Originally Published at Troop Messenger 

Switching to remote work is a trend that dominates. The latest reports indicate doubling the number of remote workers in the recent 10 years. And despite the famous Yahoo ban in 2015 that forced the employees to return to the offices, the trend for remote job opportunities keeps on expanding globally.

Among driving forces facilitating this growth, there are new managerial practices and innovative tech solutions that enable top companies to increase hiring remote teams.

Lack of effective tools, however, might hinder the productivity of your team so making the right choice in terms of software that would empower the team collaboration, will save you from facing numerous challenges.

Below there is a list of 10 ultimate tools you will find useful when working with a remote team.

Troop Messenger 

When searching for more interactive team collaboration, Troop Messenger comes as a leader. It will satisfy any team’s needs due to the simplicity of its implementation in an entrepreneurial environment.   

Working as a fully-fledged business communication platform, Troop Messenger gives you instant access to unlocking a great number of functions: 

• Instant messaging

• Making video calls

• Conducting video conferences

• Sharing files

• Desktop sharing

• Creating complex schedules.

Arranging the work schedule within Troop Messenger will let you keep project info fully organized and, thus, secure all the project performance data.

GoToMeeting 

It is optimal in case you need a tool for arranging online meetings. It works both ways, with customers and team members. The tool provides a high-quality connection and ranges as the most reliable software. With support assisting you 24/7 and instant availability of joining or hosting the meeting options, you can start a meetup, webinar, or a regular call hassle-free.

GoToMeeting is an ultimate communication choice for remote teams. A click on the link across any device will be a signal for activating various options: 

• Sharing the screen

• Making notes over the images

• Recording the conversations

• Settings for adjusting the visibility of participants’ faces

ProProfs

ProProfs Project is not an over the top project management software but has made its name in the market for it's easy to use UI and simple features.

From startups to enterprises, anyone can use this robust project management tool to streamline workflow, boost team communication, and improve team productivity.

ProProfs Project helps you to:

• Create & track projects on one dashboard

• Track time spent on tasks by each team member

• Collaborate with your teams anytime, anywhere

• Create insightful reports in seconds

• Bill your clients automatically

TMetric

When you have to arrange the effective collaboration of your remote team, the first issue you need to address is means of providing accuracy of time calculations. 

TMetric is an effective time tracking tool as it not only enables recording data on your work time in a single-click from any gadget but also has additional functions coming handy for remote work mode:

• Creating an invoice

• Generating various reports (including the ones that will summarize your team performance on the project)

• Setting various pay rates for billable hours

• Offline time tracking

• Tagging projects for facilitating the workflow

• Available on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android and iOS

• Integrating with 100+ apps remote teams use in their work.

This Timesheet software help allocate tasks to employees, track time spent, keep track of billable time to charge customers, calculate payroll, create invoices and keep track of expenses. Here's a quick list of 10 different timesheet software solutions and how they can help you manage your team better. 

BlogIn 

BlogIn is a beautifully simple internal blog and knowledge-sharing platform for teams of all sizes. The internal blog acts as a central information hub or a ‘virtual bulletin board’ for the company, allowing all employees to stay in the loop with what’s going on in and around the office.

At the same time, the blog opens a new, transparent, two-way communication channel inside an organization, where everyone can ask a question and get the information they need to make faster and smarter decisions.

The internal blog is intuitive and easy to use, so everyone can quickly get on board, which is one of the reasons why it works so well as the internal communication tool.

• Share internal news and knowledge

• Improve internal communication

• Share files

• Boost company culture

• Enables transparent, two-way communication

Usernap 

"Show, don't tell" - use screenshots and illustrations to communicate issues accurately and quickly. Usersnap's widget can be easily installed on your staging website or use the browser extension to capture anything you see and want to share.

Microsoft, Facebook and many web companies employ Usersnap for issue reporting, QA, user acceptance testing and customer feedback. Visual bug reports and feedback saves you time and makes remote working so easy.

