Customer success stories & case studies

Fosca Cordidonne started using Rock a little over a year ago. Rock became her go-to project management and messaging platform after an online search for alternatives.

"I find Rock to be far superior to any other tool I've tried (and I assure you I've tried pretty much all of them!)" says Fosca.

Fosca works as a UX/UI designer and low-code developer. As a digital artisan she focuses on creating digital experiences for startups, small businesses and other clients. Her projects include websites and other personalised digital products and experiences.

In her free time she enjoys retrogaming and pizza, something very typical for creative and low-code freelancers, she says! Freelancers like her can use the portfolio website template to plan and launch their online presence.

Reliable and all-in-one functionality makes it easier for freelancers like Fosca to get work done

Fosca says that what makes Rock great for her is the combination of tasks, messaging, and files in a single tool. Many other popular tools do not have that all-in-one approach. Most tools either focus on project management or on communication but not both at once.

Quick and personal support is also a highlight of Fosca’s experience on Rock: ‘Last but not least, the best support experience I have ever had! The team continually seeks feedback from its users and is so easy to get in touch with.’

Day-to-day client management becomes a breeze with all-in-one messaging

When working with many different clients as a freelancer, collaborating through different channels can become a real challenge.

‘As soon as I started freelancing for startups, I realized that I urgently needed a platform where I could easily save documents, assign tasks and communicate with my clients.’

‍Getting work done in one place is the safest way to make sure that nothing gets missed out. It also helps keep everyone on the same page. Fosca creates a space for every client or organization she works with.

She continues all communication, collaboration, tasks, and file sharing in that dedicated space. This way everything can be accessed easily by all parties involved.

Her clients often start using Rock as well. Fosca says, I show clients how to use Rock, they become autonomous and start creating tasks, notes or topics themselves.’ Clients get used to Rock and the collaboration within the platform becomes even smoother. Because Rock is very intuitive and simple to use, clients get on board in no time!

Rock + Notion + Cosmos is all Fosca needs to manage her client communication and collaboration

Three online platforms are crucial for Fosca’s online communication and collaboration. She uses a combination of Rock, Notion and Cosmos to document information, give work updates and connect in-person when needed.

Cosmos is a virtual office where Fosca and her clients meet up synchronously. Often used by remote and hybrid teams, Cosmos creates personal experiences and a sense of belonging to the remote workers.

New users can create avatars, personalize their office space and mingle with others. It gives a great personal touch when communicating in remote environments!

Fosca uses Notion for file storage and documentation. Clients can quickly access relevant project information, design wiki’s and important docs in an organized manner.

Rock offers a Notion integration which allows users to add project information directly into the Files mini-app. This way freelancers like Fosca can quickly share new updates with clients, and even attach Notion files to tasks.

Rock brings everything together with integrated messaging and tasks. The combination of Cosmos + Notion + Rock allows freelancers to truly balance synchronous and asynchronous work.

This combination allows Fosca to reduce the number of apps she uses on the daily, and collaborate in a few places only!

What Rock functionality should freelancers check out?

Fosca highlights two features to check out for freelancers: the Topics mini-app and calendar view in the Tasks mini-app.The Topics mini app can be a powerful ally for freelancers.

‘It’s great to have conversations organized by topic inside a space. It gives our communication more structure.’

The Topics mini-app can be compared to threads, but more organized. It works well when you aim to discuss things asynchronously, as everyone can respond to a topic in their own time and still keep it well structured!

You can also quickly find information or discussions back as you don’t have to scroll past thousands of messages. You can learn more about the Topics mini-app here.

Fosca also recommends checking out the calendar view in the Tasks mini-app. Time management is essential for freelancers and the calendar view helps to improve it. It allows freelancers to keep track of important deadlines or show deliverable dates to clients with a timeline.

It is also possible to create, edit and filter tasks from the Calendar View which enhances your overview on projects.

How to get started with Rock as a freelancer

Fosca recommends Rock to any freelancer who is looking for a reliable and feature-rich tool: ‘Explore Rock, there are many features that you haven't even noticed yet!’

