🦅 🐡 🥋 A bunch of SaaS services for communicating in an organization remotely 👰🏽 👩‍👦 👨🏻‍🏫

It all started very suddenly. I was asked to create a course on the ethics of electronic communications and the adaptation of information security systems to a situation where even those who are not used to being remote, are forced to work from home. Of course, this is directly related to the current state of affairs in the economy.

Of course, a lot will seem obvious to those who have long been on a remote site. If you are not used to seeing the combination of what is in the picture below, then I have bad news for you.

At present, it is difficult to seriously talk about some kind of “gold standard” or RCF with GOSTs that regulate the process of labor organization.

And yet, as a consultant, I can say that there is a certain set of best practices that exist.

The first and only rule

Do not try to reinvent the wheel.
Any bike is, by definition, doomed to failure.

Especially "Yes, we are all programmers here, now we will write a unique service for communications."

Yes, programmers. No, do not write. In any case, not in the next 5 years.

Slack

After all, even 5 years ago Slack already existed and developed. And he ended up where he is now, not by chance. And at the cost of the efforts of a huge number of people.

Behind the apparent simplicity lies a huge number of important trifles. In 2016, we even made a whole company around communications in slack, and it worked great. A company in a certain format still exists.

Slack has a large number of different integrations. All notifications from various company systems can be “closed” to it, so that people even chatting cheerfully and imitating working discussions (which, unfortunately, is not uncommon on a remote site), can detect an update in time and respond to it.

Jira

Jira was once a highly customizable boxed product, and even wildly paid. These times are gone. Jira for teams up to 10 people is free forever. And no one bothers you to get a separate fat for each team. This, of course, will create some inconvenience at first, but not much more than the concept of microservice architecture.

The company takes seriously both traditional followers of project management and Agile lovers.

Trello

This service is often the first that people begin to use as a result of its free. Most management systems cost money. And I must say, not in vain.

Some time ago, Trello was bought by the Atlassian company, producing Jira. This had a positive effect on both services. Jira has become easier to use, and Trello more like at least some kind of management tool. Nevertheless, it was initially just a system of working with ToDo-lists, that is, to-do lists of one or more people. You should not expect anything from her. If you don’t need anything else, fine.

GSuite

This name is rarely known even to those who use it every day for ten or more years. This is a collection of corporate mail and related services from Google.

When moving, it makes sense to transport all mail correspondence from any old mail servers. If this system was just mail, then one might naturally ask, “What is the worse the mail for a domain from Yandex or email”. But no. Since, among other things, this is a good calendar. As well as Google documents that employees will use anyway.

If you cannot defeat this, then a reasonable idea is to head. A centralized system will allow access control. And if Google is compromised, they will not tell about it except on the first channel.

Among the Google services, in addition to mail and calendar, also pay attention to Google Meet, which replaced the outdated Hangouts.

And also this saves you from having to pay for licenses for Microsoft Office 365, the purchase of which is difficult in the Russian Federation. Google documents have the ability to download and edit files in the Microsoft office format without converting them to the usual format for Google.

By the way, editing office documents is also available on Yandex.Disk, but the Yandex ecosystem in this regard is several years behind Google, and even having spent enough time with Yandex.Cloud partner, and before that Yandex employee for 3 years, I never changed my recommendations to use mail from Google. I used it before, during, and, of course, after I worked at Yandex. You quickly get used to the good and can no longer break the habit.

Zoom

Zoom is a service for video communications, for which not only the future, but also the present. Not so long ago, he went on an IPO, and now its value is growing every day. It has become a key video service in the corporate world.

Why? Because he has no analogues. It can gather up to 300-500 people at a video conference and give them the opportunity to simultaneously turn on the video. We conducted classes with a hundred back in 2017, and it did not slow down. Google Meet still can’t boast of it, and Skype can start to “choke” much earlier.

Zoom also has some nice little things:

The ability to open additional rooms right inside the conference and send people to chat 1-on-1 or in mini-groups of a different size.
Ability to dynamically change the background. Recently, MTS on its Facebook blog offered a free selection of static and video backgrounds for Zoom in support of remote work.
Record meetings of your choice on a computer or in the cloud.
Incredibly simple interface. That's right, "for the dumb."

The exception is only the first installation on the device. And also the maximum "bug free".

In the “distant” 2016th we switched to it with gotomeeting due to the large number of failures in the latter.

“Why aren't you happy with Skype?”

From the creators: “Why are you not happy with SVN, why do you need GIT?”

Just stop riding a dead horse, I mean, on Skype.

Yes, he slightly improved the interface. Yes, he learned to blur the background behind the speaker. But it still does not work well. Creates unnecessary noise, loss of connection. Performances with attempts to gather participants at the conference.

Even Microsoft itself recommends using Microsoft Teams instead, which is much larger than Skype, but rather a whole communications platform. By the way, he also became free for six months. I have no habit of using and recommending the products of this company. It is rather a matter of taste. I know so far only one company that he has visited quite well is Severstal.

In conclusion, I would like to recall that no tools, even the best, can be more important than human communication. They only contribute to it, not replace it.

A bunch of SaaS services for communicating in an organization remotely