Remote Tools for Working from Home During the Coronavirus Pandemic.
With almost everyone working from home these days, businesses must ensure that productivity stays high and the bottom line doesn’t suffer. Thanks to a wealth of available tools, you can now make sure your remote team performs their tasks seamlessly.
Below are some of the best tools you can utilize for working from home during the coronavirus pandemic.
1. ProProfs LMS
ProProfs LMS is a cloud-based LMS with more than 100,000 courses and tests created on the platform so far. You can use it as remote training software as it lets you build online courses easily. You can create them from scratch or choose from 100+ ready-made and customizable course templates.
The LMS features 100+ settings to help deliver personalized courses, tests, and online classrooms. You don’t have to worry about engagement since the platform lets you add images, videos, audio, presentations and other visual content. There are also lots of communication and collaboration tools.
Assessing your trainees is a breeze as you can use quizzes and surveys, which make training more fun.
You can enable self-enrollment, create a learning portal, centralize assignments, automate grading, and provide instant feedback. There is also a reporting and analytics engine for performance and engagement tracking.
Yet another excellent feature is eCommerce that enables course creators to sell courses on the platform.
2. ClickUp
ClickUp is an all-in-one suite that can easily replace all your apps. It integrates with 1,000+ third-party tools, but it offers so many capabilities that you may not need any other app to boost productivity.
You can use it to create to-do lists, spreadsheets, wikis, documents, notes, reminders, events, projects and much more. You can track goals and time, record and share your screen, manage resources and use charts and timelines to manage workload.
It’s also great for keeping communication going via email and real-time chat. ClickUp has 100+ different features for spiking productivity in remote teams.
There are even templates that you can use to customize your online workspace. For instance, their templates for remote work were designed specifically to help businesses manage projects and goals remotely and keep teams connected. You should check them out.
3. Trello
Trello is a web-based list-making app that you can use to manage projects and increase productivity. You can use it to add tasks to projects, assign them to your remote teams and make sure everyone meets the deadlines.
The app is incredibly easy to use. It’s all about boards and lists. Boards on the dashboard are reserved for all your projects, while each has a list of to-dos. Within each list, you can also create cards with important notes, deadlines, attachments or anything else regarding the tasks. You can also leave comments for seamless collaboration.
It’s all very straightforward and helps improve accountability and efficiency. It enables you to organize and manage projects in a very flexible way.
If you wish to automate your workflow and increase productivity, you can use the app’s AI bot. Once you set some rule-based triggers, the bot will take care of time-consuming tasks, such as deadlines or calendar commands.
4. ProofHub
If you are looking for a tool that makes working with your remote team easier and more productive – that’s ProofHub! It’s a one-stop solution for managing your projects and boosting teamwork.
With ProofHub, you can create tasks, assign them to team members, set deadlines, and track progress effortlessly. It offers multiple views to organize and visualize your work, such as Kanban boards, Gantt charts, Table views, and Calendars. You can also break down large projects into subtasks and set up recurring tasks that need to be done regularly.
By using ProofHub’s automated timers, you can monitor how long each task takes, track work hours, and generate time reports to ensure everything is on schedule.
ProofHub also offers robust communication features such as built-in chat, discussion boards, shared notes, and announcements. This means you can collaborate in real-time and get quick responses when needed.
Moreover, you can store, organize, and share documents right within ProofHub. Plus, there’s a proofing tool that lets creative teams review and approve files quickly. Shared calendars, project templates, and activity logs help your team stay organized, share ideas, and keep up with project updates.
And the best part! You get all these amazing features at a flat-fixed pricing model, which means there is no per-user fee. You can add as many users as you want without incurring any additional expenses.
5. Zoom
One of the most popular tools during the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom is a cloud-based platform that offers web conferencing, webinars, real-time chat, and other communication tools. It’s one of the best tools you can utilize for working remotely.
You can use it to host online meetings, marketing events, video webinars and much more. It’s also great for training and technical support, as it allows for file and screen sharing, interactive whiteboards, and group and private chats.
If you have a sizable team, you can use breakout rooms to split your online meetings into separate sessions. That’s also very useful for employee training or any updates you need to share across different departments.
Zoom even offers an enterprise cloud phone system with global coverage. It can help you streamline all communications as it unifies phone calls, chats and video meetings.
6. Mailbird
Mailbird is a desktop email client for Windows PCs. It is designed to simplify the management of multiple email accounts. It brings together all your email accounts to help you manage them from a single platform.
So, instead of switching between apps, you have a platform with one centralized inbox for seamless communication.
What makes it different from other email clients? Features include LinkedIn Lookup, Speed Reader, multi-language support, custom sounds, free color themes for customizing the layout and many third-party app integrations.
You can snooze messages to make sure nothing distracts you while you work. Searching through old email attachments is also simple.
The business version of the tool comes with several additional features, including Attachment Quick Preview and a business contacts manager. There are also tools for video conferencing and remote meetings.
7. DeskTime
DeskTime is a business time-tracking app for keeping track of your remote teams’ activities during work hours. But its purpose isn’t to catch employees slacking, but rather to help them stay productive.
When they know this tool can track all they’re doing online during business hours, and it can take automatic screenshots, they’ll certainly work better. That’s the whole point of the app – eliminating inefficiencies and helping those who work from home adjust better to remote work.
Of course, there’s a Private Time feature that they can enable if they need to deal with something that’s not work-related.
So, what can you track with DeskTime? You can see when your employees start working, when they take breaks and for how long, which apps, websites, and documents they’re viewing, what they’re doing in their specified offline time, and more.
Give a Boost to Your Remote Work
All of these remote tools come with free trials or free demos, so make sure you check them out to see if they fit your business needs. As each has a different purpose and offers different functionalities, I recommend you try all of them. Your remote team’s productivity will undoubtedly go through the roof.
Angela White is an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing for the consumer market in the areas of product research and marketing using quizzes and surveys. Having a knack for writing and an editorial mindset, she is an expert researcher at a brand that’s known for creating delightfully smart tools such as ProProfs Quiz Maker.