What are the go-to applications you and your team can’t do without? Over the last 12 months, organisations have turned to tech in order to maintain communications, keep up team motivation and ensure collaborative working. While the likes of Zoom and MS Teams were the obvious winners in this scenario, there are other applications that have enabled us to work slicker, smarter and maintain a sense of community while working from home.

For gravity9 our modern way of working means the work from home request was just business as usual, however, we have embraced our go-to applications more than ever and found ourselves utilising new ones. While our application suite comprises of multiple products we use daily here are the top three remote working tools we couldn’t manage without.

1. Miro – the collaborative whiteboard

Introduced to the team by our Experience Director Andy Newman, “Everyone I have recommended Miro to has picked it up instantly, it’s the holy grail between bloated features and too minimal to be useful.” Miro is a useful whiteboard collaboration tool which can be used for anything from project brainstorming to workflow creation to strat plans. “I like Miro for its infinite-ness” says gravity9 Founding Partner Noel Ady. Miro offers flexibility to define a workspace or expand the whiteboard infinitely. There are multiple templates and tools which enable you to build and create almost anything. Colleagues can collaborate on the same whiteboard in real time and you have the option to export to pdf or jpeg. The only downside to Miro is it’s not designed for vast quantities of text or text editing but we will take that against all its upsides. It is now a staple application across the whole of the gravity9 team.

2. Slack – communication platform

Slack has been used by the gravity9 team since day one. It acts as an instant messaging board whereby the communications are split into channels. As a business we run individual channels for project work, business functions and company wide communications. However, it doesn’t have to be all work though we also have channels for our gravity9 playlist, and fun random channels to share memes, ask for help, comment on hot topics or simply shout out to colleagues. “Slack allows you to share files, make video or voice calls and invite external partners into specific channels for collaboration” says Marketing Manager Emma Benham. “I have it open all day and it has overtaken email as my most used application, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t use it.”

3. Jira / Azure Boards – project management tools

Our Solution Architects utilise Jira and Azure Boards daily to manage projects, tracking progress, sharing ideas and communicating updates to the team. “These boards are designed for agile teams and are a great way to instantly see what is outstanding, closed and active, as well as new actions to address” says Solutions Architect Michal Szkudlarek. These boards may be the obvious choice for a business like gravity9 but they enable easy day-to-day collaboration and tailored dashboard and analytics allow PM’s to have a holistic view of each project. “We know where we are and we have the option for using scrum boards to help with sprints and timelines.” There is often a love / hate relationship with teams and these boards and although they work for gravity9 they don’t work for everyone.

What are the top three applications your business would be lost without?

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