If you are now finding yourself working from home for the foreseeable future, we wanted to provide as much guidance as we can on great software options to make your remote working experience as efficient and painless as possible. We are not only software developers, we have also been working remotely from all corners of the country for some time. This means there isn’t a remote working tool that we haven’t given a go.
Here we are not only looking at remote working tools that will help you work smarter, but we are also looking at options that require no (or an extremely small) investment.
All these pieces of easy to access and easy to use software are tried and tested by our remote working team.
Communicate with your team when working remotely
Slack
Slack is the bedrock of most of our communication at We Know Data. It is a great chat tool, but it goes beyond that. You can share files, call each other and share screens. You can see who is online, which is very useful if you work at different times or want to catch someone when they are in the office. It is a great interface packed full of functionality and very intuitive. A great tool for any remote team of any business size. Slack has a free option but functionality can be limited.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a great tool for collaborating at work. Taking things beyond chatting and chatting in groups, you can store attachments within chat channels, integrate with other Microsoft 365 apps and share and collaborate in Realtime. Teams comes free with Office 365.
Have a remote meeting or video conference
Zoom
One of our favourite tools is Zoom. It’s a very reliable audio and video conferencing tool. It is great for meetings, interviews, and training. A feature we love is the meeting record function which allows us to listen back. No note-taking needed so we can all concentrate on the meeting itself. Their basic version is free with Pro versions that are very affordable.
We also like:
Go to Meeting
Screencastomatic
Screencastomatic is a screen recording tool rather than a conference tool. We find it really useful. The basic version is free but limited to 15min recording and watermarks and a license is very reasonable.
Share ideas while not in the office
Miro
Previously named Realtime Board, Miro is a fantastic Realtime Collaboration Software. This brilliant whiteboarding tool allows you to work with someone else or a whole team in Realtime. Great for workflows, mapping and creating diagrams. Our favourite thing is the infinite canvas. If the ideas keep coming you won’t run out of space.
Manage you or your team’s tasks remotely
Trello
This is a great tool for project and task management. It is a flexible and shareable Kanban board app rather than a traditional project management tool. Use it for organising, coordinating and being able to track work through a workflow among a team. It’s real plus points are that it is easy to use and share boards.
Teamwork
A great tool to help you plan each step of your project. Great for freelancers through to large enterprises. It can also be conveniently used to assign tasks and keep records. Additionally, there is a client billing section that allows users to generate invoices, manage hours worked and oversee expenses. All viewed through the handy dashboards.
Get started quickly
If your needs are more basic and you want a one-stop-shop, then G Suite from Google has so much to offer smaller businesses. https://gsuite.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/
The features are endless but to name a few Google Drive allows you to store, share and collaborate on documents, meanwhile, Hangouts allows video calls, chat, and screen share. All this is through one simple login. And most importantly it is all free.
Working remotely as a FileMaker User
If you already have a Claris (FileMaker) Development system remember that the new Claris Connect function allows us to very easily integrate with other tools, such as those above. This allows you to use FileMaker Cloud and for you or your team to access your data from anywhere.
