MURAL - Detailed Review
Collaboration Tools
MURAL - Product Overview
MURAL Overview
MURAL is a versatile and innovative collaboration tool that falls squarely within the Collaboration Tools and AI-driven product category. Here’s a brief overview of its primary function, target audience, and key features:
Primary Function
MURAL serves as a digital collaboration platform, providing shareable, collaborative digital whiteboards where teams can work together in real-time, regardless of their physical locations. It is designed to facilitate various collaborative activities such as brainstorming, presentations, and project planning.
Target Audience
MURAL is targeted at a wide range of users, including educators, students, and enterprise teams. It is particularly useful for schools and universities, offering free accounts for university teachers and students. Additionally, it caters to businesses and organizations looking to enhance their teamwork and productivity.
Key Features
Collaborative Whiteboards
MURAL allows multiple users to collaborate on digital whiteboards simultaneously, enabling real-time interactions and feedback. Users can post content in various formats, including texts, drawings, images, videos, and links.
AI Tools
The platform incorporates AI features to structure working sessions, generate new ideas through mind maps, and automatically cluster sticky notes by topic. It also analyzes the emotional sentiment of text and creates concise summaries of discussions.
Facilitation Tools
MURAL includes tools like timers, private mode, and the ability to summon participants to specific areas of the canvas. Facilitators can control feature permissions, add outlines, and lock certain pieces of content.
Integration with Other Apps
MURAL integrates seamlessly with popular collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Asana, OneDrive, Google Drive, Jira, and GitHub, allowing users to bring assets directly into their whiteboarding sessions.
Security and Compliance
The platform adheres to strict enterprise security and compliance standards, ensuring data safety and privacy. It supports global, regional, and industry regulations, making it suitable for large-scale and secure collaborations.
Templates and Libraries
MURAL offers an extensive library of templates for various activities like brainstorming, presentations, and Agile project management. These templates help in organizing and facilitating productive meetings and sessions.
Overall, MURAL is a powerful tool that enhances teamwork, productivity, and collaboration across diverse settings, from educational institutions to enterprise environments.
MURAL - User Interface and Experience
User Interface Overview
The user interface of MURAL is designed to be highly intuitive and user-friendly, making it an excellent tool for visual collaboration.Intuitive Interface
MURAL’s interface is very easy to use, even for beginners. The platform offers a clean and straightforward layout that allows users to quickly start creating visual workspaces for collaboration. With over 400 templates available, users can choose from a variety of pre-designed templates for different use cases, such as customer journey maps or sprint planning, which helps in getting started quickly without needing to build from scratch.Visual Collaboration Tools
The core of MURAL is its digital whiteboard collaboration space where teams can work together in real-time or asynchronously. Users can add various elements like sticky notes, text, icons, GIFs, and images to the canvas. The platform also allows facilitators to control feature permissions, lock certain pieces of content, and summon team members to specific areas of the canvas, which is particularly useful in large, infinite canvases.Customization and Control
Facilitators have significant control over the user experience. They can customize the toolbar to limit the features available to participants, ensuring that only necessary tools are accessible. This feature is helpful for new users or when you want to focus the session on specific tasks. Additionally, facilitators can lock down content to prevent unauthorized changes, maintaining consistency and order in the workspace.AI-Driven Features
MURAL integrates AI capabilities through its Mural AI and Microsoft Copilot integrations. These features enable users to generate ideas, build mind maps, summarize content, cluster sticky notes, and classify feedback based on sentiment. These AI tools help in streamlining the collaboration process, enhancing idea generation, and providing real-time insights to align team processes.Integration with Other Tools
MURAL seamlessly integrates with various collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Office, Azure DevOps, Asana, OneDrive, and Google Drive. This integration allows users to bring assets directly from these apps into their MURAL workspace, enhancing the overall collaborative experience.Ease of Use
The platform is praised for its ease of use. Users can quickly get started with minimal learning curve, thanks to the intuitive design and the availability of numerous templates. The interface is also flexible, allowing facilitators to adjust settings and permissions to suit the needs of the team.Overall User Experience