Some tips from Fosca for freelancers who are starting to transform their work via Rock:

• Read guides on the help center: Rock has a lot of helpful material on how to use different mini-apps. Also, you can find step-by-step guides on integrations or imports from other tools.
• Bring your clients to Rock: centralize your communication by creating a dedicated space for each client. You can easily do that by sharing your Quick Connect link. Bring in a personal touch in your interactions by combining Rock with tools like Cosmos.
• Help clients become autonomous: once your clients are familiar with Rock, your work becomes so much easier! Help them to get on board by setting up a short session to introduce them to Rock. Alternatively, share relevant materials on getting started.
• Make use of cloud storage integrations: file sharing is important for any freelancer! Integrate your preferred storage tool. Besides Notion, you can integrate Figma, Google Drive, ACC, Dropbox and more.

Fosca’s first-hand experience shows that freelancers can enhance their productivity and go headache-free by using the all-in-one approach on Rock. Bringing your clients to one platform saves time and allows you to focus on the results!

If you would like to get to know more about Fosca’s work or/and her experience on Rock, feel free to get in touch with her via Rock, Linkedin, Instagram or Behance.

Metio Software is a Czech software development company that primarily focuses on creating web presentations, information systems and software prototypes. Markéta Mazlová, the CEO of Metio Software, shares her team’s experience with Rock and asynchronous work.

Within their team, everyone is free to change their location and work from anywhere. The team leverages Rock to make this possible while staying productive and completing projects.

Metio Software is a team of 12 people who also work with freelancers on various projects. The company operates fully remotely.

Why Metio Software chose an all-in-one, asynchronous first approach for their remote collaboration

Markéta shares that before discovering Rock, the company was mainly using Slack for communication and Asana for task management. The combination brought some complications in terms of team communication and collaboration.

Switching between different tools for tasks and chatting quickly became tiring, confusing, and simply too much. That was the moment when their team decided to look for one tool which would offer both at once - tasks and chat in one place.

Metio Software discovered Rock in 2021 and quickly adopted the all-in-one approach. Messaging, tasks, and other mini-apps helped their team save time and reduce daily context switching.

The all-in-one approach, especially the combination of tasks and chat, was the primary but not the only reason why Metio Software switched to Rock. The second reason was the combination of asynchronous with synchronous communication channels.

Markéta says that she read quite a few articles about asynchronous work and became interested in the idea. She mentions: ‘I got the feeling that there are a bunch of people who are trying to solve similar work challenges as us. I like that you share your ideas and information about alternative ways of working and improving processes in a remote setting.’

Working across different locations and timezones with a more flexible way of working

Implementing a more asynchronous and remote work model became way easier once the company switched to Rock. The team can focus on the goals rather than being physically together or immediately responding to messages. This gives the team more flexibility and freedom to work from anywhere.

For instance, the CTO of Metio Software travels the world and works from Cambodia at the moment. While the team is mostly based in Czech Republic, they are allowed to take workations from time to time. The team can switch work locations and enjoy new cities or natural parks while still getting work done.

Mention anything, topics, and integrations have been extensively incorporated into Metio Software’s day-to-day work

The Mention anything function allows Metio Software to interconnect different subjects on Rock. It quickly became an important part of daily communication

‍‘It’s so cool that we can mention different tasks, topics, notes or people when communicating. It makes the connection between things so much smoother. There is no need to spend too much time searching for relevant information anymore.’ - shares Markéta.

The Topics mini-app is also a big part of the company’s work routine. ‘It’s so much easier to structure conversations when you use Topics. You can really make sure that important discussions don’t get lost.’ - says Markéta.

Whenever developers want to discuss some new ideas, they create a topic that everyone who is involved can elaborate on. As a result of discussions, tasks might come up. You can easily create them by switching to the Tasks mini-app.

Metio Software team is also glad that Rock offers the Jitsi integration:

Markéta shares: ‘We use Jitsi for our meetings due to security reasons. We find it super cool that you integrate it. We can set up quick meetings without leaving Rock.’

‍Rock also offers other video conferencing tool integrations, such as Google Meet or Zoom. It comes in handy when you need to discuss things in real time.

Another tool that Metio Software (as well as many other software developers) frequently use is Github. Rock offers Github integration which allows everyone to stay up to date on the latest developments.

How can software developers organize their workflow on Rock?

There might be many different ways to organize your workflow on Rock. There is no one-size-fits-all approach but there certainly are things we might learn from each other. Markéta is sharing the workflow that Metio Software has discovered and which works well for their developers.

