Intro
Terminology Guide
Product Features:
Admin
A user with elevated permissions to manage the entire organisation, from adding and removing members to controlling billing and global security settings. You can assign and manage these roles within the Team section of your Organisation Settings.
Call
A voice or video session that connects participants live.
Change Log
A record of all product updates, new features, and bug fixes within Ripple.
Channel
A workspace that groups all related Chats, Jams, Tasks, and Notes together so context never gets lost.
Chat
Chat handles the “in-between” moments of collaboration, giving you a dedicated space for everything from private 1:1 syncs to team-wide banter so you can stay connected without cluttering up your deep work.
In Ripple, this can be accessed via Direct Chats, or via the Chat tab that sits within individual Channels.
Direct Chats:
A private 1:1 or small group message, with visibility limited to the added users within the chat.
Chat within Channels:
Channel Chat is your team’s open feed, making it the place for quick questions, announcements, and general banter.
When you click into any Channel, Chat is your default view. Think of it as the “office floor” for that specific project. Unlike DMs, everything here is visible to the whole channel, keeping everyone in the loop without forwarding emails.
In Channel Chat, you should use threads to keep conversations tidy so the main feed doesn’t get clogged up.
Collab
Ripple’s main collaboration area where you can view your Channels, Shared Jams, and Direct Chats, along with your Recent Jams, Calls, and Summaries.
Engagement
This tracks how your team interacts with the work. It’s not just about opening a file; it looks at active participation - watching video updates, voting on sentiment, posting comments, and completing tasks.
Why it matters: High engagement means your async culture is working. Low engagement might mean your Jams are too long, or the team is feeling disconnected.
Inbox
The Inbox is the central landing zone for every new task assigned to you, serving as a triage station where you can review incoming work before committing it to your schedule. It prevents action items from slipping through the cracks, giving you a dedicated space to organise, defer, or prioritise new requests.
You’ll find the Inbox inside the Tasks section, acting as a dedicated list view to help you manage your incoming action items.
Jam
A focused collaborative space within a Channel where ideas, discussions, and actions come together.
Recurring Jams:
Instead of a one-off discussion, these repeat on a schedule (like a weekly stand-up). The smart part? Any unfinished topics or tasks automatically roll over to the next one so nothing gets left behind.
Shared Jams:
Jams where you are the guest. You didn’t create the room, but you’ve been invited in to collaborate. It works exactly the same, it just lives in someone else’s workspace.
Member
A standard user in your workspace who can create and edit content, join channels, and fully collaborate on projects. You manage their access in the ‘Team’ or ‘Users’ section of your Organisation Settings.
Metrics
Your personal dashboard. This shows you the data that matters - activity levels, sentiment scores, and productivity trends - so you can measure focus, not just noise.
Note
A shared or private document for capturing ideas, reflections, and references.
Organisation
The top-level account for your entire company, housing all your members, teams, and billing information in one secure container. You manage it through the ‘Organisation Settings’ menu, where you control global permissions, user access, and subscription details.
Participant
Any team member invited to a Jam or Call who can actively contribute by posting updates, voting on sentiment, or joining the discussion. You’ll see them listed in the ‘People’ sidebar of any Jam or meeting, giving you full visibility of who is involved.
Productivity Trends
Found within your Metrics dashboard, these charts visualise whether your team is successfully shifting from “busy work” to “deep work.”
What it tracks: Key indicators like Time Saved (hours reclaimed by flipping meetings), your async ratio, and task completion velocity.
Why track it: It helps you spot if your team is truly becoming more efficient or if old habits - like dragging out a simple update into a 60-minute call - are creeping back in.
Recap
An AI-generated topic summary that condenses all the updates, comments, and tasks within a Jam into a broad overview. You’ll find these inside your Jam ‘Summary’ pages, allowing you to catch the key decisions and context instantly without wading through the entire Jam.
Relationship
A way of linking Tasks to other relevant Jams, Tasks, or Notes.
Reporter
When Tasks are created manually, this is the user who created it.
