If you are working with an international team or want to collaborate with clients across the globe, then chances are good that you work in a virtual environment. The internet is full of collaboration tools, but deciding which ones to use can be difficult. I’ve worked on projects spanning the globe and collaborated with teams using different tools.
This article provides top collaboration tools for remote teams to help you plan your project times, work together and create online presentations. All of these tools are free!
ProProfs Project
ProProfs Project facilitates team collaboration by offering many key features. The best part of using this tool is you don’t feel the need of having any sort of training because it is simple to use. Using this software, you can bring transparency into operations and decide when collaboration is needed.
Key features of ProProfs Project that help you with team collaboration are:
- Task comments: Your teams can drop comments on a particular task if they want to share their inputs or need clarification. It keeps the hassle of going through messy email threads at bay and makes collaboration easier
- Email notifications: Whenever one team member leaves a comment or assigns a task, all concerned individuals receive email alerts about the same. It prevents delays and paves the way for quick collaborative work
- Shared project calendar: ProProfs Project lets you plan tasks for the entire month via its ‘Calendar View’ feature, and it allows you to set events for collaborative work
- Mobile apps: Mobile applications for Android and iOS users are available, which enables all team members to collaborate anytime, anywhere
- File sharing: Teams across different departments can share files on the go so that their collaborative work goes smoothly
Pricing:
- Free Plan – You can use it for up to 3 projects and access all basic features
- Essentials Plan – It starts from $2 user/month (billed annually) and allows access to more essential features
- Premium Plan – It starts from $4 user/month (billed annually) and allows access to all premium features
Flock
Flock has nearly the same features as Slack but at less price. Although the interface of Flock can seem a bit cluttered at first, the tool comes with some solid team collaboration features. Get all your team members on the same page by creating distinct team channels, and collaborate through audio and video calls.
Furthermore, keeping track of important messages is not a hassle anymore with Flock’s bookmarking feature. Add specific messages to your favorites, so you can access them anytime you want.
Flock makes team communication smooth by allowing you to:
- Instantly convert discussions into respective to-dos to keep your deadlines in check
- Invite team members through one click and add them to respective team channels for uninterrupted information flow
- Connect with remote teams through video and audio-conferencing calls
- Simply drag and drop files to share with your team members
- Give limited controls to people for accessing sensitive information by adding them as guests
- Send email updates to all channel members at once through the smart emailing option
- Create polls to get everyone’s perspective about major team decisions
- Integrate with multiple third-party applications to keep your workflow intact
Pricing
- Free Plan – small teams, up to 10GB file storage, up to 10K messages, limited admin controls
- Pro Plan – midsized teams, $4.5 per user/month, unlimited messages, 10 GB file storage, enhanced admin controls
- Enterprise Plan – large enterprises, custom pricing, unlimited messages, 20 GB file storage, enhanced admin controls
Zoom: The best video conferencing tool
If you’ve worked remotely at any point, you likely have the not-so-fond memory of using unreliable video conferencing tools. Frustrating technical glitches, like frozen video and no sound, were commonplace as recently as one year ago.
Thankfully, Zoom is a world away from all that, which explains the company’s rapid growth from 30,000 users in 2014 to 700,000 users in 2017—an increase of 2233% over just 3 years.
“We love using Zoom for our company all-hands meetings,” shared Leah Knobler, who manages people ops at Help Scout.
“It consistently works well for conducting virtual meetings with 65 people.”
“We also use Zoom for our informal ‘hangouts,’ which we call Troop Talks. Each talk has a different theme or question. Everyone who is free shows up, and we take turns sharing stories.”
“One fun feature is gallery view, which allows you to view everyone on the chat at once (like the Brady Bunch intro) and makes it feel, for a moment, like our remote team is close together!”
The Help Scout team isn’t alone. Hotjar uses Zoom to connect with colleagues, too.
“We have a lot of tools (as you can imagine!) but one that absolutely everyone uses is Zoom,” explained Content Marketer and Editor Dr. Fio Dossetto.
“Being a 100% remote company, it’s crucial that we have reliable ways to communicate with each other—and actually see one another as we do that—so ‘jumping on a Zoom call’ is something we do all the time. From quick one-on-one check-ins with a teammate to discuss the details of something we’re working on, to our company-wide Friday demo, where we share the work we’ve shipped throughout the week, Zoom is probably one of the tools we rely on the most.”