• Browser screen capture and annotations
• Tickets include metadata (screen size, browser version, URL and console logs)
• Assign, label, track and close tickets easily
• Integrates with 30+ tools such as Jira and Asana
• Live commenting
• Unlimited guest access

JotForm

JotForm is an extremely versatile online form builder which is suited for a team of any size. It doesn’t require any development skills as it’s essentially a drag-and-drop form builder. So, your entire team can benefit from it. It has a surprising amount of use cases which you can apply to your business or use it to manage your team.

You can use it to clock in the work hours of your employees, collect feedback, assign tasks, open bug reports and the list goes on, it’s all up to how creative you can get with it.

The best part is that you have a wide variety of customization options for the forms you create. You can prevent things from getting boring for your team and have a sustainable remote team. As there are way too many templates and customization options you can check a form design guide they have prepared.

• Easy to use and implement

• Makes collaboration seamless

• Loads of customization options

• Wide range of use cases

SmartTask

SmartTask is a simple yet powerful task and project management tool, which will help your team be more effective and efficient than ever before.

It brings the organization's tasks at one place thus everyone in a team has a clear overview of the team's progress, who's responsible and has clarity on the deadlines.

The tool enables you with the following features:

• Tasks, Projects and CRM in one tool

• Custom Fields to customize your tasks

• Multiple Projects in one single view with Portfolio feature

• Real-time communication and notifications

• Available on Desktop, Android and IOS

Tameday 

Tameday is the all-in-one workspace for teams and small businesses that are struggling to manage their projects and workloads with various separate tools and email- Bringing everything into one place

Tameday helps you to:

• Get rid of using email for internal communication by using Tameday's built-in chat feature.

• Keep your work and to-dos in one place within Projects,

• Communicate and share files with your team who are working remotely.

• Keep in contact with your clients by allowing them to see how projects are progressing,

• Keep you on track with to-dos, discussions, project due dates and your own personal calendar.

Wrike

Wrike is a perfectly illustrative example of how to integrate a favorite task management tool with time tracking software so that it could enhance your remote team productivity.

Wrike helps prioritize projects easily due to its intuitive design. It keeps all the info on tasks you perform. Additionally, when applying integrations in Wrike, you can:

• Estimate the project resources with precision,

• Adjust timelines for specific tasks,

• Reassign tasks to accommodate urgent requests

• Tailor your tasks to projects goals.

ClickUp 

It is a productivity platform that helps you create tasks and plan your projects. While implementing ClickUp, you have the unique opportunity to organize the scattered tasks into the unbroken workflow. 

With ClickUp, you get the abundance of options pertaining to:

• commenting on tasks,

• advanced task storing,

• agenda creating

• keeping your data as secure as you choose by regulating privacy settings.

Parabol

Parabol is software not bloated with extra functions as its primary goal is to provide your team with ‘free online retrospectives’. This part of project management practice is crucial for further planning and better estimation of the coming projects. This tool provides transparency of team priorities and accountability for task performance.

It is a perfect tool for remote work enabling cross-functional cooperation within a team by synching tasks in a dashboard on a daily basis. With Parabol, you can: 

• plan the day/week,

• mark the milestones upon a task completion (for monitoring the team progress),

• edit org charts

• send retrospectives (‘summary of a meeting’) email to your team

I Done This 

It is a tool suitable for remote teams of any size. It is of particular interest to managers who can monitor top team accomplishments in real-time, and, hence, save tons of time on holding meetings. 

Applying this software, your team gets access inside the app to:

• commenting on their tasks,

• generating word clouds marking the most frequent task components,

• notifications of a reminder email (‘What have you done today?’) for sharing the daily accomplishments

• "visuals," which breakdown accomplished tasks with color coding

Monday 

Suitable for any team size, it is a tool that will let you plan your tasks on a timeline so that nothing will fall between slots, point assignees and, thus, enhance accountability, and collaborate instantly for increased business productivity. 