Roles
The permission levels assigned when sharing a Note or Jam:
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Owner: Has full control over settings and management.
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Editor: Can contribute and make changes.
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Viewer: Can read but not edit.
Seat
A paid license that grants a single user (Member) full access to your Ripple Organisation and its features. You can add, remove, or manage your available seats within the Billing tab of your Organisation Settings.
Smart Scheduler
Our intelligent scheduling tool. When creating a Call, this feature helps you pick a date and time that works across different calendars and time zones.
Summary
The automatic ‘TL;DR’ of your Jams and Calls, where Ripple’s AI captures key decisions and outcomes so you don’t have to take notes. They allow you to catch up on exactly what happened without needing to watch the full recording or read every single comment.
Tag
A label you attach to Jams, Tasks, or Notes. Use tags to group related items together so they are easy to filter and find later.
Task
An action item with a purpose. Whether generated by AI or created manually, a Task tracks who is doing what and by when, usually linked back to the conversation that started it.
Task Board
A Kanban-style view of your work, allowing you to drag and drop tasks between stages like ‘Backlog’, ‘In Progress’, ‘On Hold’, ‘To Review’, and ‘Done’. They help you track your progress across your workspace at a glance so you can see exactly where things stand without digging through lists.
Task boards are flexible - you can set them up to catch every task assigned to you from any Jam, or filter them down to focus on a single Channel or specific Jam.
Team
A way to group your users by department or role - like ‘Marketing’ or ‘Dev’ - to keep your people directory organised. You can create and manage these groups under the Teams tab in your Organisation Settings.
Thread
A way to branch a side conversation off a specific message in a Chat within a Channel, keeping the main Channel feed tidy so important updates don’t get buried in noise. You can start one by hovering over any message in a Channel and clicking the speech bubble icon.
To Do
A clear, linear list of your assigned work, allowing you to scan deadlines and check off items without the visual complexity of a board. You can access it by selecting the ‘To Do’ view at the top of your Tasks dashboard, where it sits directly alongside the Inbox view, above the Boards section.
Topic
Specific agenda points inside a Jam that structure your discussion, keeping the conversation focused so you can address issues one by one without the noise. You create them directly inside a Jam to guide the team on exactly what needs input.
Topic Sentiment
A quick “vibe check” for your Jams, nominated individually by the Jam’s participants. This rating reflects the general tone of the discussion so you can spot alignment issues early.
Other Terms:
Async (Asynchronous)
Collaboration that doesn’t require everyone to be online at the same time.
Working “async” means moving work forward on your schedule, not just when a meeting is booked.
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In Jams: Instead of sitting in a room listening to updates, you post a video or comment when you’re free, and teammates respond when they’re free.
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The Benefit: It gives everyone the space to think before they speak, removes the pressure of “being on the spot,” and lets the team progress without blocking each other’s calendars.
Busy Work
Busy work is the collection of low-value, reactive tasks - like sitting in status meetings or constantly answering “any update?” messages - that consume your day without driving actual progress.
Deep Work
The state of uninterrupted, high-value focus, allowing you to solve complex problems without constant distractions.
Flipped Meetings
A flipped meeting means sharing context and updates beforehand so you can use your live time for decisions, not just listening to reports.
It’s similar to the “flipped classroom” concept used in schools. In a traditional classroom, you listen to a lecture in class and do homework later. In a flipped classroom, you review the material before class, so the actual class time is used for discussion and solving problems.
Ripple does the same for work:
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Context First: Team members share updates and info in a Jam async before anyone schedules a meeting.
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Resolution: Often, the team solves the issue right there in the Jam. No meeting needed.
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High-Value Meetings: If you do still need to meet, you skip the status updates and go straight to making decisions.
Kanban Board
A card-based visual layout within the Tasks section that organises your work into columns like ‘Backlog,’ ‘In Progress,’ and ‘Done.’ You can switch to this view under the ‘Board’ section of the Task page to track progress at a glance and easily drag-and-drop items between stages.