WAMBUGU: Apps to make working from home easy

The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed many employees to work from home. For a number of them, this is uncharted territory.

While working from home slows the spread of the disease, it can present workers with a myriad of obstacles.

Fortunately, a handful of apps are available to help them stay on track. These apps can enable communication, project management and allow access to business processes such as sharing files, document scanning and signing.

While working remotely, the Slack application can help colleagues keep tabs on each other and foster collaboration. Teams can use the app to chat as well as share files and website links. Think of Slack as an instant messaging app, but with more features to enable teams to work virtually.

When staff desire face time, videoconferencing can bridge the gap between people at different locations. You probably have already used a videoconferencing app such as Zoom, Skype and Google Hangouts.

For project management purposes, Trello is one of the freely available and most used applications. It helps remote workers to present benchmarks, tasks, activities and goals of their project. It also makes it easy to track assignments and progress in a highly visual, easy-to-read interface.

Remote working also requires that a team have a central platform on which to share and store files. Dropbox and Google Drive are two applications that provide such service. Instead of sending out large files via email, just drop them into these secure storage spaces for colleagues to access.

Signing documents is a daily office function. To sign remotely, you need an application that helps you create and use a digital signature. Online signature removes the need to move documents from one signatory to another, physically. Both DocuSign and HelloSign are commonly used for this.

A scanner is one of the most used office equipment. At home, you can use your smartphone and the Tiny Scanner Plus app to scan documents – all you need is to take a picture of a document  and convert them into pdf format if you want and email them.

Working from home often comes with distractions from other people and events happening at or around the house. To block these distractions and bring focus, you can add myNoise to your arsenal of productivity apps. It offers a customised white noise soundtrack.

Here is my point: As we wait for the coronavirus to peter out, work need not stop. We have a suite of digital tools that can help us create unfettered professional, productive and focused home office environment.

Mr Wambugu is an informatician. Email: Twitter: @samwambugu2