By now, we all know that remote and distributed work will remain a part of many of our lives in one way or another. Whether your team is deciding to go remote to save on real estate costs or because you believe it is in the best interest of your employees to give them the flexibility that remote work offers, providing your team with the proper tools to maximize the benefits of remote work is crucial for both your success and theirs.
For over five years, our team has been working together from all corners of the U.S. and the world, and we’ve come to discover what is most important not only for productivity’s sake, but also for supporting all aspects of our team’s work and lives. A recent Harvard Business Review survey discovered 59% of workers feel their collaboration tools are not aligned with how they and their teams prefer to work. Just like providing employees with the flexibility of remote work increases employee satisfaction, giving your team the tools they like and need to be productive and collaborative is equally important.
Our fully remote team has compiled a list of tools we use daily to show you what a people-driven technology suite can look like for your team.
Here’s a peek at our team’s collaboration stack:
- MultiShare
- Frameable MultiShare is our new app that we designed to make working together as a remote team easier. Born out of our other product, Spaces, MultiShare allows for simultaneous screen sharing by as many users in a call as needed. Just like pulling up a chair at your coworker’s desk to work back and forth between your respective screens, MultiShare gives our distributed team the flexibility they need to get things done faster than ever. Everyone can follow along and toggle back and forth between shared screens without slowing down a meeting or verbally passing along screen-sharing permissions one by one. It’s been a productivity game-changer, especially for our developers and designers, and during big working sessions and brainstorms with many ideas flowing back and forth.
- Spaces
- Frameable Spaces is our flagship product that houses all of the add-on features we make to enhance collaboration within Microsoft Teams. Spaces is our team’s virtual office inside of Microsoft Teams, allowing us to see ongoing meetings, join project rooms to collaborate, and view everyone’s status and availability so we always know who to contact with a pressing question. For a distributed team like ours, having a virtual office space that provides more transparency across departments and teams, has given us a greater sense of connectivity and made ad-hoc collaboration more seamless as we crush our goals.
- Google Workspace
- Google Workspace offers a wide range of features and functionalities that enable seamless teamwork and enhanced productivity. Our team particularly relies on Google Docs, where multiple team members can simultaneously edit and contribute to a document in real time, fostering collaboration and eliminating the hassle of version control. Google Sheets allows for easy data sharing and collaborative spreadsheet work, enabling teams to collectively organize, analyze, and update information. With an easy-to-use interface and real-time updates, Google Suite is perfect for any team, and essential for a distributed team.
- Figma
- Figma is the primary tool we use for design-centered tasks. Figma makes design approachable and its elegant interface is great for cross-team projects involving both designers and non-designers. Being a distributed team, Figma’s real-time collaboration capabilities are top-notch, enabling multiple designers to work simultaneously on the same project. Figma also creates more increased visibility into what others are working on, meaning if one team member is out on vacation it’s easy for another to pick up right where they left off. Being a web-based product also means Figma projects sync across all devices automatically so designers never have to worry about accessing the correct, most updated version of a project.
- Microsoft Teams
- Since we built our products to integrate with Microsoft Teams, it’s no surprise our team also employs Teams for instant messaging and video conferencing. We love using Teams since it seamlessly integrates with our in-house products, and has a familiar feel to the rest of the Microsoft Office suite. The best part is that you can access chat, video calls, your calendar, and group messaging threads within a single application. Our team loves that we don’t have to switch back and forth between different applications for messaging, calls, and collaborating.
- Jira
- Having a centralized project management tool is something every remote team needs. Jira provides a centralized platform where team members can collaborate and track progress on tasks regardless of their physical location. It enables efficient communication and eliminates the need for lengthy email threads or scattered information across different channels. Jira’s comprehensive features, like issue tracking, task assignment, and workflow management, allow remote teams like ours to organize efficiently. Team members can create, assign, and prioritize tasks, set due dates, and monitor progress in real-time, ensuring everyone stays aligned and accountable. Jira offers transparency by providing visibility into the team’s work and progress. Being a remote team, it’s essential that members can access the latest updates, view project timelines, and generate reports from anywhere. Lastly, Jira integrates seamlessly with other popular collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Confluence, and Trello, making it easy to add into your suite of tools.
If your team is ready to stay ahead of the curve and stay connected, finding a group of applications that work best for your team is imperative for your success. For those with the means to survey your team on their preferences of collaboration software, this is a great opportunity to gather their feedback on how they like to work best, and provide solutions to make them feel both heard and supported.
Finding the right tools to support a diverse and collaborative team is a constant effort from all parties, especially leaders. Explore how MultiShare can bring back the collaborative energy your teams want without sacrificing the value and benefits of remote work.