Even without the current, continuing pandemic crisis, remote work was bound to become far more normalized over the coming years. There are simply too many factors – economic, geographic, and otherwise – working in favor of a virtual workspace for it not to catch on. Now, whether we were ready or not, many of us are commuting twenty-five feet or a few rooms at best to get to the place where we do our jobs. These 20 companies have created apps that are designed to help bridge the gaps between a traditional office environment and a virtual one. You’ll find them helpful working remotely and even managing teams that way.
About the app: Zoom is a communications platform that connects people through video, voice, chat, and content sharing. It has an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars across mobile devices, desktops, telephones, and room systems. Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, and group messaging into one easy-to-use platform.
About the app: Workfront is the leading work management solution trusted by more than 3,000 companies, one million users, and 10 out of 10 of the world’s top brands. Work today is anything but normal and just completing tasks or projects isn’t enough. With Workfront—a centralized platform for all work data that seamlessly integrates with existing applications and systems—businesses can keep everyone focused on meaningful, high-value work that’s aligned with company goals, anticipate and plan for the unexpected, and automate mundane tasks and workflows.
About the app: More flexible and cost-effective than legacy on-premise systems, RingCentral empowers today’s mobile and distributed workforces to be connected anywhere and on any device through voice, video, team messaging, collaboration, SMS, conferencing, online meetings, contact center, and fax.
About the app: Zwift is an interactive fitness platform used to transform monotonous solo indoor cycling and running workouts into dynamic and social adventures. The platform connects users to physical indoor trainers so that cyclists can pedal inside while immersed in any number of virtual landscapes on a screen in front of them that enable users to join in rides together with friends. The Zwift app can be run on a range of devices including laptops, phones, and tablets. Zwift wirelessly pairs to physical indoor fitness equipment, like cycle trainers or treadmills, allowing ‘Zwifters’ to ride or run with other users, within Zwift’s immersive virtual landscapes, bringing the outdoor experience, indoors.
About the app: Roughly 40% of Americans are working from home, meaning their homes are now their offices. To stay as productive and focused as possible, it’s important that people’s homes are being taken care of and repairs or fixes aren’t something they have to worry about. With HomeX’s mobile app, Remote workers can connect with a vetted technician whenever works for them or schedule an in-home repair, so they can get back to work rather than having to work on their home.
About the app: Calendly is simple, beautiful scheduling software that delights customers and makes life easy for business professionals. Calendly users sell more, sell faster and provide high-quality service by eliminating email and phone tag for scheduling meetings and appointments. We’re committed to creating the most elegant, frustration-free scheduling experience possible, so you can save time, impress your contacts and say goodbye to busywork.
About the app: Zapier is on a mission to make automation incredibly easy and accessible to everyone at work. With Zapier, you can integrate apps like Salesforce, Intuit, Google, and Dropbox, to move data between them automatically, so you can focus on your most important work.
About the app: Trello is a free app that makes working on group projects as easy as using sticky notes on a whiteboard. Available on phone, tablet, and desktop, Trello’s drag-and-drop interface and visual way of organizing the tasks to make sure its user always knows what needs to get done and who’s working on it. Whether it’s the sales pipeline, new employee training program, a home renovation project, or even a wedding, Trello is flexible enough to make sure they’re on top of all the important projects.
About the app: Asana helps teams orchestrate their work, from small projects to strategic initiatives. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Asana has more than 82,000 paying organizations and millions of free organizations across 190 countries. Global customers such as AllBirds, Sephora, Sky, Spotify, Viessmann, and Woolworths rely on Asana to manage everything from company objectives to digital transformation to product launches and marketing campaigns
About the app: Smartsheet is the enterprise platform for dynamic work. By aligning people and technology so organizations can move faster and drive innovation, Smartsheet enables its millions of users to achieve more. Backed by enterprise-grade security, Smartsheet is used by more than 75% of the companies in the Fortune 500 to implement, manage, and automate processes across a broad array of departments and use cases.
About the app: Airtable is a cloud-based software company that blends a traditional spreadsheet with a database. It brings the database out of the realm of power users and into the mainstream, creating a new type of flexible but sophisticated productivity tool that anyone can use. Airtable gives end-users the ability to create and share their own workflows for everything from managing an editorial calendar to planning a major event.
About the app: Evernote builds apps and products that are defining the way individuals and teams work today. As one workspace that lives across people’s phones, tablets, and computers, Evernote is the place people write free from distraction, collect information, find what they need, and present their ideas to the world. Whatever people are working toward, Evernote’s job is to make sure they get there.
About the app: DocuSign operates a cloud-based electronic signature platform that helps small- and medium-sized businesses, enterprises, and individuals collect information, automate data workflows, and sign on various devices. The company’s platform automates manual and paper-based processes that allow users to manage various aspects of documented business transactions, including identity management, authentication, digital signature, forms and data collection, collaboration, and workflow automation and storage.
About the app: Skype is for doing things together, whenever you’re apart. Skype’s text, voice, and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are. With Skype, you can share a story, celebrate a birthday, learn a language, hold a meeting, work with colleagues – just about anything you need to do together every day. You can use Skype on whatever works best for you – on your phone or computer or a TV with Skype on it.
About the app: Basecamp solves the critical problems that every growing business deals with. It’s the saner, calmer, organized way to manage projects and communicate company-wide. Basecamp is a system to help stay on top of it all. A way to keep people on the same page, organize and share information, discuss, make and nail down decisions. A system that helps us prioritize meaningful work, cut out wasted time, and restore some work-life balance to employees.
About the app: Wrike is an enterprise-ready, cloud-based collaborative work management platform for managing cross-functional work at scale that is fully configurable and enables contextual collaboration in a secure environment. Enterprises use Wrike to offer a single digital workplace for all of their departments and teams.
About the app: Dropbox provides secure file sharing, collaboration, and storage solutions. It aims to unleash the world’s creative energy by designing a more enlightened way of working. 500 million registered users around the world use Dropbox to work the way they want, on any device, wherever they go.
About the app: Noisli is your digital place for focus. The service provides background sounds that help to mask annoying noises in order to keep you sane, improve your focus, and boost your productivity. Mix different sounds and create your perfect sound environment tailored to your needs, in order to help you focus while working or studying, ease the noise around you while traveling, or to help you relax, fall asleep or reduce stress.
About the app: RescueTime is a frictionless web-based time management tool that keeps track of what you do and for how long when you are on your computer. Users download a desktop application from RescueTime that does all the tracking work. There is no data entry needed from the user’s perspective. The application keeps track of which window is “in focus” when you are on your computer, and logs what activity you are doing and for how long you are doing it. The application also has an idle timer so if you step away from your computer RescueTime does not inflate the amount of time you spent on a given activity.
About the app: World Time Buddy is a world clock converter and an online meeting scheduler that helps foster productivity. Users can compare multiple time zones at a glance, plan conference calls, webinars, international phone calls, and web meetings. It also aids with business travel and tracking of market hours.
About the app: I Done This is the easiest way to share and celebrate what you get done at work, every day, that companies like Zappos, Foursquare, and Reddit use. Reply to an evening email reminder with what you did that day. The next day, get a digest with what everyone on the team got done. It’s that simple. No hassle, no micromanagement. Get stuff done, and celebrate it with your team.