The overall user experience in MURAL is highly engaging and productive. The ability to work in real-time, the extensive use of visual tools, and the AI-driven features all contribute to a seamless and efficient collaboration experience. The platform’s focus on visual thinking and facilitation superpowers ensures that teams can collaborate effectively, whether they are fully remote, distributed, or in the office.Conclusion
In summary, MURAL’s user interface is designed to be user-friendly, highly customizable, and integrated with other essential collaboration tools, making it an excellent choice for teams looking to enhance their collaborative workflows. MURAL - Key Features and Functionality
MURAL Overview
MURAL is a comprehensive digital workspace that facilitates visual collaboration, integrating advanced AI tools to enhance team productivity and creativity. Here are the main features and how they work:Visual Collaboration Space
MURAL provides a digital whiteboard where teams can collaborate in real-time or asynchronously. This space allows users to organize ideas, create visual content, and work together seamlessly, whether they are fully remote, distributed, or in the office.Templates and AI-Driven Suggestions
MURAL offers a wide range of templates for various collaboration activities, such as brainstorming sessions, customer journey maps, and more. The integrated AI, known as Mural AI, can suggest preset templates for specific types of collaboration sessions, helping teams get started quickly and efficiently.Generative AI Tools
Mural AI includes several generative AI features:Generative Mind Maps
Mural AI can take a central idea and generate additional suggestions, creating a mind map to visualize these concepts quickly.Sticky Note Clustering
AI can cluster sticky notes into similar categories with suggested category titles, helping teams organize their ideas effectively.Summary Creation
Mural AI can summarize large amounts of information, providing quick takeaways from brainstorming sessions, feedback, or strategy workshops.ChatBot
The built-in conversation bot can generate ideas, questions, hypotheses, and more during collaborative sessions.Automation of Routine Tasks
Mural AI automates repetitive tasks such as organizing boards, setting up workflows, and managing project timelines. This automation saves time and reduces manual effort, allowing teams to focus on ideation, innovation, and problem-solving.Integration with Other Tools
MURAL integrates seamlessly with various collaboration tools and platforms, including:Microsoft Teams
MURAL can be used directly within Microsoft Teams, allowing for real-time collaboration, voting, summoning team members, and other interactive features.Microsoft 365 Copilot
The integration with Copilot enables users to search across MURAL for specific templates or murals and prompt Copilot to suggest templates for collaboration sessions.Other Integrations
MURAL also connects with tools like Asana, OneDrive, Google Drive, Jira, and GitHub, allowing users to bring assets from these apps into their whiteboarding experience.Facilitation Superpowers
MURAL includes features known as Facilitation Superpowers, which enable facilitators to manage collaborative sessions more effectively. These features include the ability to add time limits to sessions, create outlines, lock certain pieces of content, and summon team members to specific areas of the canvas.Security and Compliance
MURAL ensures high levels of security and compliance, meeting stringent IT and regulatory requirements. This makes it a trusted choice for enterprise teams, including those at major companies like IBM, Microsoft, and SAP.Collaboration and Engagement
MURAL enhances collaboration by ensuring everyone can view and edit the canvas in real-time without delays. It also allows for control over feature permissions and the addition of facilitators who can manage the collaborative process more effectively. By integrating AI into its platform, MURAL significantly enhances the collaborative process, increases efficiency, and fosters creative output and innovation within teams. MURAL - Performance and Accuracy
When Evaluating MURAL’s Performance and Accuracy
When evaluating the performance and accuracy of MURAL in the collaboration tools AI-driven product category, several key points stand out:
Real-Time Collaboration and Performance
MURAL excels in real-time collaboration, allowing teams to work together seamlessly on a virtual whiteboard, regardless of their physical locations. The platform’s interactive canvas and facilitation tools, such as voting, timers, and commenting, help streamline decision-making and keep meetings on track.
However, there are some performance limitations to consider. MURAL can experience performance lags when dealing with large boards and a high number of concurrent collaborators. The platform recommends keeping sessions to around 100 concurrent collaborators to avoid slowdowns.
