I’m sure, like everyone, you’re a bit burnt out with online meetings. They’re not going away, so here are seven tools to make them more productive and hopefully have less of them.
Why would you have an hour-long meeting just talking about what if’s, when you can start right away and work in real-time, building upon everyone’s ideas and plans?
The right collaborative tools will enable this and, in turn, will create many more positive effects:
Faster Idea Generation / Problem Solving:
- For those complex and demanding projects
- Get more eyes on a project more easily and with effective communication
- Get ahead of your competition
Stronger Team:
- Empowered staff with the tools to enable them
- With your mixed skilled workforce, working together means employees can share skills and learn from one another
- Ease of understanding where everyone’s role lies, no feels like they are the ones carrying all the weight, but everyone is pulling together
Communication:
- Everyone is listened to, with multiple ways to communicate to accommodate the different personalities of the team
- Easy for staff to find the answers they need using well-organised company knowledge bases
1 - Whiteboard Platform Collaborative
Think of this tool as an infinitely zoomable whiteboard where you come together with the team to share and create ideas.
What they do:
- Diagramming / Flowchart / Mind Mapping
- Presentation
- Video Conferencing
How to use them
- Collaborating in real-time, see your participants cursor
- Simple to use interface with engaging tools, and import any popular file formats
- Templates to get you started on your next strategy, meeting, research, and many more projects
Why use this:
- Keeps everyone in the loop, and it is easy to see the big picture and the details
- A place to quickly initiate and grow ideas
- Collaboration is fluid, tools are easy to pick up
Examples services:
2 - Collaborative Working In Real-Time
This is your portal to let you see your teammates easily in realtime or in snap shot intervals, and is the easiest way to get connected without the need of applications.
What it does:
- Ad-hoc video meeting
- Drop-in and drop out
- Always live video streaming or snapshot intervals
How to use them:
- Various rooms that your co-workers can drop-in
- Easy and Browser-Based Video Meetings
- Easily see who is available
Why use this:
- You can easily see if your co-workers are available to speak to
- Feel more connected and a sense of who you are working with each day
- Fastest way to get start a video call with anyone
Examples services:
3 - Video & Screensharing
The ability to quickly capture your computer screen as images or videos with added annotations.
What it does:
- Capture your screen with video or with screenshots
- Add additional context with annotation tools
- Can additionally record your microphone or web camera
How to use them:
- Easy to use tools to capture full screen or a specific part of your screen
- Use hotkeys to capture and create content to share quickly
- Record yourself live with your web camera while capturing your screen simultaneously
Why use this:
- Be more productive and transparent when working remotely
- Empower staff to share their Knowledge
- Create more engaging inhouse documentation for your company
Examples services:
- https://monosnap.com/
- https://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.html
- https://vimeo.com/features/screen-recorder
4 - Live Team Scheduler
An always live team rota that makes employee scheduling easy. Let your team build the rotas that best serve your clients.
What it does:
- Build your employees’ schedules in minutes and manage time off, availability
- Track employee hours and labour costs and export timesheets for seamless payroll processing
- Any size of business
How to use them:
- Schedule your team anywhere on Web, Andriod, or iOS
- Spot and prevent unnecessary overtime by setting overtime rules and receiving timely alerts
- Manage all of your scheduling needs in one place and keep everyone up-to-date with schedule changes
Why use this:
- Handle unexpected changes without stress.
- Keep everyone informed and build a better company culture
- Improve clarity, efficiency, and your employees’ performance
Examples services:
5 - AI Powered Note taking
Generate rich notes from meetings, interviews, lectures, and other essential voice conversations from any device.
What it does:
- Record conversations using on your phone or web browser
- Real-time streaming transcriptions
- Search, play, edit, organise and share your conversations from any device
How to use them:
- Searchable notes with text, audio, images and identify speakers
- Sync with your calendar to record conversations from meetings
- Record anything – meetings, phone calls, interviews, webinar
Why use this:
- Capture and find what you need fast
- Share meeting notes with your team and attend fewer meetings!
- Convert audio and video to text in minutes
Examples services:
- https://otter.ai/
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/microsoft-365/onenote/digital-note-taking-app
- https://sonix.ai/
6 - Video Messages
A more efficient, expressive, effective way to communicate to clients and your team via video and screen sharing.
What it does:
- Allow you quickly record private video messages
- Capture your desktop to annotate/explain a business document
- In-between communication tool of email and video meetings
How to use them:
- Report on progress with more flexibility for your team and with no extra effort to document
- Convey tone, mark up your screen, and record in context to give clear and more constructive feedback
- Chrome extension, mobile app, and email integration
Why use this:
- Build better business relationships with video messaging
- Reduce time spent in meetings by sending pre-meeting video
- Sending a video message can provide the context and value of a meeting in a fraction of the time
Examples services:
7- Watching live content together
A more efficient, expressive, effective way to communicate to clients and your team via video and screen sharing.
What it does:
- Watch videos with others in real-time
- Supports YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo or local video files
- Chat or video support
How to use them:
- Use within a web browser
- Either person can pause or rewind the stream
- Instant messaging built-in or video calls
Why use them:
- Easily share and react to video content together
- Instant reaction
- Share the experience of video
Examples services:
Here at Dunedin IT our mantra is always nurutre forward-thinking organisations to make decisions based on the Knowledge they derive from Information and Data in their IT Systems.
And we wouldn’t be able to do that if we didn’t empower our team with the right collaborative tools to create better solutions for our clients, keeping team momentum, and having a shared sense of direction for our company goals.
Why would you have an hour-long meeting just talking about what if’s, when you can start right away and work in real-time, building upon everyone’s ideas and plans?
Adam
Support
May 20, 2021
