We’re constantly tweaking our working environment partly due to finding better tools and partly due to the existing toolset improving.
What’s out
Skype – for IM
We found Skype to be particularly laggy when working cross platform, and we were hitting a issue when posting message. Several of the team were having a ‘pending’ status showing constantly for team messages.
We still use Skype for video chats and screen sharing.
Join.me
This looked perfect, light weight and reliable, but when InvisionApp introduced its LiveSharing feature, join.me feel out of use. We now use a mixture of Skype, and Invision to for screen based collaboration.
What’s in
Slack
Slack is a ‘It’s real-time messaging, archiving and search for modern teams’ and it work really well. You have different channels for different projects, as well as generic channels for team discussions etc. There’s an app for the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android and a Chrome app for windows PCs (let’s hope a native app arrives soon).
The pricing seems pretty reasonable too; for a team of 5 people it’s around $40 / month.
Matthew Goddard 