AI-Powered Capabilities
MURAL has integrated AI capabilities powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI, which significantly enhance team collaboration. Features like AI-generated idea clustering, AI-powered mind maps, and streamlined actions for common tasks help teams synthesize ideas and reach consensus faster. These AI tools assist in generating ideas, finding common themes, and providing recommendations, thereby overcoming challenges such as blank page paralysis and cognitive overload.
Activity Tracking and Reporting
MURAL’s activity tracking and reporting feature provides real-time insights into team participation and project progress. This includes details on who contributed what, when, and how the project evolved over time. This transparency helps in managing large teams, identifying bottlenecks, ensuring equitable work distribution, and recognizing individual efforts.
Engagement and Visibility
MURAL enhances engagement by making it easy to identify collaborators on the board. Users are asked for their names before entering the board, and all avatars are visible at the bottom center of the screen, making it easier to see who is currently active.
Limitations and Areas for Improvement
While MURAL’s AI capabilities and real-time collaboration features are strong, there are a few areas where it could improve:
- Mobile App Functionality: MURAL’s mobile apps, particularly the Android app, are more basic and lack many of the features available on the web version. This can limit the flexibility of using MURAL on the go.
- Performance with Large Collaborator Numbers: As mentioned, MURAL can experience performance issues with more than 100 concurrent collaborators, which might be a limitation for very large teams or events.
- Comparative Performance: In comparison to other tools like Miro, MURAL’s performance on larger boards with many elements can be slower and less predictable.
Overall, MURAL offers a strong platform for visual collaboration, enhanced by its AI capabilities and real-time collaboration features. However, it is important to be aware of the potential performance limitations, especially with large teams or complex projects.
MURAL - Pricing and Plans
MURAL Pricing Plans
MURAL, a digital workspace for visual collaboration, offers a range of pricing plans to cater to different team sizes and needs. Here’s a breakdown of their pricing structure and the features included in each plan:
Free Plan
- This plan is free forever and includes unlimited members.
- You can collaborate on up to 3 murals (previously 5 murals, but this may have been adjusted).
- It features all visual collaboration and facilitation tools, a full template library, and quick diagramming capabilities.
- Includes MURAL’s Facilitation Superpowers™ such as timers, voting sessions, summoning participants, and private mode.
Team Plan
- Priced at $9.99 per user per month (or $12 per user per month if billed monthly).
- Includes all features from the Free plan.
- Offers unlimited murals in your workspace.
- Provides privacy controls for rooms and murals.
- Includes in-app chat and email support.
Business Plan
- Priced at $17.99 per user per month, available only on an annual basis.
- Includes all features from the Team plan.
- Adds single sign-on (SSO) capabilities.
- Allows for unlimited guests.
- Offers advanced integrations and priority support.
Enterprise Plan
- Custom pricing based on the specific needs of the organization.
- Includes all features from the Business plan.
- Enhances privacy and security controls.
- Provides SCIM provisioning and data residency.
- Offers enterprise-grade controls and proven transformation expertise across multiple workspaces.
Each plan is designed to support different stages of a team’s visual collaboration needs, making MURAL a versatile tool for teams of all sizes and budgets.
MURAL - Integration and Compatibility
MURAL: A Digital Workspace for Visual Collaboration
MURAL, a digital workspace for visual collaboration, integrates seamlessly with a variety of popular tools and platforms, enhancing its compatibility and usability across different environments.
Integration with Video Conferencing Tools
MURAL integrates closely with Zoom, allowing meeting attendees to collaborate visually in real time, even if they don’t have a MURAL account. This integration enables the use of sticky notes, drawings, diagrams, images, and more directly within Zoom meetings. Features like Facilitation Superpowers™, pre-made meeting templates, and tools such as outline, timer, and voting help keep meetings productive and engaging.
Integration with Microsoft Ecosystem
MURAL is a proud preview partner with Microsoft, offering integrations with Microsoft 365, including Outlook and Office. This allows users to collaborate visually within their existing workflows, reducing the need to switch between apps. Users can access and work on murals directly from the MURAL web app or through the personal app in Office 365. Additionally, murals and templates can be easily sent via email while working in Outlook.
