In a time when free time is precious and workloads are increasing, it’s time to utilise the best tools available to you and your business. We’ve put the following apps through their paces and shortlisted them as the most helpful for day to day use in the workplace, whether you are freelance, a large business or an independent outfit…
Trello
How could we not put Trello first? Masters of the multi-list, we have friends who have a Trello Board to organise lazy?housemates and assign the cleaning jobs. And whilst they may not be popular in their house, we commend their organisational skills and foresight. The beauty of Trello is just how user-friendly it is. Create different?project boards, assign people to tasks, write notes, upload docs and add deadlines. The functionality is as long as our arm, and it’s all encapsulated in a handy little app. Warning – Trello is addictive, and if you don’t start a weekly shopping list on there we’ll be very much surprised.
Tide
If you’re in a busy office or co-working space, noise can often be an unwelcome distraction when knuckling down and concentrating on a piece of work. Enter Tide. An app designed to help you focus and relax, its background sounds include rain, relaxing ‘muse’ music and even coffee shop sounds. We’ve found Muse the most helpful when writing (it’s on right now in fact) but you’ll need to test them all to find your favourite. Not just for work, Tide can be used to help you drift off to sleep and with its handy timer, you won’t wake up to the sound of Starbucks at 3am. Because that would not help the next day’s productivity…
Slack
On first glance, users might think that Slack is simply a jazzier version of the old skool MSN Messenger but upon a closer inspection, there’s plenty of handy functions for users, including file sharing,?video calling, archiving, notifications and more. It also integrates well with Google Drive, Dropbox, Asana, Twitter, Zendesk and Salesforce, which basically means it’s the ‘Apple’ product of the digital project management world. Multiple channels allow you to switch between projects/clients/personal lists and there’s a user-friendly online version for your Mac or PC. Fancy a Slack?
CamScanner
The era of long-winded trips to the office printer-scanner-vortex is over, as all we need in our life is CamScanner. Useful for students and those handling and sending paperwork, the app allows you to take a quick snap of any document and turn it into a crisp PDF, ready to email. Got a crumpled sheet? No worries – the scanner will magically unfold and smooth it out, and if you fancy it, you can even annotate the document or increase the image quality.
Cute in name, even better in functionality, Pocket is an app used by over 30 million people to collate snippets of their online life in one place. Videos, images, content and text can all be saved in a handy stream for you to peruse at a more convenient time, be it on the bus, lunch break or at home. Sync to your Twitter to save Tweets that pique your interest, and over time it will recommend articles and content based on your interests – an internet filter if you will.? And did we mention it’s available to use offline too?
If you’re super busy and apps just won’t cut it, why not chat to us about outsourcing your digital needs? Check out our services, and contact us for a natter.