The featured Monday options that you will surely like include the opportunity:

• to update the status on the task,

• to choose a customizable template for your sprints from the impressively big selection,

• Email notifications – get notified by email

Clarizen 

It is a team management solution designed to facilitate remote team collaboration. The software provides instrumental features to unite resources for more productive planning.

Implementing this tool means that your team can apply:

• reporting templates,

• creating their own dashboards,

• tracking tasks of various kinds in real-time

• adjusting the time and resource allocation to current business goals in terms of project profitability

Quip 

It is a productivity suite that unites spreadsheets and documents into the shared folders.

It is perfect in terms of goal settings for your remote team. It facilitates collaboration by sending reminders and instant sharing documents from one place. Your team will not have to dig deep to retrieve the documents.

Quip is accessible across any device so that you and your team can work from any place. Applying Quip, you can create:

• Project plans

• Territory plans

• Checklists

• Meeting notes

• Documentation

You can work over multiple projects: the sidebar is available from any screen in Quip so you can easily access your work, your favorites, and your teammates.

Teamwork

Teamwork Projects is an intuitive, feature-rich project management tool that lets your team reduce the complexity of collaboration.

It allows you to work together with context, transparency, and accountability — and with increased visibility and improved communication, you can keep collaboration at the core of everything you do.

Most Exciting Features 

• Collaborative workspace

• Flexible and feature-rich

• Instant messaging with Embedded Chat

• Portfolio feature to help you oversee multiple projects

• Resource management

LeadGen 

LeadGen App is a lead capture form-builder tool for digital marketers. It helps marketers build custom lead form and test them for best conversion rates. LeadGen App works via form embed code that works on all major landing pages and website editor platforms and via direct link sharing as well. The forms can be integrated to marketing software like CRM and email campaign tools.

LeadGen App also provides an analytics dashboard to check and improve the performance of the forms. Run AB tests to compare conversion rates of different form variations on a single landing page. Maximize your lead generation potential by testing & iterating your forms.

Helpjuice 

No matter where employees are working from, they need to be able to access the information required to do their jobs. Furthermore, simple tasks like keeping on top of the latest company updates or working on a document collaboratively can be difficult for employees working remotely.

This is where Helpjuice’s knowledge base software can help as it allows you to capture, store, and share company knowledge with ease regardless of where your employees are located. Your knowledge base can include HR procedures, training courses, team forums, webinars, and more – all of which ensures your remote team is able to effectively do their jobs.

In terms of document collaboration, Helpjuice offers a clean and simple interface that lets employees quickly create documents and co-edit them while keeping track of previous versions and authors. Additionally, Helpjuice’s commenting feature helps facilitate additional collaboration as it allows authors to select any text within a document and leave a note with any questions or thoughts.

Highlights:

• Create an easy-to-use internal knowledge base with best practices, tips, and onboarding documents
• Allow multiple authors to work on a single article and have each revision recorded.
• Commenting features that include the ability to comment on any text within an article and have those comments emailed to all author collaborators.
• Advanced analytics provides article insights as well as the performance of users/groups to help you better understand what employees are looking for and the most common questions.
• Google-like search helps employees find information quickly
• SaaS-based software so that employees can access information regardless of location or device

Soapbox

Imagine if every team meeting had a shared goal, agenda, notes, and follow-up? Soapbox's shared one-on-one and team meeting agenda software makes it easy to have productive and collaborative meetings. Some key features include:

• Collaborate on shared online agendas
• Meetings notes are integrated with your agenda
• Real-time commenting
• Suggested meeting questions
• Assign and track next-steps
• Post-meeting surveys to rate and track meeting effectiveness
• Integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google, mobile, Asana, Todoist and more!

Wrapping it up:

A trend for global cooperation and delivering your service internationally are motivating factors for many companies to increase remote hiring. With the tech tools presented in our list, remote team collaboration is unlimited due to enabling uninterrupted workflow, effective communication and full accountability of the work result metrics.