MURAL also integrates with Microsoft Teams, combining project management and communication in one centralized platform. This integration streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration, and improves overall productivity. Users can publish templates to their workspace, add comments, and tag collaborators for smooth asynchronous communication.
Automation and Workflow Integration
The MURAL Power Automate Connector allows users to connect MURAL with other applications, automating workflows without requiring any coding. This connector is available in products like Logic Apps, Power Automate, and Power Apps, although there are some regional exceptions.
Cross-Platform Compatibility
MURAL’s web-based application ensures that it is accessible from various devices and operating systems. Whether you are using a desktop, laptop, or mobile device, you can collaborate on murals without any compatibility issues. The platform’s cloud-based nature means that all collaborations are saved and can be accessed asynchronously, ensuring continuity and consistency across different sessions.
Conclusion
In summary, MURAL’s integrations with tools like Zoom, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Teams, along with its automation capabilities through Power Automate, make it a versatile and highly compatible collaboration tool. Its web-based accessibility ensures that it can be used effectively across a wide range of devices and platforms.
MURAL - Customer Support and Resources
Customer Support
MURAL offers comprehensive support options to ensure you can get help whenever you need it. Here are some of the ways you can contact their support team:24/7 Support
You can reach MURAL support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via phone, chat, or email. This ensures that any questions or issues you have can be addressed promptly.
Live Demos
MURAL provides live demos to help your team learn how to collaborate more effectively and efficiently using their platform.
Additional Resources
MURAL provides a variety of resources to help you maximize your use of the tool:Documentation and FAQs
MURAL has an extensive documentation section where you can find answers to frequently asked questions and learn new skills. This resource helps you troubleshoot common issues and get the most out of the platform.
Downloadable Resources
You can access various downloadable resources, such as the 2024 Mural Brochure, which offers insights into how MURAL can help your business maximize efficiency, reduce costs, and drive profitability.
AI-Driven Features
MURAL AI is integrated into the platform to help teams innovate, align, and collaborate more efficiently. This includes features like AI-recommended templates, summarization of text from mural canvases, and integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot. These features are available for free on Team , Business, and Enterprise plans.
Strategic Partnerships
MURAL has a strategic partnership with Microsoft, which offers customized programs to propel product-led growth initiatives. This collaboration can help businesses across every facet of their collaborative journey.
Security and Compliance
MURAL is committed to security, privacy, and data compliance. They ensure that customer data is not shared or used to train AI models, and they maintain enterprise-grade solutions and standards. MURAL is also a signatory to the European Union’s AI Pact, ensuring compliance with the AI Act.
Career and Team Resources
For those interested in joining the MURAL team, there are resources available on career opportunities, including competitive compensation, career advancement, and remote work options. MURAL fosters a culture of collaboration, growth, and empowerment.
By leveraging these support options and resources, you can ensure a smooth and productive experience with MURAL, helping your team to collaborate more effectively and achieve your business goals.
MURAL - Pros and Cons
When Considering Mural as a Collaboration Tool
When considering Mural as a collaboration tool, especially in the context of AI-driven products, here are some key advantages and disadvantages to keep in mind:
Advantages
- Intuitive and User-Friendly: Mural is very intuitive and easy to use, even for beginners. It offers a dynamic visual work platform that makes collaboration seamless.
- Extensive Templates: Mural provides over 400 templates for various use cases, such as customer journey maps, sprint planning, and more. These templates are equipped with handy components like sticky notes, text, icons, GIFs, and images.
- AI Capabilities: Mural integrates AI through its Mural AI feature, which can generate ideas, summarize content, cluster sticky notes by topic, and even gauge the emotional sentiment of text. It also works in conjunction with Microsoft’s Copilot to enhance collaboration.
- Real-Time Collaboration: The platform allows teams to work together in real-time or asynchronously, ensuring everyone can view and edit the canvas without delays. It also includes facilitation tools like timers and the ability to summon team members to specific parts of the canvas.
- Integration with Other Tools: Mural seamlessly integrates with popular collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Office, Outlook, Asana, OneDrive, Google Drive, Jira, and GitHub. This makes it easy to bring assets from other apps into the whiteboarding experience.