‍‘Any software development company sooner or later needs a place to coordinate projects and communicate. Our way is to create two Rock spaces per project and it works really well.’ - shares Marketa.

When their team starts a project, they usually create two internal spaces for it. One space is used for more general updates and is run by a project coordinator. They use it for announcing information, updates, deadlines, meeting notes, agendas, and other important things.

The team uses the Notes mini-app to store information. Also, they create more general tasks in the Tasks mini-app in that particular space, too.

The second space the Metio Software team dedicates for daily communication and organizing work in detail. In this space, they create topics and more specific tasks and update things frequently in the process.

Sometimes their team creates a third space for a project where they invite clients. It’s a convenient way to inform them about a project and share summaries and other relevant information.

Markéta also shares that sometimes it’s challenging to break old habits of clients writing emails. However, once they try using Rock all the communication around projects becomes way more centralized. On Rock, you can bring in as many people from outside your organization as you like and collaborate together.

Rock your collaboration as a software development team

Metio Software’s use case shows that any software development company can benefit from the all-in-one approach and the variety of integrations as well as features on Rock. It’s essential for software developers to have a dedicated place to manage projects.

‘We found that there are many useful features which you discover in the process of using Rock. I encourage you to explore these and create the workflow that works best for you. You will definitely benefit from having everything set in one place.’ - Markéta Mazlová

In this case study, the founder and creative director of the design studio/creative agency New Aesthetics, Maximilian Helldörfer, talks about his company’s experience on transforming the way they work by using Rock. Design agencies like New Aesthetics can use the branding design template to structure client projects from onboarding to delivery.

Maximilian shares tips for marketing teams facing challenges related to remote work, having too many tools, and deep work.

An all-in-one approach helps New Aesthetics document information and manage communications without constant platform switching

New Aesthetics journey on Rock started around one and a half years ago. Before that, the agency was mainly using Slack for communication and Trello for task management. In addition to that, the company's clients would often come up with more suggestions for tools, like Microsoft Teams or Google Drive.

Maximilian describes the point in time when the agency decided to look for a solution which would help to keep all their communication and documentation in one place.

‍‘We realized that we can’t use so many different tools based on our clients as it gets all over the place. That was the moment when we decided that we need to look for a new tool which has an all-in-one approach.’

Having all their work centralized in one tool has improved their efficiency and given more time to focus on deep work.

Tasks + messaging in one place to bring order to the chaos of multi-channel communication

New Aesthetics shares that the biggest challenge before using Rock was information management across platforms.

‍‘If you use many different tools and send emails around, it’s inevitable that some information falls through the cracks. Also, it might happen that things are more up to date in one place which can cause confusion. This can be avoided only by having one tool which offers everything you need. Somewhere where you can store information and communicate, and this is exactly what Rock offers.’

An all-in-one approach means teams don't have to juggle apps and update work on different channels. With everything in one place, one update is more than enough.

The agency found that Rock replaced the combination of Slack and Trello and allowed them to keep everything in one place, which was their main challenge before discovering Rock. With functionality that natively switches between mini-apps, one can save time and easily jump, for instance, from tasks to messages or notes.

Leveraging tasks to collaborate more asynchronously, document information and organize work while working remotely

The Tasks mini-app quickly became a crucial part of the New Aesthetics workflow. The agency uses different labels to track the status of a task, for example, 'awaiting for client feedback'.

Maximilian shares that tasks helped them to save time by indicating the statuses instead of constantly chatting or meeting to share progress. The time which is saved can be used for deep work which is the key for making good progress.

Their team also loves the Activity panel feature: ‘It gives such a great overview of what the team has been working on’. One more unique feature which the team enjoys is the Set Aside panel. Set Aside allows users to store relevant tasks, messages, and notes in a dedicated panel.

‘Whenever a person says they can’t answer or do something straight away - I always suggest to set aside and do it later. It’s so nice that there’s a feature which you can refer to in those ‘I can’t answer now’ moments!’ - shares Maximilian.

Collaborating with clients on Rock to reduce inbound emails and platform switching for new projects

It was easy to get clients on board, too. Maximilian shared that the agency does not accept emails anymore and tries to bring their clients on Rock to collaborate. Even though some clients do not know about Rock at first, it does not take long for them to get used to it and start opening their own spaces.

We were curious about what New Aesthetics would suggest for creative teams who are looking for an all-in-one solution.