As the world’s go-to video conferencing tool, it’s no surprise that Zoom is pulling in top ratings. With a 4.9 out of 5 rating on G2 Crowd, a 4.5 out of 5 rating on Capterra, and an 8.9 out of 10 rating on TrustRadius, the tool is light-years ahead of the competition.
That said, Google Meet’s performance has improved dramatically in the last 12 months, and I’d argue that appear.in deserves an honorable mention for its ease of use.
InVision: The best design collaboration tool & digital whiteboard
InVision is undoubtedly the most comprehensive suite of design software on the market. With a 4.5 out of 5 rating on both G2 Crowd and Capterra, and an 8.5 out of 10 rating on TrustRadius, it’s no wonder remote teams like Treehouse, Help Scout, and Trello love using it.
“InVision is one of my favorite products,” shared Nick Francis, Co-Founder and CEO, Help Scout. “The experience is flawless, little details are executed beautifully, and it keeps our remote team in sync throughout the design process.”
“InVision helps our distributed design team stay in sync,” agreed Jeremy Jantz, Product Designer, Treehouse. “We can facilitate design discussions asynchronously, track feedback from everyone on the team, and demonstrate interactions easily and efficiently. It’s the best rapid prototyping tool we’ve found.”
Real-time collaboration is an essential part of the design process. InVision Freehand is a digital whiteboard that allows you to wireframe, plan, design presentations, and give and receive feedback, between designers but also in conjunction with other stakeholders.
For example, Trello relies heavily on InVision for communicating with developers. “The comments are extremely valuable when it comes to feedback and questions. InVision has really become an integral part of how we work,” explained the company’s Product Designer, Adam Simms.
GitHub: The best software development tool
Designers and developers may be different breeds, but it’s essential that they work together to produce quality digital products.
From hosting and reviewing code to managing projects to building software, GitHub is ideal for remote team collaboration. It’s also the highest rated platform for developers, with a 4.7 out of 5 G2 crowd rating, 5 out of 5 Capterra rating, and 9 out of 10 TrustRadius rating.
That said, using Atlassian JIRA has a major benefit: It integrates with InVision. 😉
Related: 4 ways remote designers and developers can collaborate better together
Trello: The best project management software
With so many project management tools to choose from, it was hard to pick just one. However, Trello stood out to us for its style, simplicity, and performance.
By visualizing what needs to get done and aggregating feedback from the whole team, Trello helps remote teams increase their productivity.
One secret to its success might be the fact that Trello doesn’t require so much information that it becomes a time suck. In other words, it’s ideal for fast-paced startups.
Trello’s simplicity makes it extremely flexible, resulting in hundreds of unique ways to use the software. For example, Help Scout’s support team uses it to keep track of product issues, updates, and requests.
“It can be hard to scroll through tons of notifications and get the gist of any new bugs or updates, so we use Trello to log bugs or anything that needs a fix, and to manage all feature requests,” explained Customer Champion Kelly Herring.
With a 4.4 out of 5 rating on G2 Crowd, a 4.5 out of 5 rating on Capterra, and an 8.2 out of 10 rating on TrustRadius, customers agree that Trello is the best project management software available.
That said, Airtable deserves an honorable mention. Airtable is a highly customizable tool for collaborative teams who love to stay organized.
“Airtable is a go-to on our team,” revealed Kim Kadiyala, Partner Manager at Zapier.
“It’s a tool that makes it easy for anyone to spin up a relational database. We use it for editorial calendars, project management, to catalog stories from our customers, and more. We joke that everything is prettier in an Airtable, but it’s also easier to store, organize, and collaborate on pretty much anything.”
Yammer
The next team collaboration software we have in line is Yammer.
A Microsoft powered tool, Yammer is a social networking platform that facilitates seamless communication within an organization. Providing users with a commonplace for brainstorming and sharing creative ideas, this team collaboration app helps companies make better decisions, faster.
The ability to create public and private groups inside Yammer allows you to share files in one central location, without any fear of data loss. You can also join team discussions to gain and share valuable insights regarding team tasks.
This is how you can improve your team communication by choosing Yammer:
- Create or be a part of distinct groups relevant to your work or interests
- Share documents or files for collaborating on important things
- Join team discussions to be a part of something productive
- In-app notifications and reminders to stay on track
- Integrate with other Office 365 applications and keep your workflows uninterrupted
Pricing
- Yammer comes with a free trial of Yammer Basic and is available with Office 365 paid plans.
Conclusion
It doesn’t matter if you prefer calling them virtual assistants, remote workers, distributed teams, freelancers or what you think they should be called. They are working for your company and need the best collaboration tools to do their job well.