15 Best Remote Team Tools
Remote work is becoming a daily reality. But many avid office workers still keep away from it, citing the inability to communicate with colleagues over a cup of coffee during breaks and brainstorm in a meeting room.
But you shouldn’t be afraid. Many have proven that it’s possible to work effectively in a distributed team and even communicate with all its members while being away from the office. What you have to do is just to use online tools – messengers, task managers, calendars, and even entertainment platforms. What are these Remote Team Tools? Read the article.
1. Tools for work organization
1. Asana
Asana became one of the most popular tools for managing teams in times of COVID-19. It helps you create and distribute tasks, group them into projects, comment on each task, and attach files from Dropbox and Google Drive. Asana also has calendar functions, project panels, and a personal to-do list.
2. Jira
Another team management tool. Jira allows you to delegate tasks and track their progress and has a convenient mobile interface for project management.
3. Trello
A very simple tool for taking notes on what needs to be done and who needs to fulfill the task.
4. Confluence
Confluence is not really a project manager, more a team manager that allows you to keep documents, notes, best practices, product requirements, boards, and more in one place.
5. GitHub
This is a product for web development companies, designed to create software with remote teams. There is code commenting and management of open source and private projects features.
6. Taskworld
Taskworld is distinguished by its evaluation features. In the program, you can track the quality of your work or that of your colleagues based on measurable transparent metrics.
7. Screenflow
Screenflow is a Mac tool that makes it easy to record your screen and sound and share it with your colleagues. This free screen recording software is mainly needed to discuss layouts or designs, and if you need to explain in detail how a task is performed. You can also record team meetings for people who are on vacation or otherwise unavailable.
For Windows, we recommend using another online screen recorder.
8. Google Calendar
Google Calendar is a convenient and affordable tool for long-term planning. The service helps to form your schedule, not to forget about important tasks. It’s a must for those who have a busy schedule and a large number of calls every day.
9. Toggl
If you think that you will be often distracted by extraneous matters at home, you can use the Toggl time tracker. It is a timer that is meant to improve team productivity. In Toggl, you can organize teamwork and have a complete understanding of the time spent on tasks by all employees in all projects.
2. Online meeting software
1. GoToMeeting
A very handy tool for holding online meetings with clients or scrum meetings with teams. Using GoToMeeting is very simple: click on a link on a computer, laptop, or phone and you are in a meeting, with the ability to share the screen, make notes, record a conversation.
2. Zoom
With Zoom, a user can quickly communicate with a team or an individual user. The service supports up to 1000 participants and 49 displayed videos on the screen. You can sign in to Zoom using your Google, Facebook, or by registering. Among cool features are setting a custom background without using a chroma key; creation of private and open group chats during Zoom meeting; polls integration option.
3. Youtube
Finally, you can communicate with your colleagues using live YouTube broadcasts. Simple, free, and seemingly obvious tool, which, however, can be forgotten.
3. Programs for communication within a team
1. Slack
Slack is great for real-time communication and pair or team discussions. With it, you can organize chats by topic and integrate your work with GitHub, Trello, and other tools. There is a search for chats and tags.
2. Flowdock
An analogous software of Slack. It also can be integrated with Jira, GitHub, Basecamp, Asana, Assembla, Trello, and many other tools.
3. PizzaTime and СoffeeTime
Lack of communication with collegues is perhaps one of the biggest distributed team challenges. PizzaTime and CoffeeTime will help you to forget the routine and spend time with colleagues, albeit virtual. These services will deliver delicious pizza and coffee to your entire remote team almost at the same time.
4. Accounting and Finance
1. Fyle
Fyle automates your entire pre-accounting process end-to-end, ensuring that your Finance teams have complete control over business expenses even as they work remotely. It enables them to seamlessly track business spending across projects, departments, and budgets within a single dashboard.
Summary
Remote work is no longer the freelancers’ matter. The shift to online is now happening in companies around the world. And although the workflow is different for employees from different departments, they have something in common: they all solve tasks. And, since completing tasks is directly related to organizing yourself and your work, it’s important to find a tool that is one hundred percent suitable for you personally.
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