3 Tools You Should (But Aren’t) Using for Team Collaboration
Collaboration has evolved. Products don’t follow the flow of an assembly line of individual workers. Documents aren’t printed and distributed to people to make changes. Tasks and assignments might not even be emailed out anymore, as project management tools have taken over the way we handle work.
With all these changes in the workplace, it’s time that we adapt.
Every day, new tools seem to spring up claiming to change the way people work. We’ve sifted through the clutter to find you some of the most useful and promising applications for your organization that you might not be using yet.
1. Attentiv: Effective Meetings for Better Decision-Making
Let’s face it — meetings can be a huge waste of time and a frustrating sacrifice of productivity and money. That’s why we need to make them count, and Attentiv is the tool for doing just that. Attentiv considers the typical issues of meetings and decision-making (groupthink, "yes men," extrovert-dominated conversation) and tackles each head on with a cool set of features.
Anonymous feedback and input allows introverts to finally be heard. A feature for asking questions and taking polls alleviates the fear of interrupting another speaker and allows for honest feedback. A clear agenda, complete with action items and discussion topics, allows the group to stay on-task. Easily distracted “multi-taskers” can login using their phones or tablets, finding a new use for their devices during meetings rather than browsing and checking Twitter. Automated meeting minutes round out Attentiv’s useful features, ensuring nobody ever needs to take and distribute minutes again.
All meetings and reports are stored on your account online, with no download required. The free version of Attentiv gives you five meetings a month, with paid options giving you more storage space and more meetings.
2. Sqwiggle: Intuitive, Instant Communication
Moving forward, we’re seeing more and more employees working remotely. While there’s now a plethora of video conferencing tools with plenty of features, Sqwiggle is an extremely simple and intuitive option, especially if your organization is not looking to spend much.
Just create an account, add members of your organization, and see their faces pop up on the screen. From there, you can click on a face to be instantly put on a video call with that user.
Sqwiggle’s advantages lie with its clean interface and simplicity. It doesn’t try to cram a ton of features into the tool like its competitors, and it works well. With its minimalistic design, you can quickly login and do exactly what video conferencing was designed to do. Sqwiggle is especially useful for remote workers, since you can stay logged in and quickly get in touch with anybody else on the software within your organization.
Like Attentiv, this is a web app that you can easily access from your browser, so no need to download additional software. The free version of Sqwiggle gets you unlimited one-on-on video chatting, with paid versions letting you add more people to the conversation.
3. InVision: Share and Annotate Creative Ideas
If you’re anything like me, you’re probably awful with design. Artwork and graphics have never been my forte, but with InVision I can get my opinions across. InVision is a simple yet feature-packed tool for collaborative design, whether it’s for a web page, a mobile app, or an ad. Quickly create functional prototypes and mockups with your designs and let other collaborators leave comments and suggestions.
Major companies like Nike, Sony, and Adobe already use InVision — and for good reason. Even if you’re not into design, this tool is perfect for marketing teams, engineers, and anybody with a cool idea to show the preliminary stages of something awesome, and sell another person on the vision. Like Attentiv and Sqwiggle, you can sign up for a free account or see which paid plan best fits your organization’s needs.
While the onset of innovation should ideally make us more productive, oftentimes it fails to make us any more productive. Not to mention we still struggle with common workplace tropes like ineffective meetings. With the professional workplace heading towards an increasingly collaborative direction, these tools are a surefire way to adapt and gain some productivity for your organization, no matter the industry.
