We’ve found ourselves on the frontier of a new era; I think anyone here can testify that the evolving digital world has abstracted and redefined work culture and it’s many environments. Is your daily work routine the same as it was back in 2019? While some are glad to return to the traditional 5-days-in-office work week, many businesses have found it even more productive to continue operating in a hybrid or fully remote environment ever since pandemic restrictions were lifted here in Ontario. For those navigating the vast sea of technology solutions to work online with your remote team, do you feel like you’re using the best tools available?

Our company was created during the height of quarantine lockdowns, plus we were a group of students from all over the province and abroad - there was no choice but for us to learn how to survive without actually seeing eachother in person. One of our main priorities as a business is developing top-notch communication strategies; we do our best to ensure that no piece of information we could’ve shared for any given project was left buried by physical limitations. I’m going to share some of the cooler software we’ve been using to organize our teams - we recommend giving them a try!

Here’s something to consider beforehand; I really do believe we should treat the pursuit of an effective team collaboration system as something that requires loads of experimentation and research. There's a magic to collaborating with people in a face to face environment… So much of how we interact with each other is dependent on non verbal exchange and the sense of presence you feel with your teammates. An effective team also knows how to organize and manage shared data in a way that's intuitive to all members, allowing everyone to stay up to date on critical information. Many creative teams such as ours can also benefit from sharing visual learning tools for brainstorming complex ideas. When finding software that fits your team’s needs, consider a number of key factors such as:

I’ve categorized this list of recommendations into 3 sections;

• Team Communication: Things that are better than zoom and Whatsapp

• Task Management: To-do lists, scheduling, and assigning team members

• Information Management & Security: storing documents, shared project resources, security, and brainstorming materials.

Without further adieu, let’s dive in…

And by dive in, I mean I’m just going to drop the links to each application along with explainer videos here because talking about them myself is a little redundant… Enjoy!

Discord is a VoIP and instant messaging social platform. Users have the ability to communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called ‘servers’

Alternatives: Slack, Microsoft Teams

Build digital Spaces for your distributed team to make virtual interactions more human

Plan, track, and manage any type of work with project management that flexes to your team's needs.

Alternatives: Trello, Asana, Jira, Monday

Milanote is an easy-to-use tool to organize your ideas and projects into visual boards.

Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service developed by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud, synchronize files across devices, and share files

… Come on man, if you aren’t using google drive already then this is your sign to start.

Alternatives: Dropbox

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