Faced with the global coronavirus pandemic, many companies have had to think about a new way of working: teleworking. If the use of telework was already present for some companies, it is now even more frequent in the world. In recent years, multiple tools have been developed to help professionals stay productive from home or outside their workplace. Among all the applications offered to companies, it can be difficult to find your way around. So what are the tools that allow you to work remotely while remaining productive? Discover in this guide the essential tools to be used in telework classified according to your needs (videoconferencing, messaging, project management, collaborative writing and online storage).
Table of Contents
Do you want to host a meeting and communicate with your team remotely ? We advise you to use a videoconference application to exchange with your colleagues from home or remotely. Many video conferencing applications have been developed following the boom in telework. In video conferencing, you can accommodate many participants, share your screens, write notes, set backgrounds and record your meetings. To guide you in your choice, we offer a comparison of the three most used video conferencing applications today.
Zoom is a video conferencing and messaging tool accessible anywhere in the world and on all devices. It is available on the web, as a mobile application and as a PC application. This tool offers several features: the possibility of sharing several screens simultaneously, chat and calendar synchronization from Outlook, Gmail or iCal.
Microsoft Teams is a videoconferencing and telephony application integrated into Office 365. It highlights its collaboration tool by offering functionalities allowing you to exchange different types of content with your collaborators. You can also conduct private chats and meetings of up to 60 minutes in the free version.
Google Meet (formerly Google Hangouts Meet) is a free collaborative video conferencing platform (for a duration of 1 hour and 100 participants maximum) accessible to all and suitable for businesses. This tool offers secure videoconferences thanks to encrypted data during their transfer. The application guarantees a series of anti-abuse measures, activated by default.
Slack is one of the most popular chat tools. This tool is simple to use and easy to learn. Its interface is attractive. It works with channels that represent projects or, for example, teams. Each user creates a profile and can then send a message (text, image, file, emoji, gif) in the chat.
When you work remotely and you have to work on several projects at the same time with several stakeholders and deadlines to meet, it is advisable to use project management tools to better organize yourself. These tools will offer you to manage your tasks associated with each project and will also offer you many features to be productive and efficient.
Trello is a simple and intuitive collaborative project management tool. It lets you manage projects and organize tasks through a layout of boards, lists, and cards. The ergonomics of task management is simple and is based on a To Do, Doing and Done system (to do, in progress and done) inspired by the Kanban method.
What is collaborative writing? Collaborative writing is the fact of writing together on the same document. You can write, comment and modify the lines of the document. These collaborative writing tools are essential if you want to write the same document with several collaborators and you want to know the modified lines as well as the people associated with these modifications. These free tools also have the advantage of being able to access documents from anywhere even without an internet connection by having the application.
Google Doc is an online document creation and editing tool. You can make a layout the way you want and choose from a multitude of fonts and other text options.
Zoho Writer is real-time collaborative word processing software for professionals. It allows you to create, edit, review and publish your documents.
Are you working with your team on a project and want everyone to have easy access to it? Opt for an online storage service. This will save you from wasting time sending your documents to all your colleagues and with this tool you no longer need to have several hard drives. This tool will be very useful if you are telecommuting and you do not have a common hard drive on your computer.
Google Drive is an online tool that allows you to own an online cloud storage and workspace. It is a very complete service. The interest of having a Google account and using other free office tools like Google Doc (cited above) to manage and transfer files between each service.
Dropbox is an online storage service that centralizes your files, cloud content and web shortcuts. The free account allows you to have 2 GB of storage expandable to 2 TB of storage or more.
Thanks to all these tools presented, stay efficient and organized even on the other side of the world. All you have to do is download these tools and get to work!
Productivity is the amount of practical work done at a given time. This quantity of… Read More
The landscape of work is rapidly evolving, and coworking spaces have emerged as a defining… Read More
IT security has become a significant issue for businesses, whatever their size. Cyberattacks are becoming… Read More
Logistics is a significant part of supply chain management. It plays a key role in… Read More
As someone who has been in sales for over ten years, I know firsthand how… Read More
A new generation of workflow automation tools aims to – at least partially – automate… Read More