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Best remote work group collaboration tool thing?

For real, what's best?

  • Slack

    Votes: 42 43.3%

  • Monday

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Asana

    Votes: 1 1.0%

  • Microsoft Teams

    Votes: 37 38.1%

  • None - just use some combo of Skype/facetime and email and what not

    Votes: 11 11.3%

  • Other - specify

    Votes: 6 6.2%
  • Total voters
    97
Duane

Duane

Unshakable Resolve
The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
6,421
Right, so with everyone working from home, for real - which really is the best of these things? If you had your choice, and it wasn't mandated by some corporate overlord, which would you choose? What if it's some small company with only 10 or so people? What if it's, conversely, a huge company? Does that make a difference?

I ask because my job is all working from home and I'm kinda thinking one of these might be nice. I dunno.

Make your opinion known in this #channel!
 
FernandoRocker

FernandoRocker

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,987
México
Microsoft Teams, especially in an environment where Office 365 is available (included with the subscription). Great integration and interoperability between all the Office suite and OneDrive. You get everything... permanent chat history, files, chat with emojis/GIFs, video calls, voice calls, and of course, teams for collaborative work.

And their phone app (Android and iOS) is great.
 
Nooblet

Nooblet

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,619
We use Teams and Telegram.

The only problem I have with teams is that it takes control of your microphone and overrides your preferred levels.
 
Joshua

Joshua

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,697
Small environment? Probably Slack + Zoom + Google Docs.

Big environment? Office 365 + Teams + Zoom.

Zoom for meetings under both because frankly it's the best at conferences.
 
Mr.Deadshot

Mr.Deadshot

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,285
Teams is pretty good for all sizes of companies and very compatible to most people.
Emails/Skype combo and some online storage for sharing stuff also works well enough depending on your demands and budget.
 
shnurgleton

shnurgleton

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,864
Boston
FernandoRocker said:
People who voted Slack haven't used Teams in recent times. Sure, Slack was better than Teams, but not anymore. Plus, do you really want to keep paying for two services?
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My company was transitioning from Slack to Teams last year. It was terrible, doesn't integrate well with common tools like the atlassian suite and jenkins, and threads by default. Not to mention limiting the reaction emoji... Pretty much just a consolidation play by Microsoft to force people to stay in the ecosystem, and it was obvious they were switching over to cut costs (this was after a massive round of layoffs)

Left that company in the summer, haven't looked back since
 
FernandoRocker

FernandoRocker

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,987
México
shnurgleton said:
My company was transitioning from Slack to Teams last year. It was terrible, doesn't integrate well with common tools like the atlassian suite and jenkins, and threads by default. Not to mention limiting the reaction emoji... Pretty much just a consolidation play by Microsoft to force people to stay in the ecosystem, and it was obvious they were switching over to cut costs (this was after a massive round of layoffs)

Left that company in the summer, haven't looked back since
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Can we at least agree that Jabber/Webex is the worst? We are still transitioning from Jabber/Webex, and I hate that software.
 
Juan

Juan

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,434
It really depends what you're looking to achieve with said tools.

As a Product Designer, I wrote an article last year about working remotely from far away (Working as a Remote Product Designer from far far away), and the trinity of tools I used on a daily basis to work and communicate with my team are the following:
  • Figma (for visual design, is available within the browser so on all platforms and is build as a live collaboration tool, so you can design in real time with other designers)
  • Notion (to write documentation and share knowledge. It has also live-in interaction built into it and you can collaborate in-real time with other members of your team and see what everyone is doing, used for asynchronous sharing mainly)
  • Zoom (to do live talk for our meeting or casual call)
We also use Slack, but I feel like we could just use email if we wanted too for the conversational stuff. If I had to choose for the conversational stuff, I might prefer to use a forum-like solution, such as Discourse, Spectrum or Twist, as it's really good for asynchronous communication.
 
tshirtblue

tshirtblue

Member
Oct 27, 2017
127
I've fully come around on Slack. Found it overwhelming years ago, but I understand now it's basically just group texting. So helpful in the work-from-home situation I'm in with my job.
And I discovered last night, you can place audio calls or video calls within Slack. So helpful.
 
Kill3r7

Kill3r7

Member
Oct 25, 2017
24,373
I am a fan of slack and we have been using Zoom for the last couple of weeks having around 80 person video meetings without much of an issue.
 
shnurgleton

shnurgleton

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,864
Boston
Juan said:
Figma (for visual design, is available within the browser so on all platforms and is build as a live collaboration tool, so you can design in real time with other designers)
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Have you used Zeplin? I've seen figma before and it seems to have a lot of polish but I've found it super easy to lift styles right off of Zeplin designs. Curious about these since I'm doing more and more UI development these days
 
Yung Coconut

Yung Coconut

Member
Oct 31, 2017
4,267
I voted for Slack since that's what I'm used to using on the job. Been using Zoom for get togethers with our group of friends to chat, watch movies and have a couple drinks together a few times a week though. It's been pretty great.

Microsoft Teams is pretty impressive from the little time I've spent with it also.
 
captive

captive

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,984
Houston
shnurgleton said:
people who voted teams haven't used slack
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i've used slack, its phone and screen sharing capabilities pale in comparison to teams. In fact in the corporate environment i used slack, we used another product entirely to do screen shares. So we would be chatting in slack, and be like ok lets do a screen share, ok hold on let me send you an invite from this other stupidass app.

as a chat app its slightly better than teams and especially switching between tenants its better than Teams. teams sucks at switching tenants.


also apparently Zoom is completely unsecure and doesn't care about privacy.
 
