Gaby K. Slezák
I've been working remotely for almost as long as the WWW exists and am evaluating new collaboration tools every week. These are my top picks for everyone who wants or needs to work in distributed teams or simply likes to work from the home office. There's many more of course and keep in mind that tools are highly personal affairs - they have to fit you and your way of working, and the context of your business.
Visit me at yourvirtualtrainer.net if you're interested in boosting your productivity by finding the tools that suit you and your business!
International de facto standard for online collaboration in geographically distributed teams. The focus is on communication and saves hundreds of hours of face-to-face meetings. Build communication channels by topic or department, public or private, closed or open to outside collaborators. With a few simple measures you can manage a stress-free ** on-boarding of all employees.**
Slack integrates seamlessly with Google G Suite, Microsoft Outlook, OneDrive, Dropbox, Asana, Trello, Sococo and countless other data management and project planning tools (no technical expertise required to integrate them). Includes its own video conferencing module, which, however, cannot keep up with Zoom or Skype for more than two participants (lower video quality).
Pricing: Free version available and sufficient for small but agile teams for a long time, it includes up to 10 apps/integrations but only 1-1 video calls. Tip: Integrate video conference leader ZOOM (see below) for free and you have the best of both worlds. Paid plans start at 6.25 €/activeuser/month.
Trello has a proven record of international teams who love using it. To do lists on steroids. *Perfect for *agile project management (think Kanban) but also for small business organisation. Some of my clients and I use it for personal planning, too! Very easy to use. Integrates and syncs with thousands of platforms and tools. Boards are beautiful and can make work more fun. Less options but more user-friendly than competitor Asana. My clear favorite of the two.
Pricing: Free forever version goes a long way: unlimited boards, people, lists, attached files up to 10 MB. The catch is that you can only add one power-up per board. A power-up allows you to integrate Google Drive, Dropbox etc. and to connect and sync with hundreds of other platforms and tools. The paid plans start at 9.99/user/month and then you have a powerful pm tool that integrates with Github, Jira etc. while keeping your more visually minded Team mates happy, too.
Easily organize and plan workflows, projects, and more, so you can keep your team's work on schedule. Like Trello, but less user-friendly. *Lots of features and *integrations with all popular tools and platforms. **
My verdict: powerful, but not as much fun as Trello and the additional features are not necessary for everyone. Plus: **very slick integration with Unito and Zapier for automating and syncing purposes (think GitHub sync ...).
Pricing: Paid plans include Gantt charts and permission management.
Zoom is an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars. Video quality is the best I know when video conferencing with (way) more than 4 people. Smooth integration in Slack and many other popular collaboration platforms. You have your own "room" with a fixed URL that you can give to people you want to meet.
Pricing: The free forever basic plan has a time limit of 40 minutes for meetings with three or more participants, which is sufficient for most purposes (and you can just restart the meeting if you need more time). No time limit for up to two people.
Intuitive but comprehensive professional whiteboard tool for teams and learning groups that need to collaborate visually and virtually. Design Thinking is your thing? Then Mural is your tool.
Simply glue virtual post-it's to beautiful boards, use plenty of graphics and symbols and the best professional background templates. Never start from scratch again (although you can!). Login only via (work) email. Boards can be shared with guests via URL (optionally with password) - they don't need a login (can't edit though).
Google Drive, Evernote and countless other integrations, time-saving typical brainstorm and meta plan stickers (check, smileys, arrows, idea...).
Comments, chat bar and voting function (to rate ideas/collected suggestions)
Pricing: Free trial for 30 days. From 12 US$/member/month.
Beautiful online boards that make virtual collaboration as easy as pinning sticky notes to your wall. Integrate it ad hoc in meetings or workshops, because you can login with Google, Facebook or Microsoft accounts (it is a child's play - everyone can immediately be creative).
Pricing: The free forever version lets you make up to 6 padlets (pin boards) for free, unlimited notes/media, unlimited members. Paid plans start at 8,85/month. Has been around for many years and is a clear recommendation.
A rather playful 2.5 D visual workspace solution for distributed teams who miss an actual water cooler. You can see who's online (at their computer) and set up meetings spontaneously just like in a real world office: You can see that your team mates are "hanging out" in the lounge and invite them with a mouse click. I'll be honest: I've never used it in any project professionally but it's one of the few with a room metaphor that is not 3D and I think there's people out there who would be a fit.
Pricing: Free Trial and free version for small teams up to 10 members. Very intuitive, short learning curve.
Like Doodle on steroids, but easier to use for your prospective clients: Calendly lets your clients or team mates schedule an appointment with you without the back and forth of emails, only at times that suit you.
Pricing: Starts with a forever free basic plan that is sufficient for most small businesses. Paid plans also offer automated booking of group meetings, classes or webinars/seminars. Integrates well with Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook/Office365 etc. and offers many integrations like Salesforce, Zapier, PayPal, Zoom and many more.
Need to make a call to someone far away or arrange a web or video conference across different time zones? Find the best time across time zones with this Meeting Planner. In just three clicks you have the perfect time slot.
Free.
Create structured multimedia notebooks on all devices (including Mac and iOS), structure them intuitively and use them alone or together. Accessible from anywhere with any device via the Internet. The data is stored in the Microsoft One Drive Cloud. You decide if you embed documents and other media or just reference it (link to it).
Good for: Sharing and collaborating on working materials, research, multi-media note-taking.
All you need is a free Microsoft account.
I am a seasoned online expert and passionate coach, helping small business owners to get a million things done by working in the cloud and attracting new customers while improving their work-life b...
