Following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic, many workers are on self-quarantine and are working remotely to avoid contracting the virus. This alone has made drastic changes in the way people have been used in collaborating and working together at their workplaces.
This article highlights certain tools you can work with at home and still collaborate effectively like you have been doing with your workmates at work.
Let us dive into my list of the top 10 tools you can use to collaborate effectively from home.
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Google classrooms
Google Classroom is a free web service, developed by Google for schools, that aims to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments in a paperless way. The primary purpose of Google Classroom is to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students.
If you’re a tutor or school teacher, you can utilize this amazing tool to keep engaging with your students from home, send them assignments and grade them electronically throughout this period.
Google Hangout
This is another popular collaboration tool you can access at your home. With Hangouts, you can do the live video calling and real-time catchup with students or workmates.
Hangouts is a communication software product developed by Google. Originally a feature of Google+, Hangouts became a stand-alone product in 2013, when Google also began integrating features from Google+ Messenger and Google Talk into Hangouts.
If you’re familiar with everything skype does, then your hangouts does almost all of those. One outstanding feature I have used with hangouts is the video calls, it’s simple and easy to use.
Office 365
Do you use a lot of Office word and Microsoft word packages for your work? With Office 365, you can get an online version of Microsoft Word, Excel and others for free just on your laptop.
Google Docs
Google docs and google drive are one of my most favorite. You can use google docs to type and process all major word documents including word, PowerPoint, Excel and many others online and for free.
Google docs will allow you to share a document with friends, colleagues or workmates and you can see every change someone is making in real-time.
Teams
Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines persistent workplace chat, video meetings, file storage, and application integration
Skype
Skype is a popular video and teleconferencing platform that will allow you to catch up with work much more frequently via video calling without actually spending a penny, even better for an unlimited time. Similar to skype is zoom.
I use skype a lot for online meetings and engagements with fellow work buddies. You can use it remotely to replace all the physical meetings you have been having at work.
Trello
Trello will allow you & your workmates to collaborate effectively. Trello allows you to organize your projects as boards hence making it easy to know who is doing what and at what time.
If you have worked with sticky notes before, yes Trello allows you to do all you were doing with sticky notes but this time on a laptop and with others seeing every change you make.
Work Chat
Work Place is another amazing tool courtesy of Facebook that allows teams to communicate effectively while working remotely.
Work Chat includes features such as chat rooms specifically designed for work chat and keeping up with colleagues. You can invite, add friends on the chat and keep intact while working remotely.
It’s no doubt that WhatsApp is still the best collaboration tool at the moment since the majority of people use it every day at least 7 times. With WhatsApp, you can keep in contact with fellow colleagues at the go communicating effectively throughout your remote work.
What do you think of my list? Share with us your list of the top 5 collaboration tools to use while working from home.
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