Remote work life with 4 SaaS products I can’t live without
The pandemic situation takes longer than a year and I would like to send all of people out there respect for continuing to work remotely from home. Frankly, most of the Tech-savvy companies are able to survive through COVID19 because of cloud adoption rate in their organization, introducing employee with a change in workstyle nature when people starts to get used to work with cloud applications way earlier before COVID-19 hits. Obviously the pandemic is accelerating the migration to Cloud and trigger the company to utilize more features they have been neglected. For example, I’ve heard the story from my friend that she spent so much effort to encourage employee for using chat workspace and new conference tool…after COVID-19 hits and company announced for Work from home policy, everyone naturally start to use it quickly. There’s a good side in the bad situation!
For me, I am one of employee working at Japan Cloud-based software company with business development role who has over one year working-from-home (WFH) experience. I would like to share the 4 SaaS products I can’t live without.
( For reference, my company has adopted flexi hours and remote-work policy a few years before COVID-19 impact and this factor also plays an important role for our employee to shift to working from home without big problem.)
Top 4 SaaS applications I can’t live without
1. Chat workspace — Slack
Undeniably when you cannot see each other physically, the chance to walk to chat with your colleagues for a quick update is gone. Slack is a major communication tool we are using internally instead of email in traditional firms. Nowadays, I think none of you won’t have no clue what slack is, right?
Since slack is designed the approach for user to communicate by creating dedicated channel privately or publicly with the stakeholders as a channel members. It provides flexibility to integrate with other applications to automate or get notification as well as freedom to build your own app with available slack APIs. Besides that, it provide conveniences for you to join other slack community by adding the slack workspace on your console.
In my daily routine: First thing after opening my laptop, I check out out if any updates from company announcement in #official channel, then move to check if any notification from other slack channels that I need to do some task by using command /remind or saved items for me to check it out later if the notification comes during my meeting or discussion. Although I wish I can easily create task link to my own calendar.
I also uses a slack workflow builder to help me reduce the burden. I design the form to collect necessary information I need from the user and after the submission, it will notify me. Easy Peasy!
Besides that, the slack webhook from other app / email also help me focus mainly in slack without leaving to my mail inbox.
Since Slack seems to be able to create channel more freely, sometime you might feel overwhelmed with no. of channels and lost track in the information siloing.
Several official announcements from other divisions ranging from Human Resource, Policy updates, IT-Security check, or even a reminder to reimburse the company expense within the deadline from Finance-Accounting —the pain from various type of announcement. It would be nice if having a tool for employee to focus the things matter to individuals without…
time-consuming and difficulty to extract the information from the long text wall and missing out the important notice.
2. Workspace - Notion
Notion is sometimes known as the missing half of slack. It’s an awesome tool to help you manage several things with useful template that come with aesthetic design. I like the freedom to pick any view suitable for my projects. It consist of kanban style, calendar, gallery, table, or list view. The UI/UX is intuitive for the user with simple yet powerful design.
Since I am handling several projects, I normally use the kanban style to track my tasks across projects. It provide preview to integrate with other tool I usually use too such as Google form/Slide or Figma. Our division also use it for organize the meetings including 1-on-1, or division big meeting. It is easier to configure the filtering for each view, for example, filtering progress of each projects by quarter-basis in order to stay focus the activities it matters during current quarter, but also able to check back the previous quarter.
The other awesome small feature I love is Notion Web clipper — the extension on your browser that ease to manage your own knowledge management when you want to save the piece of information you are interested on the site you are exploring. Just a one click away. :)
3. Web conference — Zoom
There’s several web conference tool in the market but the most frequent one I use is zoom. During remote work, there’s increasing rate for no. of meeting due to WFH diminish the chance for bumping to each other in the office for quick update. Sometimes communicate through slack is alright but often time with asynchronous issue, quick zoom call always a better option whether it’s an ad-hoc urgent matter or to set a necessary meeting to discuss and gather a conclusion. Just be sure it’s a necessary thing to zoom because it usually drain out energy to stare in the monitor for long time.
Although I’m using zoom a lot but I feel it still lack of features to facilitate long meeting or seminar especially the function to for the host to observe the impression from the participants easily.
Recently there’s new conference tool called around. My team and I am quite amazed of how this tool can present itself such uniqueness in this red ocean market.
4. Google Workspace
Google Workspace is a new name replacing G Suite contains several features inside such as Doc, Sheet, Slide, Form, Site, etc. I am manage the shared drive containing several documents in form of Google Doc/Sheet/Slide with different access rights providing for different stakeholders involving in the project such as with Sales/ Customer success/ legal/ Patent team.
Before starting and ending my day, I always keep my Google calendar opened to check entire schedule throughout the day. As Google calendar provides option with color for each event, I use different color to categorize Meeting / Working by myself / Lunch or breaks / Casual chat to catch up with my colleagues.
I time-to-time utilize google form for purpose to conduct the user survey and collect internal feedback from the internal corporate innovation activities that my team organizes. Although it’s limited and not as beautiful as Typeform, it serves what standard form would have.
My team also uses Google Site as a portal to update all the important information / project guideline and policy providing to all employee in the company to check whenever they want. It is also convenient to track the user visit for improving the portal by linking to Google analytics.
So here’s top 4 SaaS products keeping me alive for WFH life; Slack, Notion, Zoom, Google Workspace. I hope the article give you some tips or comparison of SaaS products at your workplace.
How’s your WFH life? What’s your favorite SaaS applications helping you to keep focused, being productive or stay connected with others inside your company? :)
Drops in your favorite chat tools, task management tools or other productivity tool. Shares me if any tips you have been using or challenges you encountered.
