5 Great Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams

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FREELANCER TIPS

• 5 Great Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams

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Having a Remote Team

• As freelancing businesses grow, what once started
  out as a one-man-show can often quickly turn into
  a team experience. The transition can be tough,
  but a team can accomplish a lot, provided it is
  managed properly. Companies wanting to grow
  cannot afford an unclear strategy on their
  collaboration tool. Imagine this half of your
  colleagues use email, the others prefer Skype and
  a third group only shares their ideas via text or
  not at all. Sounds like a disaster, right? To
  avoid that, you need to find the right
  collaboration tool for your team of remote
  workers. Weve made a list, showcasing five of
  the best tools, which will help turn your remote
  team into a well-oiled machine.

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1) Sqwiggle

• Well start you off with something that might
  seem a bit whacky at first, but actually does a
  pretty amazing job at simulating the office
  atmosphere if thats what youre looking for
  Sqwiggle. Dont worry using this tool is much
  easier than writing its name.
• Once you turn it on, it makes snapshots via your
  webcam a few times per minute, allowing you to
  see all of your colleagues at a glance. Once you
  click on their faces you instantly get in a voice
  call with them, similar to a tap on the shoulder
  in the office. You can invite multiple people to
  the call as well, and it comes at the monthly
  price of 9 dollars per user.

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2) Slack

• Slack is another collaboration tool that has been
  getting a lot of hype recently. Its goal is to
  combine almost everything you would use for
  communication and sharing. Sending documents,
  short messages, longer mail-like reports and
  etc., Slack does it all. It also integrates
  perfectly with a lot of other tools, like Google
  Hangouts, Dropbox and even Twitter. Slacks aim
  is to break down everything, so you not only have
  an archive of your internal communication, but
  also dont struggle to find something when
  searching in the right channel. The Lite version
  of Slack comes for free, too, which is a good
  incentive for any team to check it out.

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3) Skype

• Everybody knows what Skype is, but we couldnt
  just skip it, as it is probably one of the most
  used collaboration tools. It is a chat service
  that doubles up as a phone, making it pretty
  useful for any type of work. Group calls are
  actually now free for up to 10 people as well. A
  simple word of warning though using your
  personal Skype for work can be quite distracting,
  so Id recommend making a separate account if you
  decide to use it as your go-to communication
  tool.

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4) Google Hangouts

• Google Hangouts is another very commonly used
  tool to communicate with your team. If easy,
  simple voice calls are what youre looking,
  Hangouts might be your thing. One of its many
  nifty little features is that it allows you to
  archive your talks on YouTube, allowing you to
  check them out any time you want.

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5) Dropbox

• All of the tools listed above mostly focus on
  communication, but when working with a team you
  often need to share actual physical examples of
  your work, pictures, screenshots, word documents
  and much more. If youre looking for a way to
  make that aspect of remote team collaboration
  easier, Dropbox is what youre looking for. It
  basically serves as a remote folder on your
  compute which anyone from your team can access
  and upload things to. Dropbox comes with an
  initial 2GB of storage for free, which can be
  easily expanded.

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