishu document. When we use it, we only need to click the "+" sign and select the "Mind Map" button to insert a mind map in the document that is completely consistent with the text environment.

In order to compare and test the mind mapping function of Feishu documents, another professional mind mapping software Xmind was opened to let the former and the latter sort out the same ideas.

The results are shown in the figure above. The mind map compiled by Feishu Document is not inferior to Xmind in terms of content, design and logic. Especially when we consider that the price of Xmind is as high as 388 yuan/year, we will feel that Feishu Document is really attractive.

In addition, considering that industries such as media and public relations need to organize a large amount of document content, Feishu Documents has also added a "bidirectional link" function that displays document relationships in a graphical manner.

When using this function, we only need to insert a document through @ to complete the reference between documents. At the same time, at the end of the article, Feishu Document will present us with a reference list and a relationship diagram button. Click the relationship diagram and we can see a file association tree, which clearly organizes the relationship between documents.

Considering that the main feature of Feishu Document is the cloud-based document, coupled with the "two-way link" function, this can not only greatly improve our efficiency in organizing and sharing files, but also to a large extent set a cutting-edge development model for fragmented traditional documents.

In order to improve the efficiency of connection between documents, Feishu Documents also further supports document components. Through the expansion of this function, developers can embed Feishu documents in any third-party system, and different users thousands of miles away can view and collaboratively edit documents at any time.

For example, in the traditional document mode, if we need to make an event planning plan and want to modify a certain content in the document, we need to modify it offline first, then upload and synchronize it, and finally complete the modification. Not only is the process cumbersome, but once there is a mistake in a certain link, it may even affect the actual implementation of the event.

Under the "Feishu mode", once we choose to embed Feishu documents in a third-party system, we only need to modify the corresponding documents in the document, and it can be synchronized to the third-party system in real time, greatly reducing our collaboration costs at work.

Programmers' favorite feature

If it only meets the needs of "writers", then Feishu Document is just a super-large cup of Word+Xmind+OneDrive. The reason why Feishu dares to shout out the slogan of "Internet-friendly" is precisely due to Feishu Document's breakthrough innovation in this aspect, and it has the ability to empower more jobs related to productivity.

Take programmers as an example. Although they have professional code writing software, they have to insert codes into documents to communicate with colleagues on projects. Traditional document tools can only present codes like "ants", which is undoubtedly a visual torture for programmers who pay attention to efficiency and accuracy.

In fact, Feishu Document has realized the shortcomings of traditional document tools in this regard and added the function of code blocks. In the latest update, Feishu Document has added a new version of the code block function, which can automatically recognize more than 50 programming languages ​​​​such as C, Java, Python, etc., and can also accurately highlight the code content according to the corresponding syntax, and switch the line break method with one click.

In this regard, we randomly input C, Java and C++ languages ​​into the Feishu document. The results are shown in the figure above. The Feishu document can not only recognize the corresponding code in the first time, but also give different special effects to the code according to different language features, which is comparable to a high-quality online compiler.

For daily operations that require frequent data transfer and file rewriting at work, Feishu has also added the Open API, an automated and batch tool interface that allows developers to directly call the document API as a user and edit documents efficiently with one click.

Take weekly reports as an example. Since we need to count a week's data, it often takes a lot of time to complete the statistics for a weekly report. Once we connect to the Open API, Feishu documents can automatically update the business data in the document for us and remind team members to follow up and collaborate in real time.

It should be noted that due to the need for a certain programming foundation, the Open API is currently only an exclusive feature for programmers, but Feishu officials said that in the future, the Open API will be available to ordinary users through Feishu shortcuts. From this point of view, one of the major directions of Feishu document evolution is to popularize and simplify the mysterious programming work, just like Meitu Xiuxiu to Photoshop, anyone can beautify their face with one click, and this is precisely the core competitiveness of Feishu documents - decentralizing efficient tools so that everyone can use convenient and handy productivity tools.

All-in-One

In the past few years, enterprise IM tools have been committed to solving problems at the "communication" level. For example, the well-known DingTalk and WeChat for Enterprise have customized functions such as enterprise grouping and position display for companies. Of course, we point this out not to deny the historical achievements of enterprise IM tools in improving "communication" efficiency, because improving communication efficiency is itself a major pain point for companies. However, based on the actual experience of the industry, under the pressure of KPI, most enterprise IM tools are currently trapped in an involutionary cycle of grabbing market share and improving "communication" efficiency, which is out of touch with users' better expectations for enterprise IM tools.

As for Feishu, due to its latecomer advantage, it had already fully considered the industry's high point before its launch, and had a deep understanding of the major pain points in corporate office work, so it proposed the concept of a one-stop corporate communication and collaboration platform. It can be said that Feishu has been standing on the shoulders of major corporate IM tools since its launch. It not only understands user needs, but also knows the pain points in actual use.

"Feishu has two competitive advantages that DingTalk and WeChat for Enterprise do not have," said Pan Luan, a well-known technology commentator. "One is Slack and the other is Notion. In order to achieve one-stop product function improvement, Feishu has implemented OA, held a cruise plan to attract ISVs to join, and is also developing more SaaS products internally, which will make the creation tools (Doc, Sheet) better meet the needs of sales and enterprises."

This has been demonstrated in the Feishu documents we mentioned above. In the more than ten years of development of electronic documents, the potential for industry progress has been exhausted. Feishu documents have benefited ordinary people and met the needs of corporate collaborative office by sinking technology. At the same time, it has created a one-stop electronic document solution, which simplifies the work scenarios that used to require the use of multiple tools such as Word, Xmind, OneDrive, etc. into one software. In terms of the efficiency of using pure productivity tools, with Feishu documents, other tools can really be uninstalled and left idle.

Although Feishu is a relatively "late bloomer" in the entire enterprise IM industry, it is precisely because of this longer period of observation and research that Feishu has fundamentally and simultaneously built the two dimensions of communication and collaborative office, truly achieving "All-in-One" that organically integrates the two. This is a victory we have achieved in work efficiency and a new breakthrough for Feishu in the enterprise IM track.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.