- Security and Compliance: Mural adheres to strict enterprise security and compliance standards, ensuring data safety and compliance with global, regional, and industry regulations. It is also compliant with GDPR and CCPA regulations.
- Facilitation Features: The platform includes features like voting, private mode, and custom toolbars to help focus team efforts and make brainstorming and ideation sessions more productive.
Disadvantages
- Pricing: Mural is slightly more expensive than some of its competitors, such as Miro. While it offers a free plan, it is limited to creating only three murals, making the paid plans necessary for regular use.
- Interactive Charts and Tables Limitations: There are some limitations on the interactive charts and reports you can create, which might be a drawback for some users.
- Sticky Note Function: The sticky note function can be a bit fiddly, as double-clicking accidentally adds a sticky note that must be manually deleted.
- Integration Configuration: The configuration process for integrations, especially with tools like Microsoft Copilot, can be somewhat cumbersome.
Overall, Mural offers a powerful and intuitive platform for visual collaboration, enhanced by its AI capabilities and extensive integrations. However, it does come with some limitations and a higher price point compared to some alternatives.
MURAL - Comparison with Competitors
Collaboration Tools Comparison
MURAL
Intuitive and User-Friendly
MURAL is known for its intuitive design, making it easy for beginners to start collaborating immediately. It offers a wide range of templates and seamless integration with tools like Microsoft Teams, Asana, and Google Drive.
AI-Powered Features
MURAL includes generative AI support through Mural AI, which helps teams generate and organize ideas more effectively. It also integrates with Microsoft Copilot for enhanced AI functionality within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Collaborative Features
MURAL allows real-time collaboration on an infinite canvas, with features like facilitators who can manage sessions, add time limits, and lock content. It also supports voting, summoning team members, and private mode.
Security
MURAL boasts excellent built-in security features, meeting stringent IT and regulatory requirements, which is crucial for enterprise teams.
Miro
Visual Collaboration
Miro is another popular visual collaboration tool that offers an infinite canvas and smart drawing tools. However, it is often found to be more overwhelming and confusing compared to MURAL. Miro lacks the deep integrations with Microsoft tools that MURAL provides and requires more white-glove service to work cross-functionally.
Integrations
While Miro has around 150 integrations, MURAL has more integrations that are better maintained, ensuring more seamless workflows with commonly used tools.
Pricing
Miro can be more expensive, especially for a wall-to-wall solution, whereas MURAL’s Enterprise plan offers more transparent and predictable pricing.
Taskade
Project Management and AI
Taskade combines project management with AI assistance, using GPT-4 Turbo to automate routine tasks and generate actionable insights. It offers a unified workspace for task organization and real-time collaboration, which is different from MURAL’s focus on visual collaboration. Taskade’s strength lies in its ability to integrate AI into project management workflows.
Custom Workflows
Taskade allows users to create custom workflows and project views, which is more geared towards project management rather than the visual collaboration focus of MURAL.
Integration
Taskade integrates with over 5,000 apps via Zapier, providing extensive automation and data flow capabilities, though it may not offer the same level of specialized AI development tools as MURAL does with its Microsoft Copilot integration.
ClickUp
All-in-One Productivity
ClickUp is a comprehensive productivity platform that combines projects, knowledge, and conversations. It includes AI-powered features like ClickUp Brain, which generates project updates, creates meeting summaries, and handles routine tasks. ClickUp’s focus is broader than MURAL’s, encompassing task management, time tracking, and resource allocation.
Real-Time Collaboration
ClickUp supports real-time collaboration with features like task-specific discussions and virtual whiteboards. It integrates with over 1,000 tools, including Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, but its AI capabilities are more generalized compared to MURAL’s specialized visual collaboration AI.
Zoom
Video Collaboration
Zoom is primarily a video collaboration platform but has evolved to include AI-driven features for meetings and team chats. It offers advanced meeting capabilities, AI-generated meeting summaries, and document collaboration. However, Zoom’s focus is more on video conferencing and asynchronous communication rather than visual collaboration.
