Recommended Collaboration Tools for Co-working

Working from home and working in a co-working space has become an ongoing trend over recent years. With the Internet becoming more sophisticated and technological developments improving yearly, working remotely has never been easier. 

Businesses are deciding to save money on paying overheads for office space and are now hot-desking, allowing their employees to work from home or signing up for a co-working space.

Although there are a multitude of tools readily available to make working in a team easier, these are our top 3 recommended tools to help your team improve their collaboration skills:

• Kahootz

Kahootz is a secure cloud collaboration platform. It is one of the safest ways to work in a team online. It combines multiple tools such as surveys, document management, forums and calendars, in a secure online workspace. It can be used to handle both internal and external users, and gives organisations the power to include everyone they need in their online workspace easily.

One of the benefits of using a cloud collaboration tool includes the flexibility of being able to collaborate with your team from anywhere, at any time and on any device. This mobile working model allows for greater efficiency as projects can be managed remotely; thus, completion time is reduced. The ease of deployment of workload and having a better platform for team communication allows for higher levels of productivity. The document collaboration feature means that updates are made in real-time, and there is no confusion on which document is the most recent.

Kahootz follows a pay-as-you-go model, which means organisations only pay for the services they use. Organisations can add or remove users as they wish, and they have complete control over granting permissions or applying restrictions on which team members can view certain documents.

Kahootz is a cloud service that is trusted by the Government and other security-conscious organisations such as the UK’s Ministry of Defence and the NHS. Security experts regularly test it to a standard known as CHECK. This is one of the most rigorous tests available and can only be done by security experts who are approved by the CESG – the UK Government’s security department.

Some of its key features include secure file sharing, document collaboration, task management, shared calendars, surveys, and report writer.

• Otter.AI

Otter.AI is an online app which records and transcribes voice conversations into smart notes. It uses artificial intelligence to learn, in real time, the language of the speakers and to ensure the live transcriptions are as accurate as possible. It has a sophisticated database system which stores all your notes and audio recordings, which becomes readily available for you to find and send.

It can be used to generate rich notes from meetings, interviews and presentations. Gone are the days of manual minute taking as Otter allows the minute taker to focus on the conversation rather than passively taking notes, it frees teams to become more productive and engaged in meetings.

One of the apps main features is its efficiency to playback and pull up the notes of a specific part of the conversation. Traditional audio recording required you to listen to several minutes, and maybe even hours, of audio to find a particular line or phrase. With Otter, you type in the keyword into the search bar, and it will highlight where in the transcript it is mentioned. Otter even breaks down the audio, so when you click on that part in the transcript, it plays back the section where that word is mentioned.

The straightforward interface allows users to search, play, edit, organise (by creating folders) and securely share their recordings and transcripts, from any device to any individual or groups. Otter is powered by Ambient Voice Intelligence, so it is always learning. This technology trains Otter to recognise voices, learn special terminology, and helps the user to work and collaborate smarter.

Some of its key features include Ambient Voice Intelligence, speaker tagging, AI-powered transcription, audio recording, complex search option and secure sending.

• GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting lets users schedule meetings anytime and anywhere. It is one of the most well-developed video conferencing tools on the market. It enables the user to meet with other computer users, customers, clients or colleagues via the Internet in real time.

It is especially convenient for organisations that have employees in more than one location, as it is an easy and cost-effective way to convene everyone via an online meeting instead of them commuting for a meeting. Due to its high-definition video feature, it is also often used to give a sales pitch, which is especially beneficial, if your potential client is abroad.  

Another feature that makes GoToMeeting a useful collaboration tool is its screen sharing capabilities; users can share the contents of their screen at any given time during a video call. Not only is this useful to show some vital visual information, but can also be a way for a manager to check the progress of their employee’s work by checking into their screen. It keeps the team accountable, so if they are working remotely, they can show that they are indeed doing work. 

GoToMeeting allows the meeting organiser to share keyboard and mouse control to another user should they want to, as well as having access to drawing tools to highlight items and brainstorm during a meeting. This works hand in hand with the recording capability of this tool. The screen recordings can be shared and uploaded, and the annotation features include the ability to zoom in on the screen, share the region and an extensive list of graphic design tools.

For example, if a team member is not present for this meeting, they can watch the meeting and see and listen to the thought process of any ideas that may have been generated. This is one good way to display that this tool not only allows collaboration in real time, but also in a more long term sense.

Some of its key features include: Group calls with audio and video, scheduled meetings, presenter switching, screen sharing, collaborative annotation and remote access.