Tools for working from home

'When we need to work from home, we often face a problem: being away from the office and most of the business tools we have available there, how to work efficiently? And how to maintain contact in an efficient and even social way with our colleagues?'

Well, that's what we want to share today!

There are more and more tools available for remote work, from home or anywhere else!

Shall we go to them?

Meetings

When in a remote work environment, it is still necessary to maintain the teamwork, take decisions, to share ideas, to do brainstormings and even socialize!

There is a set of excellent tools, many of them free, which can be very useful. 

Besides Skype, which we all know, there are two tools that are very interesting for making remote meetings and that are free in a simple version: Zoom and Whereby.

THE Zoom allows for free up to 100 participants but limits the duration of meetings to 40 minutes. If we want more time, we have to start a new meeting or purchase the paid version. But isn't it a great way to keep meetings efficient?

THE Whereby 'it is also a spectacular tool. It works like a meeting room, where we can name our room whatever we want. Then just send the link to those who will join us and start our meeting. You can even close the door and anyone who wants to enter will have to knock.'

Both tools allow audio, video, and screen sharing.

Still about the meetings, one of the biggest problems for those who work from home is the background noise. A Krisp.ai it's a tool that uses artificial intelligence to eliminate background noise from a call made on the computer or phone. 

The most interesting thing is that it allows us to eliminate our background noise but also the background noise of the person calling us!

In the case of the computer, Krisp there is a free version that allows you to do some free time so you can use it for that meeting where you want to keep quiet!

If you want to record your screen with a video presentation without having to hold the actual meeting, then Drift Video is a great option!

Team Chat

For chat, we are all very used to using Whatsapp and we can use a version for computer in web.whatsapp.com.

But we have two problems: first, with all the groups and friends, we can't stop receiving messages. If we put WhatsApp in front of us, it won't be easy to work! On the other hand, what happens if we run out of battery on the phone? Or if we simply want to turn it off to work better? There goes WhatsApp and our work tool.

An excellent alternative is the Slack. With this tool we can create a list of people we work with and create closed and open groups that allow us to communicate in a targeted way. We can link notifications to a specific group or department but not to a specific project that we only want to be informed about.

O Slack is free in its basic version and has excellent features.

Working with Documents

To create texts, spreadsheets, and presentations, most of us are used to the MS Office - Excel, Word and PowerPoint. The problem is that many times we do not have the license installed on the computer and cannot use them.

As an alternative, we can always use the tools of Google Docs. 

The advantage, besides being free, is that the latest version is always saved and therefore we do not run the risk of losing our work.

"Furthermore, we can work in collaboration with someone - one or more people at the same time, which, in the impossibility of wanting to work with more than one person on the same document without being in the same room, is excellent!"

There are two additional tools that we can highlight:

O LanguageTool, which is a spelling checker that, in addition to spelling, also helps with grammar and DeepL for those who want to do some translation and are not near that person in the office who always helps us with these things.

Backup and file sharing

To ensure the backup of your work files and even sharing with your colleagues, we suggest two tools that allow you to avoid USB drives and external disks and that are free up to a certain capacity.

THE Dropbox and the Google Drive. You can create an account on Dropbox free or what gives you access to 2 Gb of free storage and a real-time sync with your computer.

O Google Drive is available for those who have a gmail account and is also free and initially offers 15 Gb of storage space, allowing synchronization with the computer.

Notepad

To save the notes, we have several alternatives.

THE Evernote, which allows you to take notes, copy web pages and even store documents of any format can be a solution. 

THE Evernote it's excellent for scanning documents with your phone, automatically saved on your phone.

Another very similar solution is the Pocket, particularly useful for saving website links.

A solution that is also quite simple to use for those who have a Google account and works almost like a PostIT of any size you want, is the Google Keep. You can write notes in various colors, very simply and quickly.

All these tools work in the cloud and therefore you won't lose your notes in case you lose your computer or phone.

Time management

Managing time can be one of the biggest challenges for those who work from home or remotely.

The first and most simple suggestion we have is Google Tasks. It works like a very simple task list always associated with the calendar of your Google account. 

If you want a more comprehensive tool that allows you to manage teamwork, the Asana it can be an excellent solution, allowing for projects, teams, etc.

THE Trello it works on the kanban concept and has enormous flexibility. It is organized by columns where virtual post-its are placed. It is excellent for visually organizing our ideas and tasks.

THE workflowy and the Mindmeister they are two tools that allow thinking in a tree logic.

THE workflowy it is extremely simple to use and works by bullet points: it is excellent for listing ideas, making to-do lists, and even meeting summaries. 

THE Mindmeister it's more visual and allows for a kind of brainstorming of ideas, even if it's just with ourselves.

Finally, if you want to organize your work and breaks with the pomodoro method (typically 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of break), there are several tools for that. 

For example, the Pomodoro focus 'will allow you to define how long you want to work and how often you want to take a break. It's great for keeping us focused!'

Well, we hope you enjoy! And if you need more tools, let us know that

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