Technological advancements and a global health crisis have pushed a huge working population to work from home. To cope with the sudden shift, workers have to rely on online collaboration tools to communicate, delegate and give updates on the tasks.
Benefits of online collaboration tools
There is more than one reason why workers and managers love online collaboration tools. The popular tools have enough features to carry the burden of one whole company and results in better management and organization.
Here are the benefits of online collaboration tools that’ll be enough to convince you to use one!
Increased productivity. Online collaboration gives you the ability to work from any location and at any time. This reduces “downtime” and allows employees to work at hours they are more productive. Some online collaboration tools have features where they automatically notify team members when documents have been added or modified. This guarantees that everyone is well-updated on the projects.
Efficiency. Almost everything online promotes efficiency. With just a few taps on the keyboard, you’ll be able to immediately find the resources you are looking for, saving time and effort. The same goes for online collaboration tools. Since communication is done on the same platform, information and documents are easily found and this eliminates countless hours digging through emails.
Heightened security. Some online collaboration platforms have taken it a step further by safeguarding and protecting their users’ data with encryptions, password protection, two-step authentication, and firewalls. Organizations and businesses are at ease knowing that shared files and documents are safe behind the door of the collaboration platform.
If we’ve managed to convince you, here is the best collaboration platform you can find on the web!
Microsoft 365
Long-time running Microsoft has been evolving the past recent year and ultimately launched Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) back in 2011. This is Microsoft’s assortment of easy-to-use, capable, and online collaboration tools. Think of Word, Excel, and Presentations but online and used simultaneously by your team.
Microsoft 365 is available on all major operating systems like Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. Some Microsoft 365 packages include Microsoft Teams, which employees can use for messaging, video conferences, and meetings.
Slack
Slack is a popular online collaboration tool, available for both desktop and mobile devices. Slack was primarily designed for communication, its whole interface is made for exchanging messages and files between team members. But one thing we greatly appreciate about Slack is chat organization, where you can make specific group chats or “channels” for a particular project or department.
Slack also supports voice and video calling through desktop or mobile devices and also allows you to keep draft messages, to-dos, or links.
Keep in mind though that Slack is not cloud storage but it is a great help for sharing files with teams. Though there’s not much you can store in the app itself, it does integrate with Google Drive, Box, Microsoft 365, and Dropbox.
Asana
Asana is another popular online collaboration platform that should be familiar to most. It allows you to create and manage to-do lists for current and future projects, tracking the progress of tasks, create reminders, set deadlines, and more! It also integrates with Microsoft Teams, Jira Server, and Zoom.
With Asana, project planning, visualizing, and organizing becomes effortless. You can view your tasks in a list, board, or calendar format and the search option makes it easier to spot past assignments.
Podio
Facilitating collaboration and communication becomes bearable with Podio. This online collaboration platform allows teams to organize projects into smaller chunks and assign tasks to perspective workers. It also has welcome options like viewable project status, file-sharing, and giving and receiving feedback
It is accessible on both desktop and mobiles and supports integrations from Zendesk, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Evernote.
Ryver
Ryver’s main function is to provide you and your business with an effective way to communicate, alongside some wonderful additions, like filtering who can see your posts and join your team. It also has a Facebook-like feed where you can see posts.
It’s available to all major operating systems, including Mac and Linux. The platform also allows you to create numerous teams, which you can categorize.