Xpin Collaboration Platform

Pin represents a piece of equipment on a floor plan. Commentary window shows threaded comments.

Xpin is a platform to communicate and collaborate in a dynamically shared environment. Upload images to a live canvas, invite others to share, add pins and have conversations around these pins. The live canvas is updated instantly so everyone is always up-to-date and looking at the same information.

Any image can be used as the live canvas but Xpin especially lends itself to projects that have a natural visual context. eg:

• Construction site plan
• Gantt chart or spreadsheet Project plans
  
• Architectural drawings
• Manufacturing plant

Collaboration is centered around user generated pins – positioned on the live canvas. Each pin can have comments added plus files of supporting documentation.

Example 1 – Collaborating on a Gantt chart project plan

• Project manager(PM) creates a PDF of the plan they wish to share using MS Project
• PM creates a new Xpin project and uploads the PDF
• PM sends email invites to stakeholders to participate in the project
• Stakeholders are now able to add Pins to comment on parts of the plan or respond to existing comments from others
• Email responses are sent to all subscribed stakeholders

But Xpin is not just a great collaboration tool. Pins can represent not just a series of comments but actual entities like jobs, pieces of equipment, people, rooms or buildings. Each Pin can be custom configured to record specific details (called attributes), like the availability of a piece of equipment – and/or its condition. Conversation threads can then happen in context for that entity.

Example 2 – Equipment Status map for manufacturing plant

• Plant manager creates a new Xpin project and uploads the plant floor plan
• Equipment pins are added to the plan to locate pieces of equipment
• As equipment is moved – operators can update the pin position which is instantly visible by the plant manager and others
• Other attributes like availability or maintenance state can also be updated by operators or maintenance crew
• Management and operators are collaborating to keep information fresh and available to all interested parties

Xpin is about the control and communication of the here and now with is real time updates. Update a status here, move a pin there and the change is reflected immediately for all viewers. But history can be important too. Xpin lets you scroll back in time and your screen rewinds showing how things looked at some point in the past. Scroll forward and you’ll get a moving scene of when things changed, how, where and why.

Scrub or step through events over entire canvas history

Wrap all this with flexible searching and filtering, permissioning, custom alerts and email integration and you have a management tool that is as powerful as it is unique.

For further reading please see our Xpin White Paper (PDF)