Juan

Juan

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,434
shnurgleton said:
Have you used Zeplin? I've seen figma before and it seems to have a lot of polish but I've found it super easy to lift styles right off of Zeplin designs. Curious about these since I'm doing more and more UI development these days
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Yep, 3 years ago, our design workflow was with Sketch, Abstract and Zeplin. It worked well, but 2 years ago, we fully switched to Figma as it was (almost) doing everything those 3 tools offered, and it was a perfect fit for a fully remote team as ours.

Recently, Figma did an update regarding inspecting style, which made it way easier to use and get design value for everyone when inspecting a file, especially engineers (I do code as well, and it was really to work with all the tech team). Below is a quick screenshot of their inspecting panel, but there's more available (such as file or code export):

1585334799-figma-inspector.jpg


Actually, Figma is 100% with unlimited files for a personal use, so you can give it a try and see if it fits your needs. It really changed since the last 2 years, and for the best, so I can only recommend it right now. ^^
 
Stinkles

Stinkles

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
20,459
I work at Microsoft so obviously Teams but I'm really really digging it. You can add green screen backgrounds too so I created a looping gif of the bbc interview where the guys kids and wife come toddling into frame behind him.

doesn't fit right but I think it's hilarious.

zoom seems fine but I have a really hard time getting videos to work for other people.

edit. Yikes at zoom story above. I only use when other partners insist
 
Mezentine

Mezentine

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,964
Slack is excellent if everyone is trained properly. Most people don't need to have notifications turned on, and anything that requires conveying really dense information should be sent via email instead. When its used to literally just replace the organic conversation that would be happening in a physical office its great
 
exodus

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,935
My workplace adopted Teams and I hate it. The interface is god-awful.

My team just uses discord. Far less bloat and infinitely more readable. Slack would be fine as well, but we opted for Discord since we all run it anyways.
 
Juan

Juan

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,434
Mezentine said:
Slack is excellent if everyone is trained properly. Most people don't need to have notifications turned on, and anything that requires conveying really dense information should be sent via email instead. When its used to literally just replace the organic conversation that would be happening in a physical office its great
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Definitely this. While I used Slack, I actually didn't install the Mac OS application and only use it in the browser, so I'm really not bothered by the notifcations and such.

Some people might use it and expect to have a direct answer within a few seconds like we were talking next to each other, so it's been quite a challenge to make people understand I don't connect to Slack all day so I can have focus time and train them to expect answer later in the day.

It's been worth the time to explain them as it really worked well for asynchronous small discussion as well now. 👌
 
Gunny T Highway

Gunny T Highway

Unshakable Resolve - One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
16,990
Canada
I work in a school setting so Teams works the best since you have access to the entire Office 365 suite. Plus most kids only have worked with Microsoft programs such as Word, Power Point, etc anyways.
 
captive

captive

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,984
Houston
Stinkles said:
I work at Microsoft so obviously Teams but I'm really really digging it. You can add green screen backgrounds too so I created a looping gif of the bbc interview where the guys kids and wife come toddling into frame behind him.

doesn't fit right but I think it's hilarious.

zoom seems fine but I have a really hard time getting videos to work for other people.

edit. Yikes at zoom story above. I only use when other partners insist
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have you seen Jeff Snovers different backgrounds? He did a breaking bad one, one at fenway pretty funny.
 
ForgeForsaken

ForgeForsaken

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,975
20 minutes into the future.
FernandoRocker said:
People who voted Slack haven't used Teams in recent times. Sure, Slack was better than Teams, but not anymore. Plus, do you really want to keep paying for two services?
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We have a ton of technical issues with Teams. I'm trying to resolve a couple at the moment. All things with pages of google results and no real solutions and MS not really acknowledging.
 
Big Boy

Big Boy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,890
We use teamwork for project management and single/group messaging. Hangouts for video calls
 
DrForester

DrForester

Mod of the Year 2006
Member
Oct 25, 2017
21,627
We use teams at my work, and it works great for meetings and keeping in touch.
 
Viewt

Viewt

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,799
Chicago, IL
We use Teams and Slack primarily, but I'm also using Skype for Business and WebEx depending on the client I'm working with. Teams is garbo. Slack has issues with dropped calls, but otherwise, it's solid.
 
BennyWhatever

BennyWhatever

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,756
US
We use Office 365 + Teams, with Zoom for most video calls. It works exceptionally well, although a little slow at times under a large load (aka the last few weeks). That's probably just our VPN though.
 

Deleted member 7148

Oct 25, 2017
6,827
I'm a Slack fan. We use Teams at work and I'm not a fan.
 
daveo42

daveo42

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,250
Ohio
I only ever used Teams due to what's used by the companies I've worked for. It's pretty great, but right now our integration has been buckling from added stress as more people wfh.
shnurgleton said:
people who voted teams haven't used slack
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This is very true. Can't vote for something I haven't used. Teams has been the go-to for most of the corporations I've worked for.
 
TylerD

TylerD

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,091
We transitioned from WebEx and Jabber to Teams earlier this year and life is SOOOOOOO much better. I knew nothing about Teams and pretty much love it now.
 
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