There are several (as in many) different remote work platforms that organizations are adopting and have been suggesting to the COVID Continuity team. This is a rollup of the different platforms for chat, video meetings, and teleconferencing.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines persistent workplace chat, video meetings, file storage, and application integration. The service integrates with the company’s Office 365 subscription office productivity suite and features extensions that can integrate with non-Microsoft products. We use this pretty heavily at Punchcard since it’s part of the Office system.
It’s part of the Office 365 family of products, so if your organization is already using that, Teams is easy to get going in your business. There is a free version of the platform available.
Zoom
For individuals looking to set up fast video conferencing, the free tier of Zoom allows for meetings under 40 minutes, up to 100 participants, and free 1 on 1 meetings.
Slack
Slack made persistent chat the standard for tech companies and few years ago, and is still wildly popular with enterprises as well as community groups (for example, the CODEVID-19 hackathon is running through a Slack group. We’ve included some great tips from Slack in terms of running remote work teams.
Google Meetups
For organizations using G Suite, Google Meetups is a popular choice, and during the outbreak, Google will be giving all paid features to G Suite subscribers, including large meetings (up to 250 people), live streaming, and recording.
Unhangout
Suggested by James Aitchison
Created by the MIT Media Lab, Unhangout is an open source platform for running large-scale, participant-driven events online.
Each event has a landing page, which we call the lobby. When participants arrive, they can see who else is there and chat with each other. Hosts can welcome their community and do introductions in a video window that gets streamed into the lobby. Participants can then join breakouts, which are small group video chats, for in-depth conversations, peer-to-peer learning, and collaboration on projects.
Tadum
With remote meetings, need to develop new ways to stay accountable to our organization and our peers. Tools like Tadum can help streamline agenda and minutes, to keep us on track.
If you have other tools that you think could be valuable for virtual and remote meetings, please let us know.