‘Just get started, experiment and find what workflow is best for you. Rock gives all options to find a way that works best for your specific case. Especially if you are a creative agency, you don’t want to make a burden for yourself by over organizing! Rock gives you the opportunity to create your workflow in an easy way’.

4 tips from New Aesthetics on getting started with Rock as a creative agency

Switching platforms can be a big change for teams. It often comes with transferring tasks, restructuring everything and getting used to new workflows. Here are some suggestions from Maximilian for creative teams looking into getting started with Rock:

• Try out different workflows: Rock provides teams with resources to find a way that works best for your specific case. Give yourself some time to think about how you want things to work.
• Experiment with features: Rock is flexible and provides different ways of customization. Experiment and find a way to organize your work the way you want.
• Start at your own pace: In the first weeks you might not need much complexity and depth. When you get more familiar with Rock you can incorporate more and more features.
• Fine-tune task management: focus on task statuses, assignee statuses or labels, or all of the above, to organize your tasks.

New Aesthetics’ story shows us that constant platform switching and scattered client communication can be avoided when communication is centralized. Tasks + messaging provides the foundation for more productive teams. Deep work is prioritized with asynchronous work, leading to a more productive team.

Dylan Cromhout is a lecturer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and a managing director of marketing agency Brand Shepherd. He uses Rock for both: projects at the university as well as marketing agency work.

Throughout this article we share how Dylan coordinates a large student group on Rock. But first, let’s learn more about the university course he runs, named the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’!

What is the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’?

How can we make universities more productive for societies? Can we prepare students for real life work environments instead of focusing only on academic research? These are the questions that inspired Dylan to create the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ program.

The program is part of the course Marketing Diploma that he teaches at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) which was started in 2010.The project connects around 250 students with approximately 400 small businesses.

The aim of the program is to create a mutually beneficial exchange: students help small businesses improve their online presence, and businesses give them a launchpad to obtain real life marketing skills.

For example, students help create social media pages or update business websites. This gives them hands-on experience and marketing skills for their future careers‘.

Small businesses don’t always have resources to pay for expensive marketing. Luckily, there are many talented students who can learn important skills while helping those small companies.’ - Dylan shares the main idea of the project.

How to manage an educational project with 200+ students without breaking the bank?

In 2021, the program was launched for the first time fully online. Dylan shares that in the beginning it was very challenging and stressful to find tools which would allow him to manage such a big project fully remotely. At first, a Whatsapp group with around 200 students was created.

However, it quickly became clear that there were too many variables and people involved to just facilitate the program on Whatsapp. At that time, Dylan started to search for a WhatsApp alternative. He shares that most of the communication and task management tools he encountered were way too expensive as they charge per user.

The list of options narrowed down even further when Dylan realized that they had to look for a free alternative. ‘Firstly, we wanted to combine Discord for chatting, Todoist for task management and Google Drive for file sharing. These were the only free tools that I could find that could manage more than 100 users easily.’ - says Dylan.

However, shortly after starting to combine those different tools, Dylan discovered  Rock! and because of the affordable pricing as well as tasks and chat being in one place, Dylan decided to give it a go.

Learnings from the first edition of the fully online Digital Superstart Challenge

After testing Rock for a while, Dylan was confident enough that Rock would work for them and decided to introduce it to students. The program was successfully managed and completed on Rock.

Running the program for the first time added some learnings for the future. ‘The main learning from last year - use one space for the whole project. It was way too complicated to have a space per student.’ - shares Dylan.

Rock makes the Digital Superstart Challenge program work because it’s mainly dependent on tasks being completed. Combining messaging with a task management system makes it easier for students and Dylan to communicate and collaborate.

How to manage an educational project on Rock: Detailed workflow on the second edition of the fully online Digital Superstart Challenge

This year, Dylan and his colleague May are running the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ on Rock again. Based on learnings from last year they made some workflow changes that make running the course a smoother experience.

Dylan shares the details of his workflow which allows him to manage a project with around 250 students on Rock successfully. Below you can find a detailed step-by-step management flow of the course:

1. One space per project

Dylan and his colleague created a main project space for the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ where participating students are added and all the magic happens.

Dylan’s colleague May is assigned as the space admin. Her job is to monitor the space, update relevant information and assure that everything works smoothly.

