Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.
Nearly 60 years since Marshall McLuhan described his vision for future “global villages”, we’re living in an age of abundant productivity – for those who seek it. Virtual and remote teams now revel in the same productivity, creativity, and connectivity as our office counterparts!
This article lists my favorite tools and extensions that further enhance remote teams’ abundant collaboration, communication, and connectivity. BTW, did I miss your favorite tool? Then, email [email protected] with your suggestion!
In this article
Virtual collab is the new normal!
Thanks to the continuous evolution of technology, we have access to a plethora of tools compatible with different platforms to support remote working and help employees be engaged and productive despite the absence of a physical work environment. So, let’s jump into it!
Tracking and project planning tools
Project management in remote teams (lacking good documentation) can feel like driving blindly. But honestly, if you have the right processes and tools in place you will likely feel even more productive and on-track than your days working in an office. Without further ado, here’s our list of our fave project management tools.
AttendanceBot
AttendanceBot is a one-stop-shop for managing projects to company-wide announcements. No sir, it’s not just in emails anymore! Tools like AttendanceBot simplifies your team’s managed leaves and time tracking from within any communication platform that your team is already utilizing. You can use this software alongside fragmented tools like personal messages or emails, or opt for software like HRMS, to easily manage your workers.
With a superfast time tracking and PTO, AttendanceBot guarantees more accuracy than excel sheets. If you are looking for a seamless workflow, this is the software that can help you manage approvals, work shifts and leave policies, and set them up just as easily. Equipped with calendar integration, notification to team attendance, you can also easily create quotas and time periods.
Milianote
Milanote is every creative professional’s dream. It is basically a virtual bulletin board that allows you to pin notes, pictures, graphics, and any other visuals that have to do with the project at hand. Other collaborators can add “comments” on the aspects of the boards, as well as suggestions and their own contributions. Let’s say you are working on an ad campaign. You might want to share your Milanote board with your copywriter, your graphic designer and your photographer. You might also want to get feedback from the client as you compile your ideas and examples. This is what Milanote is made for! It’s been dubbed the “Evernote for creatives” and is a great replacement for the classic office bulletin board.
Trello
Sheesh, those are some pretty cards! Trello works like our old-school favorite cork board only digitalized and advanced. You can create a board for each team member or each department so everyone can see what they are working on or what else needs to be done. You can create Trello cards for every project or to-do list complete with a deadline and a space for descriptions or project details.
With Trello, team leaders can easily create and pull cards from Upcoming Projects to This Week and move them from one board to another. Each member and team leader can also set cards on watch to see comments or updates on projects.
Utilizing Trello allows for a dozen ways to organize your team and your projects according to how you like doing it.
Trello makes every single part of your team collaboration easy and organized where every single part of your project can be managed, shared, and tracked with teammates.
Video conference and virtual meeting tools
We all LOVE a good meeting, don’t we!? Well, let’s take a look at how to make your favorite virtual meetings, that little bit more fabulous!
tl;dv
Catch up on your meetings in minutes!
Collaboration is best done in the apps and tools where you’re already working. tl;dv wants to enable meetings and communication with the tools you already know and love.
Record, share and highlight your meetings! Add timestamped highlights to your existing Notion agenda! Get instant alerts whenever you’re tagged in a meeting.
This is meetings on steroids. Don’t spend 60 minutes in a meeting for the 3-minutes you actually care about it.
PSSST: you can also watch tl;dvs (recorded meetings) at ~ 2x speed. 😎
Intermedia AnyMeeting
This software is the latest iteration of AnyMeeting. The video quality is good, controls are user-friendly, and the pricing is fair. The software has a built-in assistant too. With AnyMeeting, you can welcome up to 200 plus attendees–from small business meetings to Oscar nominations, this software can support you. It also works great with screen sharing from the browser and has a whiteboard feature, and an automatic transcription.
This video conferencing app is easy to use with no training or on-boarding required. You can host or join any meetings within seconds at any device whether desktop or mobile anytime and anywhere. You can also integrate AnyMeeting with other applications such as G-Suite, MS Teams, Slack, Outlook, and more.
InVideo
You asked. We delivered.
— InVideo (@InVideoOfficial) July 7, 2021
WE'RE NOW ON MOBILE TOO! 🥳
Introducing to you, Filmr By InVideo - taking video creation to greater heights, and newer platforms.
Ps. Filmr By InVideo is currently only available for iOS. You can download it here - https://t.co/qtqYlsNOS8
1/2 pic.twitter.com/jy4LfLPbEn
Powerpoint is so last year. With the InVideo platform, team members are able to create unique video presentations in 15 minutes or less. What’s great about this app is that you are allowed to add as many team members as you want to the video-making process and once it’s done, it can be emailed out, posted as a private webinar or presented live. InVideo provides over 4000 templates and 1 million+ stock images to use in your videos and animations. It is truly the future of boardroom presentations.
Zoom
Zoom became one of the most used and most popular video conferencing software since the COVID-19 breakout forced everyone to stay home. Now it is not just used for family gatherings and virtual birthday hangouts, it has also become an essential tool to hold meetings and conferences for different types of jobs and offices.
