Seek a wide variety of sources and source types
You will likely need to perform a variety of searches in a variety of places. For example, you may locate sources by searching in Mardigian Search, the ABI/INFORM database, and on Google. Searching in a variety of places will help you form a full picture of the tools you are investigating, and will ensure you find all the information you need. You usually do not find everything you need on one website or in one database.
Investigating smaller or less established companies may require some creativity
Smaller or lesser known companies and/or products are less likely to have been discussed frequently in scholarly journals and trade publications. That does not mean that you cannot focus on a lesser-known tool. You should be able to find information specific to that product on their website, and you may find reviews or analysis from third parties by searching on Google. To fulfill your library sources requirement - and to make sure you have a strong understanding of business needs - try searching more generally about business collaboration tools in library databases. See the keyword searching page of this guide for examples.
Deeply review the product website for collaboration tools of interest
This may seem obvious, but a great first step is seeing what a company says about their own product! Reviewing the websites of several different collaboration tools can help you with comparing different options.
Think critically about the information you're finding
This is especially important for information found via the open web (Google searches). Not all information on the internet is trustworthy! When reviewing information on different tools, keep an eye out for advertisements designed to look like news articles, and consider whether a given website is a trustworthy source. To learn more about evaluating resources, refer to the Evaluate your Sources page of this guide.
Watch out for common keyword pitfalls
When searching for collaboration tools, it can be tempting to just type "slack," "teams," or "hive" into Mardigian Search. However, using these keywords by themselves will likely lead to lots of irrelevant results, since these product names are also widely used words that mean other things. To help reduce those irrelevant results, use product names in combination with other keywords, such as software, application, or communication.