Tools

5 Great Tools for Remote Collaboration

Luis Ortiz

— 4 min read
5 Great Tools for Remote Collaboration

By Chatty Garrate. Follow her on Twitter.

More and more people nowadays are looking for remote working opportunities. Not only does it promote work-life balance, but it also increases productivity, contributes to healthier company culture, and keeps them happy and stress-free.

While these benefits are great, there are many bumps in the road that remote employees will experience while working virtually anywhere. One of which is collaboration.

Remote work poses quite a unique challenge for teams, as you won’t be able to meet face-to-face with your team members every so often. It’s tricky, yes, but it’s not impossible. We’re in the age of technology, after all! We can automate workflow and communicate effortlessly with the right apps and tools, making it easier for us to interact with our virtual teams.

Looking for collaboration tools and applications for your team? Read on below!

For Communications: Slack

If you and your team are discussing business messaging practices, brainstorming a brand new marketing campaign, or celebrating every little win, Slack is the perfect messaging remote work tool for you! Slack creates a virtual environment that fosters teamwork and allows you and your team members to communicate and collaborate in real time.

With its vast capabilities, you can keep your team's communications in one user-friendly location. Furthermore, for maximum functionality, you can use it on your own device safely, as Slack offers fully native apps for iOS and Android.

File sharing
Workflow builder
Voice and video calls
Messaging
Public and private channels
Slack Huddles
Slack Connect

Some of Slack’s most sought-after features include:

  1. File sharing
  2. Workflow builder
  3. Voice and video calls
  4. Messaging
  5. Public and private channels
  6. Slack Huddles

But the best part about Slack? Integrations! If you want to do some asynchronous stand-ups in Slack to keep your team in sync, check out StandBot!

StandBot

For Virtual Meetings & Webinars: Zoom

You'll need a reliable video conferencing tool when you want to host a collaborative video event! And right now, nothing compares to Zoom. It's easy to understand and navigate, making it a go-to app for many freelancers, small businesses, remote teams, and enterprises.

Some of Zoom’s standout features include:

  1. HD audio and video
  2. Whiteboarding, polling, and remote control
  3. Recordings and transcripts
  4. Up to 10,000 attendees
  5. Ability to share screens, documents, photos, and cloud content
  6. Partner integrations

On top of all of this, Zoom is known for its in-depth support. If you have questions or complaints about the product, Zoom has an online chat feature, phone support, help articles, FAQs, and video tutorials.

For Better Productivity: Trello

Whether you're trying to comprehend what Sitemap Generator Tools you'll use or delegating tasks for your upcoming projects, Trello is everything you need in project management.

What makes it so popular is its unique, column-based design. With it, you can easily create and organize tasks like "cards" and automate your workflow by setting rule-based triggers. It's simple, powerful, and user-friendly!

Some of its notable features include:

  1. Board and card system
  2. SSL Data Encryption
  3. Progress meter checklist
  4. Easy, drag-and-drop editing

If you want to improve your productivity further, Trello allows integrations and extensions to boost its capabilities! For example, if you want to check the progress of your team's projects, try the Agile Retrospectives power-up. It'll give you insights into your team's performance and help you decide what action items can be worked on moving forward.

For Work-Life Balance: 10to8

Time is of the essence, even for remote teams. But since everyone’s scattered around the globe, you might need a little help to sync your team up! With the help of 10to8 Meeting Scheduling Software, distributed teams can coordinate and plan meetings such as cross-departmental meetings, virtual coffees, and more.

Some of its most notable features are the following:

  1. Timezone management
  2. 2-way calendar sync
  3. Easy integration with most calendar apps (Google, iCal, etc.)
  4. Automated reminders

For Simple Health Checks: TeamPulse

Do you know the current state of your team's health? If you don't, why not try TeamPulse? TeamPulse is a health check-in Jira integration that lets you run health checks that will gauge the current health of your team in terms of teamwork, releases, communication, and stress. With this data, you can develop a plan of improvement together!

Some of TeamPulse’s awesome features include:

  1. Run asynchronous or real-time check-ins
  2. Customizable sessions to measure what you need
  3. Create action items and improve your teamwork

TeamPulse

Remote Collaboration is Possible!

With all the apps, software, and integrations available at your fingertips, remote collaboration wouldn’t be a problem at all.

You can easily accomplish your goals when you use these platforms that enable your team and organization to communicate and connect more effectively regardless of where your team members are.

Want to learn more about remote teams, collaboration, and productivity? Check out our other blog entries for insightful stories, best practices, and tips and tricks!

Are you adopting or looking to improve your Agile practices? Is your team remote? If your answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, you should check out our products for distributed teams. We focus on making communication more effective and easier for remote teams.

Check out our tools:

Stay on top of our upcoming releases:

And subscribe to our blog below!

Read more