Easily invite anyone with or without a Zoom account to join in a virtual room and meet the rest of the team with a shareable URL. If you are a registered user, you can host meetings with more than 100 people using the free version of the software. And to combat what we know now as “zoom fatigue,” they have added features such as breakout rooms, making it also ideal for fun games, activities, and catch up sessions with your virtual teams.
Remote communication and org tools
Detail, transparency, ownership, and trust. These are some of the pillars of good remote and async communication. Remote team communication is the key to successful collaboration. These are our favorite tools to get you in-sync with your fellow comrades, even if they’re half-way across the world, or in a boutique cafe in Bali!
Remotion
Remotion brings your hybrid-remote team to life, right on your desktop. With quick calls and coworking rooms, the product helps you make room for the casual social chats that happen naturally in an office but are more difficult remotely.
Remotion’s approach to the virtual office is to give you a sense of presence of your team by showing you a glimpse of what everyone is up to—like who is chatting with who, and what music they’re listening to together. Their hop-in, hop-out coworking rooms let you work side-by-side with shared music, and are lightweight enough that they won’t slow your computer down.
Remotion also has fun features like live selfies and emoji badging to help you connect with your teammates outside of calls.
Bonus: they also have an awesome guide on remote-working!
Nextiva
Nextiva is the ultimate communication app. Think of it as an all-in-one sounding board that funnels emails, phone calls, texts and instant messages into one convenient platform. The great thing about Nextiva is that it can be used for both customer communication as well as within your team. Whether you are communicating through email, text message or phone, all communication will be filtered through the Nextiva app and recorded on individual profile pages. Every piece of communication sent between you and the person you are contacting will be listed, so there will never be any confusion on who said what and where/how they said it. If you are the type of business that has multiple ways of communicating, Nextiva might be worth a try.
Guru
Guru acts as a company wiki, storing all the information your employees need to get their work done. This would be a good alternative to Notion, which is also a popular documentation tool. The app includes an advanced search function that will help end repeat questions for good. Simply direct team members to the Guru platform and all the information they will ever need is there, ready to be searched! This is one of those virtual collaboration tools that will completely change everything.
These remote collaboration tools completely re-define what it means to work in an office. You will find that using these virtual collaboration tools will make the workday just fly by, productivity will increase and you will wonder why we didn’t always work without pants on. 🤔
World Time Buddy
With our team stretched out across Australia, Europe, Africa, and South America this tool is definitely a go-to! Especially when trying to connect with our buddy from Paraguay!
World Time Buddy will help let you know what time it is anywhere in the world. Some teams are more scattered across the globe and that makes scheduling calls, meetings, and tasks difficult.
World Time Buddy makes it easy to enter time zones and find overlapping times. If you want to schedule a call or assign a project, this tool will help you and your employees reach a satisfying workflow easily.
Troop Messenger
Troop messenger is a compact tool perfect for remote work for all sizes of enterprises. It is highly functional and user-friendly where team members can directly interact with one another through instant messaging, video calling, and audio calling. It also features file sharing, plus you can create unlimited groups. This application allows admins to add restricted access members who can only access certain aspects of the workspace. You can also integrate it with other software such as Dropbox or Google drive.
Nectar
If you have noticed a dip in the morale amongst your team members since going virtual, Nectar can definitely help. In a nutshell, Nectar is a rewards and recognition platform that allows employees of all levels to reward points when they feel like someone on the team has done a good job or went the extra mile. For example, a manager might award an employee 10 points for helping to secure a new client. Another employee might award 5 points to a fellow team member for getting their task done early so the rest of the team can finish the project on time. All team members are placed on a leaderboard within the app along with their score (nothing wrong with a bit of healthy competition). Points can be redeemed for anything from gift cards to secret lunches with the CEO. It pays to be a good worker!
Vacation tracker
This handy little app can be easily integrated into your existing virtual office software whether that be Slack, Google Chrome or Microsoft Teams. Vacation Tracker allows employees to request time off or “claim” vacation time. Once this time is approved by an administrator, a notification will go out alerting other team members of their absence. These alerts can also be synced to any shared calendars or schedules. This allows for workers to plan ahead and make sure all necessary tasks are complete before the vacation begins!
Virtual office software
Kumospace
Kumospace provides a perfect space for any occasion you have in mind, whether it’s to hold a sales meeting, a conference, or a happy hour, you can customize your own space and add your own furniture, music, and logo.
From video conferencing to the necessary tools that you need to properly communicate with your team is here. Features include screenshare, chat, and broadcast, all in a protected space.
And finally, say no to gate crashers! Within a snap of your finger, you can share the space you created through a custom URL or share link.
You can keep up with your coworkers with the Kumospace map feature and chat function too.
Movavi
The crème de la crème of virtual collaboration tools
Remote collaboration is the new norm and is not the next-best solution. These are the tools that will not only help team leaders in decision-making and managing workload but also help increase employee productivity and improve communication.
Is there one you’d love to recommend? Reach out to [email protected]!
