Top 10 Tools for Teams Collaborating At a Distance

[Demetri Orlando]

1. Teams need a "home page" -- someplace they can rely upon to house all relevant links to tools and resources the team will be using. A ning group creates a nice home page, since it includes head-shots of participants, messaging, and discussion boards.

 
2. For larger teams, an email list-serve is essential. Smaller teams don't need the formality of a list-serv, but do need to ensure consistent use of all team members on email chains.

 
3. Plain old telephone calls continue to be an essential tool for meetings at a distance.

4. Instant-messaging and chat are important for synchronous communication for both large and small group work. (e.g. a chat room can be a useful tool for "back channel" participation during a telephone conference call.

5. Collaborative online document spaces (i.e. Google docs) are an essential element for groups creating documents, presentations, etc.

6. Wiki pages are also useful for collaborative document creation, but can present issues for multiple simultaneous editing. An advantage of wikis over Google Docs are the "discussion" and history tabs.

7. Web conferencing (e.g. WebEx, Go2Meeting, Elluminate) are useful for synchronous online meetings where a presenter wants to display slides, share desktops, or do website tours.

8.

 

9.

 

10. Project management is essential for business-related online teamwork. Tools like basecamp provide to-do lists, time tracking, deliverables tracking, etc.
Please contribute ideas for 8 & 9!
Inspired by a post on readwrite web