Clarizen bolsters collaboration suite with reports and dashboards

Perhaps most notable in the company's Spring 2015 Release -- its biggest step forward since the release of Clarizen V6 in 2013, the company said Monday -- is a brand new Reports and Dashboards module that's designed to deliver a 360-degree view of the health of companies' initiatives.

Clarizen's SaaS platform already included reporting capabilities, but it can now generate a new type of report, said Avinoam Nowogrodski, the company's founder and CEO. "It's more advanced and goes more into business intelligence to give more insights."

Central to its value is the ability to generate discussion around reports, Nowogrodski said. Previously, viewers of a report often used email to discuss it, he said. Now, each report is "basically an object that has all the conversations and all reported items included around it."

Information is presented in real time, with exportable links to fully updated versions of reports, said Lori Bush Shepard, vice president of corporate marketing.

Snapshots can be exported for a high-level executive view that's accessible by both internal and external users, she added.

"When you can have those discussions and real-time access, it's not just a report that sits there -- you can take action on it and discuss it at every point in the process," she said. "It's not just raw data but something where you can discuss it."

Also Monday. Clarizen debuted an expanded integration with Box, allowing companies to connect files and folders more easily between platforms, it said.

Users can connect Box files or create new ones without leaving Clarizen, so the file is "always connected and collaborated on in the context of work being done in Clarizen," the company said.

Clarizen's Spring Release is free to existing customers; as of Monday, the Box enhancements are embedded in every Clarizen account.