With the COVID-19, work around the world has come to a grinding halt. Some industries like technology were well equipped and ready to embrace the work from home culture quicker than most other industries. But for the rest of the people, it is getting difficult to be productive. Therefore we decided to collate these productivity apps and hacks during lock-down.
Even though public space has been ordered to remain shut, many companies have the option not to do so, and this hinders the control of COVID-19 which is why it was encouraged for employers to work from home-which could prove to be rather fruitful with the help of the right tool including various mobile applications. It is incredibly easy to keep your productivity level at its peak with the help of certain mobile applications that allow and encourage communication and other necessary utilities.
• Factors such as poor workflow cause unplugging after work very difficult due to the stress of pending work. This means employees could be pulling all-nighters in order to meet deadlines, thus causing them to get distracted from their personal life.
• Communication and collaboration becomes a barrier when all members of a teamwork from different locations and sometimes at different times. But this is where we need this list of mobile applications that enable us to use the various apps at our disposal to make WFH a lot easier.
There are a lot of applications that can be put into various categories that help when any individual works from within the limitations of their houses. Here are a few you should know about.
Virtual meetings
Zoom is a good tool for holding online meetings with a large team. It also lets users record and broadcast meetings for later.
Team Viewer is a remote collaboration tool that allows desktop sharing, online meetings, web conferencing and file transfer between devices.
Join.me is another alternative with features such as screen sharing apart from audio and video calling.
Zoho offers to provide its remote collaboration tool for free till July 1 with features including video and audio calls, real-time collaboration, messaging, etc.
Microsoft Teams is your hub for teamwork in Office 365. All your team conversations, files, meetings, and apps live together in a single shared workspace.
Google Hangouts allows direct messages to group conversations, and Google Hangouts Chat helps teams collaborate easily and efficiently. Individuals also get Hangouts Chat as part of G Suite.
Daily Communication
Slack allows users to have conversations organized by topics, projects, team members, or any other categorization created by the user. It is also possible to conduct a chat, call, or exchange GIFs which makes it a little fun apart from all the work.
Telegram is a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security and speed. It enables some great features like the exchange of media (cloud-based), encrypted and self-destructing messages along with allowing users to build their own API tool.
Whatsapp Messenger is a communication app where users can send and receive messages, along with important features such as voice and video calling, along with the freedom to send or receive files, and also allows users to retract sent messages (with certain terms and conditions).
Work Management
Trello is an app with a board. A Trello board is a list of lists, filled with cards, used by users, and their team members. Trello allows groups of employees or workmates to be able to create, edit, and organize projects of any capacity.
Asana is a web and mobile application designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. Asana allows users to set priorities, deadlines, and other details for projects, and allows tracking of all stages of the same, enabling the team to stay on track with their goals.
Daywise is a behavior science-based application that helps people stay focused at work and sleep better at night. Daywise allows users to schedule their Smartphone notifications and delivers them at set times. Scheduling notifications at specific intervals has proven to improve attention and productivity.
Document Management
Quip is a collaborative productivity software suite for mobile and the Web. It allows groups of people to create and edit documents and spreadsheets as a group, typically for business purposes. Quip allows users to directly edit documents without the hassle of sending emails to and fro to get any work done.
Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service that lets users create and collaborate with others using Google Documents, Google Sheets and Google Slides. Many more features are available in the app that involves scanning and uploading images, videos and PDFs as well. Google drive is well-preferred is because it allows the users to gain access to all the files offline as well.
Dropbox lets users upload and transfer files to the cloud, and share them with anyone. It lets users back up photos, videos, docs, and other files to cloud storage, and access files synced with any of their computers or mobile devices from anywhere.
Box is an app that gets users access to managing, securing, sharing, and governing all the content of the projects along with their internal and external processes. The best part about Box is that the application and software are compatible with and integrates with external apps such as Adobe, Office 365, G Suite, Slack, Okta, Oracle, SalesForce, and many more.
Miscellaneous
There are many factors one has to keep in mind when Working From Home because it becomes a very thin, blurred line between work and personal life. The reason utility and communication apps are important is because the COVID-19 seems the perfect time to ensure a good work-life balance. But in terms of practicality seems a lot more difficult because these benefits of WFH do not come easily due to lack of some resource or the other, often accompanied by the wrong environment for WFH.
RescueTime takes the estimation out of how users spend their days so they can rebuild their focus and spend more time on the more important tasks. RescueTime tracks exactly how users spend time on their digital devices- everything they do is categorized so they can quickly see the time they spend on specific apps, websites, and projects and track their daily productivity.
Although the situation seems gloomy all around the globe, it is important for individuals to maintain a balanced work-life ratio for their well-being as well as their companies. This can easily be done via these apps and software mentioned above. Despite everything it is extremely important that work be done strictly from home, and hopefully these tools make this task much easier!
