Working with P2 is both familiar and new, all at once. It’s made of many features you’ve encountered in other places, but it’s also a blank canvas — which means getting the hang of it might take some practice.
Let’s start with the basics: P2 is a collaboration platform. Specifically, it’s an asynchronous collaboration tool that’s been Automattic’s primary communication channel for more than 10 years. “Asynchronous” is a bit of a technical word: it just means that you’re not talking in real-time with someone present with you right now — like voice or chat. You write, and the other person will reply at a later moment. This means that P2 works best if you consider it your primary space to collaborate, working alongside — not replacing! — chat tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Discord.
Why “primary”? It’s because P2’s flexibility makes it easy to share and integrate a lot of different platforms in your writing and workflows. It works with pretty much anything, and that’s one of its strengths: no matter what other tools you use, you can easily link or embed them from P2. Add a video, a CodePen prototype, audio files, and so on.
At its core, P2 is great at two things every team needs: information sharing and feedback gathering.
P2 to share information
This is P2 at its most basic: publish some information everyone in your group needs to know, and they’ll get notified about your new
Posts let you share long-form, formatted content — like project plans or documentation — directly in P2. They are displayed in reverse chronological order.
Share essential information with your team. Some data that’s useful for a project you’re working on, news about the latest advances in your field, a change in policy, a new resource to check out — anything the whole team should see.
Since P2 posts have
Comments are the main way in P2 for you and your team to reply to posts and keep the conversation going. They’re located at the bottom of each post, and are organized in threads. Learn more.
You might already be familiar with this type of online interaction if you use social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or Mastodon, or have some form of a blog. The main difference is that you’re sharing with teammates or people you choose — not an open, general audience.
P2 to gather feedback
You can also use P2 for in-progress work. Do you have a
A draft is a post or page that has been saved, but hasn't been published yet.
Your teammates can read and comment with their expertise, opinions, and notes at any time. If you need input from someone specific, @mention them: they’ll get a
P2 notifications keep you informed about things that need your attention. On desktop find them in the bell icon in your top right corner. Also find notifications in your WordPress apps.
Ask for feedback early and often. Some people may not be used to sharing in-progress work so transparently, but this is essential to work effectively with P2. To get into this habit, share and ask for feedback as early as possible, in a way that makes the most sense for you and your team. It takes some practice, but the benefits are huge.
Information sharing and feedback gathering are the two primary ways to use P2. But you might ask: what about just having a discussion? Yes, of course! It’s a form of gathering feedback, it’s very effective and something you should experiment with.
When P2 is your primary collaboration tool, work is available and transparent to the whole team. It makes information easier to access and it breaks down silos — which means that you can
Using search in P2 it's easy to come back to the right messages and files when you need to. Use the search field to find a post, page or file. P2+ comes with advanced search to narrow results using filters and modifiers.
This also makes onboarding new people easier: they can read previous posts and discussions on the P2 for an immediate sense of how your team collaborates.
P2 Guides