Tools We Use and Why | Part 2

We value our communication process with the team - it's the things that allows us to stay at home and work remotely.

Hi there!

We hope you are all doing okay during this hard time of viruses outbreak! Remember that right now, Stay home == Stay safe!

Many businesses have been forced to close doors and lose profit. Many people were left without a job. Many people were forced to leave their homes despite the epidemic, being threatened that they would lose their jobs otherwise.

We at Webdesh are all about adapting to the situation and finding a way to wing it and continue doing what we’re doing, without putting anyone in danger.

That’s why we value our communication process with the team – it’s the thing that allows us to stay at home and work remotely.

Last week we introduced you to Part 1 of our favourite tools and today’s article is about the tools we use for communication.

Volodymyr Hryshchenko @ unsplash.com

Discord

We are modern people of a modern time and our team members are often in different places. That means that we need a place to voice our thoughts and concerns to the team at all times, and make sure the team will hear us, at all times.

If you’re familiar with gaming, we’re 88% sure you’ve used, or at least heard of, Discord previously.

We know that Discord is not the go-to team communication channel, but to be honest – it’s not too different than Slack. At least for what we are using it for. When we had to choose what type of communication tool we need for the team (other than Asana and email), I decided to research again and compare Slack and Discord as our 2 best options presented to us at the time. I have used Slack a lot, but we didn’t click. When I tried to automate it – too much spam, when I tried to integrate it – I had issues and was not happy. That was years ago, though, rest assured – the problem could have been me. But Discord seemed simpler, too similar and with a dark theme option (🤘). I don’t know if Slack has it now, but we decided to test Discord as something new and we never turned back.

So credit to Noble Hire for introducing us to Discord!

One of the many features we love is screen sharing. Another thing we love are voice channels. We use those for conference meetings, daily calls, etc. when all of us gather up and discuss something.

Polly @ Google Office in New York

Google Products

For communication and organizational stuff we use a lot of Google products, but we’re going to mark down the few that really make life easier for us.

We are going back to basics here, but Google products are quite essential for our work. Yes, we know that Dropbox, Proton mail, etc. have their other benefits, but Google knows how to hook you for life. When you have it all in one place and you can switch easily between each tool, you become loyal. And this is what we have become throughout the years 😀

So here are the Google products we use in our day-to-day tasks:

Google Drive – we use Google Drive for storing all information our clients give us for their websites. It’s awesome that you can create a lot of online docs such as Google Documents and Google Spreadsheets. This way both we and the clients can always stay updated on the progress of the project. All we need is an Internet connection and a shared document, simple as that!
Google Calendar – we looooove it! We use it for internal stuff – scheduling team meetings and events, as well as for working with clients – inviting them to a meeting or a phone call. This way each one of us is always up-to-date with anything that’s going on in the team – if anyone’s missing for the afternoon, or if someone’s in a meeting when you need to call them.
Gmail – most of us have tried using many different platforms (such as Outlook or the good old Abv.bg) for their mailboxes, but we’ve concluded that Gmail is really a no brainer. Aaaand, since it’s a Google product, it has a ton of useful documentation you can refer to when trying to do something. We love that you can connect more than one email account to receive messages in the same inbox. Often times we use the scheduling feature and the out-of-office auto response, of course. Overall, we use it for everything we can! 😀

Tim Gouw @ unsplash.com

We really hope this 2-part article has been useful for you, especially in a time such a now where all of us should stay at home and adapt to working remotely. Don’t forget to check out Part 1 of Tools we Use and Why. Share in the comments below whether you are going to try some of the tools or tools you love using. Stay tuned for more tech articles and stay safe!

Who wrote this article

Learn more about the author

Mirela Vaseva

Website Creator & Head of QA

/ IT, Software Engineering graduate 💻
/ good music, horror films, detective novels and delectable food 👌
/ YouTube videos junkie 🎥
/ animals, nature, water lover 🐱

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Tools We Use and Why | Part 2