Collaboration is one of the most important aspects of effective teamwork. Teams that collaborate well and work as a team are more likely to be productive, more profitable, and more satisfied with their jobs. While absolutely necessary and trivial for the company’s success, collaboration isn’t easy for everyone but it doesn’t need to be scary either. There are a number of simple strategies and apps for collaboration improvement.
So, we’ve compiled this list of 10 best apps for collaboration improvement. From brainstorming to video chatting, these apps will help you stay on track and get the most out of your time together.
Microsoft Teams
As a member of the Microsoft 365 family, Microsoft Teams came to connect if not all then most Microsoft 365 products. It’s a collaboration platform or rather, a collaboration hub that gives its users all the necessary tools (e.g., chatting, video conferencing, document sharing, task management and much more) to work together.
It’s an ideal tool for all kinds of companies from big enterprises to middle-sized creative agencies and small nonprofits. Microsoft Teams will quickly become your digital workplace where you can access and share files, exchange ideas, collaborate on a proposal, assign tasks and even request a vacation or a day off. Microsoft Teams has a variety of native tools that you can use to tailor the platform to your needs. You can also tap into the myriad of available third-party solutions. The number and the diversity of available integrations are certainly one of the unique values that Microsoft Teams offers. Microsoft will foster collaboration within your team and by taking advantage of the integration opportunities, you can improve it further.
ScreenRec
As the saying goes, “it’s better to see once than hear a hundred times.” Collaboration is made possible through communication and most importantly, through being on the same page. So if you want to share something visual with your colleague quickly instead of a thousand text messages or even voice memos, use ScreenRec. It’s a tool that enables you to create and share private video messages and screenshots. For instance, suppose you’re a QA engineer and you noticed a bug on your company’s website. You can use ScreenRec to record what exactly happens and include it in your ticket for the development team. It saves time and ensures that you convey your thoughts and findings accurately.
Miro
For planning and brainstorming sessions to generate positive outcomes, teams need to collaborate very closely. And one tool that helps with that is Miro. The best way to describe it is an online collaborative whiteboard. Miro essentially offers you a blank canvas and offers you tools to turn that canvas into a workflow, or you can jot down ideas for your next marketing campaign. In other words, you have the dough and Miro gives you the cookie cutters to turn the dough into shaped cookies. Here are some of the things that your team can collaborate on via Miro’s tools:
-Workshopping,
-Strategy mapping,
-Agile ceremonies,
-UX research and design,
-Product development,
-Customer discovery,
-Visualization, etc.
nBold
Imagine for a second that you work at a company where the employees’ offices change every week or even every day. On Monday the head of marketing is in room 200A, on Tuesday she is in the corner office on the third floor and on Wednesday, she doesn’t have an office and works from the kitchen. It’s nonsense, right? Collaboration becomes very difficult in such circumstances. Imagine, for a second, that even the purpose of the rooms is changed on a daily basis. One day it’s a break room, the next day it’s the front desk or a meeting room. Again, impossible conditions for collaboration. Now imagine the same for digital workspaces. Clear structure enhances collaboration and that’s what nBold does.
nBold is a solution available within Microsoft Teams that helps create pre-built workspace templates that can include your everyday apps and tools to make sure your team will have everything needed in one place for effective collaboration. You could also employ governance rules so that the workspaces within the whole organization comply with your internal IT and security regulations.
Notion
To collaborate means to exchange ideas, thoughts, documents, edit and revise proposals, budgets and more. For these, you need good storage, a good database which Notion offers. There are many ways that you can use Notion but one of its most common uses is turning into your company’s, department’s or team’s encyclopedia. You can use it to store and categorize important notes, documents or ideas. You can also use it for task management.
Soapbox
This is a great tool particularly for fully asynchronous teams where collaboration takes a bit of a different form compared to more conventional teams. Similar to ScreenRec, Soapbox does screen recording but it goes beyond that, it’s a webcam and a video making tool. You can use it to create talking-head style recording with a screencast. So, if you’re working in an asynchronous team and you need to make a presentation but the difference in time zones doesn’t allow video conferencing, you can use Soapbox to record your presentation and share it with your colleagues. It becomes more personal and more effective, and imitates a videoconference when you add the “talking head.”
Krisp
Distraction is collaboration’s worst enemy. Focus is key to productivity but very often then not some things are out of our control especially during conference calls and meetings. Loud AC, pets barking or meowing, children playing or a background noise in a coffee shop where you’re working from. All of these can disturb and distract your coworkers unless. To avoid this, you can use Krisp, a noise cancellation and echo removal solution. It will eliminate or minimize the background noise, allowing your team to hear you hence improving communication and productivity.
CodingTeam
This tool is specifically designed for programmers. Using CodingTeam, programmers can collaborate on a coding project. Simply speaking, it’s a Google doc for developers. Some of the features that this tool offers include:
-Chatrooms and forums,
-Integration with OpenForge API and Jabber/XMPP,
-Code browser,
-Bug tracker,
-Project browsing,
-Tag clouds, and more.
Filestage
A big part of collaboration is feedback and giving feedback can be done in a hundred different ways – through email, via chat or the project management tool that you use. But when it comes to digital content like photos or videos, giving feedback is trickier. Suppose you received a poster for an upcoming event from the graphic design team and you need them to change a very specific element in the upper right corner of the image or a shade of the color. You can either type it up or you can use Filestage. It’s a feedback and approval platform that allows teams to submit digital content (as well as documents) for a review and receive feedback on it.
MeetinVR
The apps and tools we’ve discussed so far are available in desktop, mobile or in both versions. This one is a bit different. To conclude our list of apps for collaboration improvement, let’s move to virtual reality. As the name hints, MeetinVR is a tool designed to conduct meetings in virtual reality through VR headsets. Some say it’s the future of collaboration, while others passionately resist it. Regardless of the debate, the tool exists and you can use it if you wish. You can use it for both meetings and workshops.
MeetinVR gives you what they call “purpose-driven spaces,” where each participant gets an avatar and you can talk together, shake hands, write on a whiteboard essentially everything you would do at an in-person meeting. Another similar tool that you can check if you’re interested in virtual reality is Horizon Workrooms.
Whatever your needs may be, there is certainly a solution out there that will help you out. Some apps for collaboration improvement are in this list and some are one Google search away.