11 Must-Have Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams in 2023

Luckily, Notion has a Slack integration that sends your team a notification when someone makes a noteworthy change. There’s no way to guarantee your team members will read your messages right away. If you have an international team with members in different countries and time zones, they almost certainly won’t be able to get back to you at the same time. The main chat channel is a congregation point for members from all divisions of your team.

It’s not just about bringing globally dispersed colleagues into a shared digital space. The right virtual tools give everyone instant access to ideas, projects and each other, making asynchronous and offline work more efficient for everyone. Slack is a platform for instant business communication that companies use for chat between employees. They can send one-on-one messages, create groups with more people or set up channels dedicated to different topics. Slack isn’t where https://remotemode.net/blog/10-best-remote-team-collaboration-practices/ takes place, but it’s where remote team members can communicate.

Making collaboration work: templates for remote and hybrid teams

These tools enable people to share ideas and information online without being physically close to one another. A remote work productivity study by Microsoft Teams revealed that while productivity has increased in employees working from home, 85 percent of leaders don’t trust their employees are being productive. When a teammate looks to collaborate with another, sharing a screen is sometimes necessary. The demand for high-quality video conferencing software is more significant than ever, and it doesn’t look like it’s stopping any time soon. Based on Kanban boards, Trello features boards to organize every step of your projects and let you instantly see the status of every task. You can also track progress via Timeline, stay on top of scheduling with Calendar, and monitor key metrics with Dashboard.

Don’t just log in to your video conferencing app of choice and make it up as you go—respect the time of your employees. It’s also a good idea to record virtual meetings for any employees that might not be in your time zone. You can’t just add a group of people to a Slack channel and expect them to gel.

Remote Work Is Here to Stay. Is Your Team Ready?

Remote work collaboration makes it possible for teams across the country, and even the world, to quickly share insights on the same project — that is, if they can figure out how. Being upfront about these obstacles can help you come up with some compromises, and may even lead to outside-the-box solutions, such as asynchronous work. Managing projects, tracking tasks, and closing open loops all require a different workflow than what is true in an in-person office environment.

We’ve put together a list of 10+ online collaborative tools and apps to spur ideation within your team no matter where they work. Meetings are not only for being in constant communication with your remote team but also, they can help to raise the team spirit and boost productivity. A good practice is to have daily meetings where everyone in the team can share the activities did yesterday and the ones to be worked on today. This way, all the team will be on the same page and this will be reflected in excellent teamwork.

How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team Is Remote

Communicate with your team members in real-time, gather feedback, and take your projects forward. It might even be where you discuss which other collaboration apps the team should use. Teams can host virtual rooms for groups that need to work remotely, providing them with a place that brings communication and collaboration together. Depending on the computer literacy of your team members, you may need to spend a few weeks introducing your virtual team to the ins and outs of multi-channel communications. Though each individual will have different reactions to being contacted outside of regular work hours, it’s still important to lay down a set of ground rules and boundaries.

It’s a flexible tool with an intuitive interface to visualize projects, track progress, assign tasks, manage resources, analyze performance data, share files, and communicate in real time. First off, tools meant for remote collaboration are based primarily on the features a team may require to best succeed. Shared word processing services, file-sharing hubs, video conferencing, and general project management interfaces are just a few examples of features that may be required from remote collaboration tools. Fellow is one of the best collaboration tools for remote teams as it helps you run effective meetings. Fellow offers tons of team meeting agenda templates, so you don’t have to start from scratch each time you meet. Our results show that the shift to firm-wide remote work caused business groups within Microsoft to become less interconnected.

Both come with unlimited projects, free guest/client invites, loads of storage space, all features/tools, 24/7 support, extra classes, and reliable uptime. This collaboration software keeps everyone on the same page with channel messaging, where you can instantly share ideas, insights, and files. For example, you can plan activities to get to know each other or establish free discussions about something interesting. There are many things that you can plan in order to have a good time with your team, it’s a matter of finding creative ways to get engaged with everyone.

Our favorite thing about Todoist is the fact that you can use it on virtually any platform. Your account syncs automatically across devices, enabling worry-free usage regardless of what platform you’re on.Personally, we use the Chrome extension and the Android widget. The fact that Todoist is never more than a couple of clicks or taps away makes it very convenient to use. The business plan only costs $5/month for each user and lets you add up to 50 people to a single project. While doing all this when you’re working together in real time is practical and fun, Slack excels asynchronously too. Status updates, notification preferences and rich profiles re-create the office environment so you know when others are offline, in a meeting, too busy for an immediate response, or having a snack while waiting for an update.

The tool allows users to have assignees schedule, move or cancel meetings on their behalf. Remote work is all about flexibility, and that is exactly what Outlook Calendar offers. Let’s take a look at some of the major remote collaboration tools any company can use. These collaborative tools vary in their primary purpose, but all cater to the multiple needs of a remote team. People who work on remote teams face communications challenges consistently. As more and more of our interactions happen digitally, we will continue to experience new forms of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

• Connecting with team members over the internet requires a certain adjustment.
• Dropbox helps your team to work on what matters the most in a smart way.
• Second, we assume strict exogeneity, that is, that the timing of the switch to remote work must be independent of employees’ outcomes.
• They utilize team collaboration and work from home software to create a virtual workplace.
• The underlying factors that will aid in your ultimate success are well worth the discipline and consideration you’ll need to put into them.
• By committing to continually iterating and improving your remote work practices, you can give your team a more satisfying, productive, and collaborative remote experience.

Effective collaboration allows remote teams to communicate effortlessly and, ultimately, increase productivity through streamlined outcomes. Without taking steps to improve https://remotemode.net/, your virtual team could be at risk of a lack of visibility, unclear objectives, and poor planning. Whether you’re looking for a tool to facilitate video conferencing, project management, or file sharing, there’s something on this list for every team. Take the time to evaluate your team’s needs and try out these tools to see which ones work best for you. With the huddles and clips features, you can connect with your remote team through audio and video calls to collaborate and resolve issues in real time. You can also use Slack Connect for external communication with your customers, vendors, and partners.

Team chat apps

RingCentral allows meeting participants to join meetings directly from their browsers. With the action items feature, you can assign and prioritize tasks from a single platform. You can also integrate Fellow with Asana, Jira, and Zapier and get, give, and track feedback on meetings, projects, and assignments in real time. Its intuitive workspace allows for interactive screen-sharing of open applications or an entire screen during video conference calls. In addition, users can host unlimited video meetings on a free plan, though the Pro plan unlocks features like adding your company branding, webinar live streaming and recording transcripts.