As the government lockdown comes in to effect in India, employees have to learn how to work from home without hampering productivity. Check out our list of recommended apps companies can use to make working remotely comfortable for their employees
Video conference and collaboration
- Zoom – Zoom is one of the most feature-rich video conferencing tools we have seen till date and it is available for PC, MAC, Android as well as iOS. The best part is that it has a free version that allows up to 100 participants to join and that too in HD video/audio quality. Some other features that impressed us include multiple participant screen sharing, option to join with a standard telephone call, conference video recording, keyboard/mouse control sharing, multi-file sharing, and a handy virtual background feature using which you can keep things professional. All of this is done with 256 bits encryption, with the only catch being of a 40-minute time limit on the group meeting. If you want to have more participants, you can opt for one of the paid plans (up to 1,000 participants allowed).
- Microsoft Teams/ Hangouts Meet – Both Microsoft and Google offer their video conferencing apps for organisations. However, these are paid and come as a bundle with their company's enterprise offering - Microsoft Teams with Office 365 Business edition and Hangouts Meet with Google G Suite. Both options support video conference of up to 250 users simultaneously. Also, they offer an option of live streaming the meeting to a larger number of users (10,000 users for Microsoft, 100,000 for Google). Other common features available on the two video conferencing solutions include meeting recording, global dial-in number facility, sharing documents seamlessly with editing in real-time and meeting note-taking (only in Microsoft).
File sharing One of the biggest issues faced by work from home employees is of sharing files with their co-workers. Most offices have shared drives in the office that can be used to share data within the organisation seamlessly, but that solution is not available when working from home. It's not possible to email large files as well due to transfer limits for email services.
In this scenario, the best option is to use cloud storage services. The latter offer easy sharing with internal as well as external parties, enterprise-level security, cross-platform file sharing, and sync and data backup. If your company has already employed the enterprise service of Microsoft Office or Google G Suite, you would automatically have got bundled cloud storage. Microsoft offers 1TB of OneDrive storage per user while Google offers storage ranging from 30GB to 1TB, depending on your plan. Other options you can consider for cloud storage include Dropbox and Box for Business.
Instant messaging There are multiple options available for free when you think about instant messaging today – WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Line, etc. However, if you are looking for an instant messaging app, especially for work, then you need to look at different options.
Slack is the one that is an easy recommendation in this scenario. It puts all your work communication in a single place that is easy to search and even lets you do voice and video calls between teammates. It also gives the option to integrate with other apps used by your organisation like Office 365, Trello, Zoom, Twitter, etc. The free version works great for small teams, while for larger teams, you can opt for a paid plan. If you don't like Slack for some reason, we recommend that you check out Flock or Chanty.
Project management So you have set up video conferencing, collaboration, file sharing, and messaging, but how do you track how are things progressing? This is where project management tools come in to play. We recommend Basecamp, Asana, and Trello – all of these give the option to add employees as team members and then assign tasks to them under their projects. You can schedule meetings, add to-do tasks, share files, assign sub-tasks, map projects in the timeline, or calendar format for ease of monitoring. These tools make it easy to keep track of how a project progresses with regular reporting and reviews. The best part is that these apps display the on-going progress in an easy to understand and follow visual format.
Miscellaneous tools - Docusign – Our recommended website for e-signatures. The site makes it easy to upload and share documents with others for quick e-signatures.
- Office Lens/Adobe Scan – You don't need to invest in a scanner anymore. Just use these apps on your smartphone to scan any documents and save or share them.
- Evernote – The note-taking app is loaded with features. You can jot down notes, take photos for reference within the app as well as save web articles.
Karan Bajaj is a senior journalist based in Delhi
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