Work From Home? Use These 35 Tools for Better Communication, & Collaboration

Due to the coronavirus pandemic situation, organizations are working from home. Their teams are relied upon to work at an equivalent level no regardless of where you’re working from.

With the assistance of an internet connection, it’s comparatively simple for us to complete most of our day-by-day work, regardless of whether it is related to leading a video call, sending a follow-up email, publishing a blog post with the team members of the prospect, or implement a task process to handle prospects and clients in your CRM.

But, once it involves working from home, we know well that only the internet connection doesn’t solve everything.

Tasks and obstacles are sure to arise that are difficult to manage remotely — once it involves these complex tasks and cross-team collaboration, communication, and productivity can get muddled.

As the requirement for productive remote work has grown, numerous organizations have found and started executing tools and resources that empower employees to be as productive as possible while working from home.

To help figure out which tools are perfect for your remote team, Insightin Technology has aggregated a list of a number of the most effective tools for you to experiment with.

35 Helpful Tools and Software For Remote Workers

The accompanying 35 remote work tools are fragmented by use case to assist you in identifying the type of resource you and your workers would benefit most from.

Remote Job Tools For General Collaboration

1. Google Suite

Google Suite (G Suite) is a Google platform that is budget-friendly and permits your teams to collaborate on Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Slide, among other easy-to-use Google Drive tools. You can conjointly share a team calendar and make work emails through the GSuite.

2. Microsoft Office Teams

While GSuite can be utilized completely online within one platform, Microsoft Office Teams permits you to download apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint to your laptop or desktop computer or mobile device. Like GSuite, you likewise can utilize this general suite of tools to manage, store, edit, and share documents in team folders.

Besides the more explicit applications, Microsoft Teams likewise permits you to communicate with your colleagues via video calls, email, and through an internal discussion platform where your teammates can ask questions or make posts.

Remote Job Tools For Project and Task Management Software

2. Trello

Trello permits you to create a dashboard that features huge projects or categories and tasks related to them. Every tiny task, called a “card” is often labeled with a colored tag and text.

For example, if you would like to mention something is “Urgent” you could create a red card tag that says “Urgent” on it and stick it to the appropriate Trello cards. You’ll able to assign task cards and project deadlines to individuals on your team and monitor every card’s progress through its Activity dashboard.

4. Asana

Asana permits you to create and delegate tasks, maintain, and check tasks into shared projects, communicate within every task so discussions remain sorted out, and include attachments from your PC, Google Drive, and Dropbox. Additionally, it also has schedule options, analytics for projects, and a to-do list.

5. Assembla

Project management for software engineers seems to be Assembla’s niche, however, it could deal with project management for just about any type of remote job. It can monitor time and tickets, produce reports, and simplify product releases and error fixing — In addition many say it’s simpler to the setting up than Jira.

6. Basecamp

Basecamp is basic and simple to-utilize management software that enables you to organize your schedules, set meeting schedules, track assignments, and store documents.

Your entire project management occurs on one organized dashboard to grant you a predigested birds eye view of everything that is happening.

7. RingCentral and Glip

There’s another incredible tool by Ring Central and Glip. While RingCentral empowers organization calls to your business line to be sent to a cell phone when you’re working remotely, Glip assists you in managing basic project management and text-based team communication.

For task management, file sharing, annotating images, shared calendars, and real-time group chat, Glip is a solid tool. Additionally, it guarantees all those conversations are fully searchable.

Alongside group conversations and standard project management features, you can activate video chats on the Glip app which permits you to talk to your colleagues about ongoing tasks.

8. Github

Web programmers will love GitHub as a result of its design to build software with remote workers. The platform allows workers to engage in code review and therefore the management of both open source and private projects.

The GitHub Marketplace provides programmers a range of tools that will facilitate them to do their tasks more efficiently, no matter where they sign in.

9. Jira

Jira is another project management software essentially for web engineers, IT reps, and client support that enables you to assign and track tasks, as well as issues that require to be solved. It conjointly includes a handy mobile and desktop interface for project management on the go.

10. Podio

A part project manager, part Facebook for organizations, you can utilize Podio to monitor what you have to do and chat while doing it.

With the website and mobile app, you can create “workspaces” for various aspects of your projects or work. These workspaces seem to be like FB pages as team members can remark or share info on them equally to however they’d share a Facebook post.

You can likewise utilize the platform to communicate with team members or oversee customer contacts secretly since it has a wide scope of security settings.

11. Taskworld

The sweet spot for Taskworld is overseeing projects, monitoring assignments, and subtasks. ts analysis feature helps you measure and provides feedback on work performance, setting it aside from other similar project management dashboards.

12. Wunderlist

Advertised more as an individual to-do list for your mobile, Wunderlist is additionally utilized by some of us to monitor customer work. There is not a lot of to the application with the exception of a helpful plan for the day that you simply can manage and verify as you go.

13. Monday.com

Monday.com is an online task-monitoring platform specifically for businesses and organizations. It offers comparative features to Asana and Trello in which you can watch the progress of assignments on a dashboard and assign tasks to the workers.

But, additionally, it conjointly permits promoting teams to plan tasks considering their budget limit.

Remote Job Tools For Scheduling and Hosting Virtual Meetings

14. Zoom

Zoom is a simple-to-utilize app and desktop platform that permits you to launch, schedule, and record virtual conferences with your team. These meetings can be entered virtually from a laptop or desktop computer, mobile device, or voice via a dial-in telephone.

During Zoom meetings, you can likewise share your screen with colleagues so they can see your tasks or presentations.

15. GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting permits you to launch and schedule virtual webinars or meetings wherever users can sign in or call to listen to sole hosts speak. These conferences can be recorded and sent to team members after they are finished.

16. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is a mainstream choice since Google is typically convenient for those who use Google Calendar to monitor your schedule and Gmail for emails.

17. Join.me

Join.me is extraordinary for quick and simple screen-share meetings. Additionally to having the ability to schedule and launch fast virtual conferences with screen-share, you can likewise make a shareable URL to your personal meeting space that teammates can sign on to when they’d prefer to meet with you.

18. Skype

At this time, several people have already used Skype. Alongside permitting you to host free small virtual gatherings, Skype conjointly allows you to make group chats. If you would like to use the paid version of Skype, you’ll even have meetings with groups or make international voice calls.

19. Uber Conference

With Uber Conference, there’s no wondering who joined the conversation, who said what, or what the heck your conference PIN is. It also has a mobile app and permits screen sharing.

You can make video calls in your name and when somebody logs in, you can normally see them on the video calls dashboard. At that point, when somebody is talking, their video feed will be featured so you can easily see what’s going on and keep focused.

20. Google Calendar

As opposed to having a full discussion over an instant messaging platform about when to attend a meeting, you can utilize GSuite’s Google Calendar feature.

With the feature, you can share your Google Calendar with your colleagues. At that point, when you want to schedule a conference with them, simply find their names and book a proposed time that works.

When you do that, you can also put notes within the description area like, “I’d wish to book this meeting to examine the marketing newsletter. Inform me as to whether this time doesn’t work for you ”

Remote Job Tools For Quick Chats With Colleagues

21. Slack

Slack is incredible for constant communication for one-on-one discussions or with everybody on your team. You can likewise sort out chats by subject, and combine actions from platforms like Trello, Github, and Pingdom.

We like the idea communicated here that Slack is as getting ready for a virtual workplace as you’ll get. You can even open a single channel for every customer, and invite just the individuals on that project to be on the single channel.

Insightin Technology team officially uses Slack for their team communications.

22. WhatsApp

If you’ve got a foreign or globally distributed team or communicate frequently with international purchasers or prospects, WhatsApp may be a nice communication platform that enables you to send text messages, host multiple-person video calls, group chats with them, or create voice calls for free on a Wi-Fi network.

23. Flowdock

Flowdock is a basic and simple to utilize instant messaging application and website just like Slack. It conjointly incorporates Jira, GitHub, Basecamp, Asana, Assembla, Trello, and many other apps.

Remote Job Tools For Asset Management

24. Google Drive

Google Drive is free. You can store and organize all of your content and information, and you can work on the equivalent document with multiple individuals at the same time.

25. Dropbox

Sharing big files doesn’t work so well over any email, that is where Dropbox and their Business come in. This is an excellent tool for organizing teams’ work. Simply have the teammates upload their office documents or reports into monthly folders and text you once their work is in.

26. Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud programs like Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator permit you to make design files or visual assets that will then be updated or edited by your team.

27. Canva

Similar to Adobe, however easier to utilize for novice designers, Canva enables you to create team dashboards where you can update or share design assets and templates with your team members remotely. This ensures that you can access and edit any design resource or brand imagery you would possibly need while performing from home.

Remote Job Tools For Announcements and Internal Documentation

28. Confluence

Confluence permits you to create an internal blog or wiki for your team. It’s more of a team manager, best practices, product requirements, keeping documents, notes, and plans all in one simply searchable place.

Pro Tip: You can also try the Gliffy integration to do fast wireframes.

29. GitHub Wiki

Savvy internet marketing agencies use GitHub Wiki for worker onboarding by organizing useful resources for new employees.

30. Loom

With Loom, you can record your voice or simply a presentation to give an announcement to your employee. Then, you will get a URL to share the recording and easily circulate it across channels like email or instant messengers.

Remote Job Tools For Tracking Team Progress

31. Time Doctor

Need to keep a detailed eye on how your employee is spending their time, for customer billing or productivity purposes? Time Doctor can assist you just do that.

With the help of this tool, you and your organizations and/ or remote workers are able to create projects and start a clock when working on a new project. Then Time Doctor’s dashboard provides a report of how many hours your employee has worked throughout the day and which projects they’ve spent the most time on.

32. Harvest

For monitoring company expenses and work time, this is a straightforward few-frills tool. Using Harvest you can create a to-do list of items or projects and start the clock while you start performing the tasks.

Then you can see how much time you’ve just spent on different list items, like producing marketing emails, strategizing, or writing blog posts.

33. iDoneThis

If you are unable to remember what you did yesterday, iDoneThis solves that problem for each employee and team by sending a “digest” of what everybody did.

Remote Job Tools For Team Decision-Making

34. Polly.ai

When your team has to create a choice that does not need a full meeting, Polly.ai allows you to create a survey that you simply will then send through platforms like Slack. From there, your teammates can normally vote on a choice.

35. Doodle

Planning to arrange a group conference? Doodle is a polling platform that enables you to ask quick questions to your team and see how they vote. You’ll conjointly create a meeting-time poll that allows your team to vote on a conference or meeting time that works best for them thus you can accommodate schedules.

Navigate the Remote Work Landscape with useful Tools

Today, your workers should have the ability to effectively do their jobs remotely — they have access to the right resources to assist them to be as productive as work at home as they are in an office space.

It’s no secret that everybody works a bit otherwise includes a distinctive set of challenges. However, our objective is to help the organization and freelancers to be productive, If you want to be a productive team or individual, try and implement one of the tools mentioned on top of it.

Author

Shahriar Ibne AzamSr. Digital Marketing Specialist

sazam@insightintechnology.azurewebsites.net