5 Chat Apps to Use in the Office to Keep Your Team in Sync
Gone are the days when an e-mail was used as the primary mode of communication in the office and among the team members. The drastic boom in technology has changed the way we communicate, collaborate and work on a daily basis.
Today, we have a sea of mobile and web apps that can make our work easier by streamlining our work processes and helping us in better management of our tasks.
Let us see the most famous chat apps that can help us in collaborating and managing our projects:
Slack
Just like Flickr, Slack is an amazing communication app that is used by well-known companies like Airbnb, FOX, and IBM. This app is embedded with great features of organizing and managing tasks within the team. We can also make use of casual chat rooms.
Features:
Slack comes with a bundle of features. It works on the basis of channels. There are channels for everything like separate channels for teams, projects, and topics. In this way, the work gets organized and people get more information.
It also has a search option. When the messages get clutter, we can easily use the search option for finding our desired message. The Slack bot is another great feature.
The Slack Bot is amazingly designed to answer some common questions. We can also program it for giving us reminders automatically. Slack integrates with the services we use and gives all information inflow. In this way, everyone in the team gets notified about the information.
Slack’s integration with other apps:
Slack integrates itself with Google Drive. It also has integration with an amazing project organizing tool named Trello. Apart from it, it also supports GIF Keyboards for fun and entertainment.
What will you get in a free version?
In a free version of Slack, you will get the feature of history up to 10,000 messages, integration of 10 apps, one-on-one calls, and storage up to 5 GB.
You can also go for a paid version in which there are more features. Their standard and plus plans come with unlimited integration of apps, unlimited messages, great support service, group calls, and additional storage space.
Facebook’s Workplace
Now, Facebook is not just limited to fun and entertainment. You can use it in your business too. Facebook’s Workplace is used by many small and big scale businesses for managing their projects.
It is yet another great app and thanks to its amazing feature that turn our firm into a little community. It transfers all the photos, chats videos and posts to that community.
Features:
We can enjoy a number of features in the free version. However, the paid version is embedded with a lot more features like tools for monitoring, organizational charts, bot APIs and so on. There is one greater feature called P2P video streaming called Enterprise Live but you have to pay the US $8.00 for these additional features.
The workplace gives us the option of marking important things so that the entire team can know about it. Apart from it, it comes with a poll option. We can run a poll and take suggestions from the team within minutes. It also has an auto-translate option which gives us the benefit of communicating in any language of our choice.
The workplace is also best for the beginners in the team as it has an option of training groups. These groups have training tools for the guidance of the beginners.
Integration of tools:
It is surprising to know that Workplace can translate up to 46 languages with its auto-translate feature. Besides this, it is integrated with Trello, Google Drive and Dropbox.
The workplace is used by:
There are a total of 30,000 companies that use the Workplace. Among them, well-known companies are Starbucks, Air Asia, and Walmart. For people who have used Facebook before, this is the simplest and time-saving app.
Voxer
Voxer is a specially designed app for the industries in which the staff is usually on the go. Thus, sending written texts is not convenient for them. They prefer sending voice messages. For instance, the staff of the logistics and hospitality industry finds it easier to send voice messages.
Voxer enables us to connect with our colleagues, friends, and family anywhere. It is considered as an ideal and convenient tool for instant communication. Voxer comes with high security and gives us the feature of deleting old messages at any time.
We can also use Voxer from our desk and connect with our friends. Voxer provides the feature of sending voice messages of up to 500 people at a single time. It has unlimited storage of messages and comes with headset integration.
Without paying any extra charges, we can connect to any data network in the world and get in touch with our friends.
Instant listening to messages:
With Voxer, we do not have to wait for the sender to finish his recording. It enables us to listen to the messages while the sender is still recording it.
However, we can still share our photos, videos, and texts through it. One more amazing feature is the voice to text transcription of Voxer.
Integration:
Voxer comes with an integration of Dropbox.
Free trial:
They give you a free trial of 14 days but there is no free version of Voxer. You have to pay US$8.33 on monthly basis for using these amazing voice messaging features of Voxer.
Voxer has some well-known clients like Marriot and Westin.
The virtual whiteboard of Cisco Webex Teams
We know that a picture is worth more than a word.
Cisco Webex Team has designed this virtual whiteboard on this concept. They think that the display of ideas is better than anything. They provide a virtual whiteboard on which we can actually display our ideas, thoughts, and concepts.
Besides this, it is also embedded with the traditional feature of a video call, voice and text messages. We can instantly share our files and screens with other members of the team. Cisco is a great tool for speeding up our projects and build better business relations.
Free version:
Even the free version of Cisco provides great features like video calling of forty minutes to fifty people at a time. Apart from it, it comes with a cloud storage of 1 GB.
Paid program:
The paid plan is divided into three plans which are Starter, Plus, and Business. With Starter being the basic and Business being the most advanced plan, it provides additional features of storage, integration, branding, customer support service, and analytics.
The Microsoft team
Office 365 integration needs no introduction. For those, already using this integration, need no big change is coming to Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft team offers a number of features like a shared workplace. Through this shared workplace, different members of the team can use the same Microsoft applications like MS Excel, PowerPoint, MS Word and so on. Apart from it, it also enables you to collaborate with your team and chat with them at any time you want. It also comes with Skype video calling and we can also use the Skype emoji along with custom memes.
It is included in the most advanced business premium plan of office 365. However, it is also available in standalone form. The free version provides the following features:
- Amazing integration of 140 services and apps
- 300 users at a time
- No limit on messages
- 2 GB space per user and shared space of 10 GB for storage
Takeaways
We cannot forget those days when we need to type an entire e-mail to our team even for small tasks like converting the pdf to doc file, arranging tasks as per deadlines, conducting meetings and so on. Nowadays, you can even check top data room providers to get more out of your work.
We have hundreds of more apps that are free to use and come with amazing features. These apps have completely changed the way we work. With the correct use of these collaborative apps, we can definitely bring a great boom in our productivity.
To meet our unique business needs, we need to search for the right app and make the most of it. Even if it is a paid app and comes with the desired features, it’s worth investing in it. Many top-notch brands of the world are using these well-known apps and have experienced a drastic change in their business.
About the Author:
Arslan Hassan is an electrical engineer with a passion for writing, designing and anything tech-related. His educational background in the technical field has given him the edge to write on many topics. He occasionally writes blog articles for Classic PDF Editor.
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