Facebook has taken aim at the professional market with the launch of Workplace, which it claims will fulfill a key gap for people who do not work at offices and thus did not previously have access to traditional workplace tools.

The workplace software market is dominated by players such as Microsoft, as well as newcomers like Slack, but Facebook believes it has a chance to carve out a share.

Coming out of beta, more than 1,000 organisations are using Workplace – formerly Facebook at Work – on every continent except Antarctica, with the usage highest recorded in India, Norway, US, UK and France.

“At Facebook, we’ve had an internal version of our app to help run our company for many years,” said a post on the Facebook newsroom blog. “We’ve seen that just as Facebook keeps you connected to friends and family, it can do the same with co-workers. We started testing a version of Facebook for the workplace with a few other organisations over a year ago.”

Workplace aims to help organisations collaborate better, whilst using familiar Facebook features including News Feed, Groups, Chat and Live Video. The function is mobile-first so can be used on the move.

Updates include enhanced features like ‘Multi-company Groups’, allowing employees from multiple organisations to work together, Live, Reactions, Auto-translate, Trending posts, Search filters, Video and group audio called Work Chat, as well as a Workplace Partner Programme and a competitive pricing model for organisations, based on a monthly fee per active user.

“The new global and mobile workplace isn’t about closed-door meetings or keeping people separated by title, department or geography,” concluded the blog. “Organisations are stronger and more productive when everyone comes together.”