A Look at the Best Virtual Workspaces for Remote Team Collaboration

Asana’s intuitive UI allows for scalable project management that’s easy to learn. Redbooth also offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Creately starts at $4.80 USD per user/month, and offers a free plan with limited features. Smartsheet is a scalable tool that allows you to work on anything from a small project to end-to-end project management.

Hub staff will make you more productive and will make your time work for you. You can keep a track remote collaboration of where employees are spending their time and what tasks they are working on at a given time.

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There is a free forever version with fewer features and team members that you can try too. With a small learning curve, users can be up and running quickly with this collaborative tool. Asana’s user interface and user experience is also top in its class. There is a free version for unlimited team members but with limited features . Miro’s calendar block allows you to show when you’re online, offline, or busy to help ease the pressure of feeling like you need to respond right away. Miro has a Miroverse, which allows you to share and use project templates provided by the community.

In other words, talking is good, and if your team works remotely, it can be challenging to make sure those water cooler conversations are still taking place. Great teams are built on trust, but it can be challenging to build trust when you aren’t together in the same space. When colleagues work together, they have lots of chances to grab lunch, take a coffee break and chit-chat, and it’s in these small moments that real trust can form. Use chat to collaborate on your tasks, but don’t feel the need to respond immediately to all communication. Workers have autonomy and freedom to create a schedule maximizing productivity, but the downside is they can often feel isolated. They also have a freemium version available with limited features for up to 15 meeting participants. Bluescape’s integrated tool called Popsync allows you to quickly pull images from common image sources like Unsplash or Google Images to add to your workspace.

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Linear is a streamlined and modern issue tracking tool for software teams. It’s quickly becoming a favorite for smaller teams as the antithesis to Atlassian Jira, which has been the industry leader for years. We use Linear at Himalayas because it has great UX, has easy-to-use shortcuts, is super fast, and is opinionated in all the right ways . It’s one of those “oh wow” tools you don’t quite understand until you start using it. For more advanced automations and unlimited version history, the ‘Team’ plan is $36 USD per user per month. They have an ‘Enterprise’ plan available for more advanced access controls and security.

KPIs help keep remote workers focused and motivated by communicating as clearly as possible what the task at hand is and what remote employees should be working towards and prioritizing. Basically, everything that remote employees need to know to do their best work and communicate as effectively as possible with co-workers. The added benefit of asynchronous work is that distributed teams can operate on a 24-hour clock instead of the traditional 8 hours.

Transitioning to New Work Modes with Microsoft Teams

Bluescape offers over 200 pre-built templates for your workspace – from meetings, strategy and planning, presentations, and more. Milanote allows you to share boards with no required signup, making it easier to collaborate with clients in real-time. This collaboration platform has smart notifications to show exactly what has been edited since your last visit, and who has seen the edits you’ve made. A visual workspace, Milanote works for many creative endeavors, whether you’re an agency, a startup, a photographer, a marketer, or any other type of creative distributed team.

It’s specifically useful when teams take turns using office space and meeting rooms. These will all help your team better connect, keep communication strong, and build team bonding. As your team gets closer and knows each other better, collaborating will seem easier and more natural. This intel will make it much easier to schedule teams for meetings and touch base with everyone equally. Even though asynchronous communication should be your norm, lots of collaboration magic happens when the whole team pow-wows together.

The tool offers built-in voice and video conferencing, and supports real-time feedback for design reviews. These digital tools bring opportunities that in-person interactions can inhibit since people are often hesitant to provide unfiltered thoughts and comments in a group. Across multiple agile teams, real-time feedback can inform productivity and analysis.

• But content teams need more tools to cater to content creation and management needs.
• Over time, this builds a culture of “default to transparency” and improves communication across the board.
• All these features make Workplace a good choice to manage communications and tasks within your company.
• “Catch-up coffee hour” on Monday mornings, a workout session on Thursday afternoon, or after-work drinks on Friday afternoons.
• For some tips on what tools to use, check out our breakdown of remote working tools here.
• While it’s important to communicate clearly, there is such thing as too much communication.