Security
Zoom has strong security features, including end-to-end encryption and 256-bit AES, similar to MURAL’s security standards.
Conclusion
In summary, while MURAL excels in visual collaboration with deep integrations and AI-powered features, other tools like Miro, Taskade, ClickUp, and Zoom offer different strengths. Miro is strong in visual collaboration but lacks the seamless integrations of MURAL. Taskade and ClickUp are more focused on project management and all-in-one productivity, respectively. Zoom is a leader in video collaboration but does not match MURAL’s visual collaboration capabilities. Each tool has its unique features and use cases, so the choice depends on the specific needs of your team.
MURAL - Frequently Asked Questions
What is MURAL and how does it work?
MURAL is a collaborative intelligence system that centers around a digital whiteboard collaboration space. It allows teams to work together in real-time or asynchronously, using visual thinking and facilitation tools. Teams can create virtual canvases, add notes, draw, pin files and images, and use custom templates to collaborate effectively.
What are the pricing plans for MURAL?
MURAL offers several pricing plans:
- Free Plan: This plan is free forever, allows unlimited members, and includes all visual collaboration and facilitation features, but it is limited to three murals.
- Team Plan: Costs $9.99 per user per month, includes unlimited murals, privacy control, in-app chat and email support, and overage allowance.
- Business Plan: Costs $17.99 per user per month, adds single sign-on (SSO) capabilities, unlimited guests, advanced integrations, and priority support.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for enterprises, includes enterprise-grade controls, multiple workspaces, and expert guidance.
Does MURAL offer a free trial?
Yes, MURAL offers a free plan that is free forever, allowing you to try out the platform with limited features. There is no specific free trial period for the paid plans, but you can start with the free plan to get a feel for the service.
How does MURAL integrate with other tools?
MURAL integrates seamlessly with various tools, including Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Office, Azure DevOps, Asana, OneDrive, Google Drive, Jira, and GitHub. These integrations allow for features like custom tabs in Microsoft Teams, meeting invitations, notifications bots, and messaging extensions. MURAL also integrates with Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance productivity and collaboration.
What AI features does MURAL offer?
MURAL AI enhances team productivity and creativity by providing several features:
- Generative mind maps to explore ideas
- Automatic clustering of sticky notes by topic
- Summarizing content to synthesize ideas
- Categorizing sticky note text by emotional context
- Simulating human-like conversations to generate ideas and questions
- AI-recommended templates based on workshop outcomes and goals
These AI features are available on the Team , Business, and Enterprise plans.
Is MURAL secure and compliant with regulatory standards?
Yes, MURAL meets the most stringent IT and regulatory requirements. It offers enterprise-grade security features, including SSO capabilities and strict data compliance standards. MURAL ensures that customer data is not shared or used to train AI models and maintains transparency on how data is used. MURAL is also a signatory to the European Union’s AI Pact, ensuring compliance with the AI Act.
How user-friendly is MURAL for beginners?
MURAL is very intuitive and easy to use for beginners. It offers a user-friendly interface with lots of convenient templates to choose from, making it great for dynamic brainstorming sessions. The platform is designed to be straightforward, even for those new to visual collaboration tools.
Can multiple users collaborate in real-time on MURAL?
Yes, MURAL allows multiple users to collaborate in real-time on the same canvas. Everyone with access to a canvas can view and edit it simultaneously without any delays. The platform also includes features like facilitators who can manage collaborative sessions, add time limits, create outlines, and lock certain pieces of content.
What are the limitations of the free plan?
The free plan on MURAL allows unlimited members and includes all visual collaboration and facilitation features, but it is limited to creating only three murals. If you need to create more murals or require additional features like unlimited murals, privacy control, or advanced integrations, you would need to upgrade to one of the paid plans.
How does MURAL support team facilitation and management?
MURAL includes several facilitation features to support team collaboration:
- Facilitators can manage collaborative sessions, add time limits, create outlines, and lock certain pieces of content.
- Features like voting, summoning team members to a meeting, celebrating milestones, and private mode help in keeping the team connected and productive.
- The platform also allows control over feature permissions for users and the ability to add facilitators with extra features.