‘We recommend having one person as the admin of a space with full editing rights. This person can make sure all tasks are neat and everything is going smoothly. You should add students as guests and not members, so that they have limited rights to change things in a space and can’t create or delete tasks. Otherwise, when hundreds of students have editing rights, it can end up messy.’ - Dylan shares.

2. Students fill out a Google Form

Students who participate in the program are asked to go to the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ landing page and fill out a Google Form there. They have one week to register.

Once they complete the form, students get an automated email with a link to join Rock. They create their Rock account and get added as guests in the main project space.

A tip from Dylan: Record a short Loom video to show students how to use Rock and share it in the main project space. It will help students to onboard quicker and start using Rock smoothly from the outset!

3. Everything happens in the Tasks mini-app

Dylan and his colleague add all the tasks that are necessary to be completed by students to the Tasks mini-app. They add due dates and detailed descriptions of what students need to do.

‘I also add links to videos which students need to watch to understand the tasks better. Also, I split tasks into different steps with a Checklist, so it's clear for students what exactly needs to be done to complete each task.’ - says Dylan.

General tasks don’t have assignees as they are the same for all students which are in the space. All students can see these tasks on the Calendar view. This way, they are aware of what needs to be done by when.

4. Automated tasks via Zapier

Students who participate at the program are in charge of finding small businesses to work with. Once they find candidates, they send them to a landing page where businesses can register by filling out a Google Form.

The Google Form is connected to Rock via the Zapier integration. Once a business registers, a task is automatically created in the main Rock project space. It occurs in a specific list dedicated to businesses.

All the business details which they fill out while completing the Google Form appear in the task description, so nothing falls through the cracks.

5. Students take over tasks of businesses

Once a task of a new business registration is automatically created, a notification pops up in the space chat. Students are in charge of finding tasks of companies which they acquired.

They use the tasks comment section to claim their businesses. The space admin confirms and assigns the student as an assignee to the task.

6. Business related details are tracked within a task

From now on, everything that is related to a specific business and the student assigned to that business happens within the comments section of the task. If students have questions or need some help regarding a specific business case, they communicate in the comments.

The space admin, May, helps out by answering questions, editing descriptions of tasks accordingly and adding labels.  Everything is structured and all information about each combination of business and student is easy to find.

7. Task labels help to identify students’ progress

A part of the task for students is to invite businesses to join a Facebook group. When students complete it and business owners join that group, students share this information in the comment section of the business task.

The admin checks the comments and adds a label called ‘FB ’in order to identify that this specific business has joined the relevant Facebook group.

Labels indicate which steps students have completed with a specific company, so it gives a good visual representation of where each business stands and how much work a student still needs to do. It also helps us filter tasks based on what has been completed so that we can track progress.

8. Tasks are finished!

Once all relevant labels are collected as well as most important information is up to date, students’ tasks get moved to the next phase. Different lists are used to denote phases.

When all is done, tasks get moved to the ‘Done’ list. This indicates that students completed all the steps with helping businesses to improve their online presence!

Invite businesses to Rock

Rock is being used by software developers, startups, and freelancers because it’s very flexible and customizable. At the moment, around 250 students are involved in the program and update their work on Rock successfully. That relieves Dylan and May from a lot of stress in terms of managing the program.

Dylan shares that it would be great to involve not only students but also businesses on Rock. If businesses would like to continue to work with Dylan’s team after the program, they will be invited to join Rock.‘For now, we only manage our students on Rock.

However, moving forward we would also like to use Rock to engage the businesses we work with. Most of them still use Whatsapp or Facebook for their communication but we would like to introduce them to Rock and show them how easy and structured communication and collaboration can be.’

Some businesses are reluctant to change because they are used to managing their communications on Whatsapp, Slack or Facebook Messenger. However, as the businesses grow, this will become more difficult and chaotic and that’s where Rock will be useful.

Starting educational projects on Rock

Dylan hopes that his experience can help and inspire other educational projects to be executed on Rock.‘I totally recommend using Rock for educational purposes.

You don’t need a huge budget, it has many great features and excellent customer support. I hope people working in education can learn from my experience and adapt my workflow for themselves. So they don’t have to go through a messy trial phase which I had last year.’ - says Dylan.

If you want to implement an educational project on Rock but still have questions, feel free to get in touch with the Rock team.