Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

July 2022

12 Best To-Do List Applications to Simplify Your Task Management in 2022

Task management software has become an important part of everyone's productivity arsenal. As our lives have increasingly become hectic, it becomes harder and harder to keep track of everything that needs to get done. To solve this issue, there are numerous apps for task management, to-do list software, project management software, list making apps, note taking apps, team communication tool, team collaboration software, instant messaging apps, to-do list management etc.

6 Features of the Best Call Center Chat Software

When it comes to call center chat software, you have a lot of options to choose from. It can be hard to decide which one is right for your business, especially when most of them seem very similar on the surface. However, there are some key features that set these systems apart from each other—and knowing about them can help you find the best solution for your needs. Here are some features to look out for in a good call center chat software.

Live Voting in Annual General Meetings: What You Need to Know

In annual general meetings, apart from presenting annual reports and interacting with shareholders, voting is one of the most sought activities. This includes voting on electing the next board of directors, approving resolutions, and settling motions. However, as meetings are now held virtually or in a hybrid format, regulating authorities are requiring an efficient and transparent live voting technology.

Your Guide to Shifting to Hybrid University Model

There is no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic has completely redefined not just the workflow of businesses but also educational institutions. From holding online classes and board meetings remotely in the past two years, to shifting to yet another relatively new work setup, such changes further reinforced the need for innovation in modern governance.

4 ingredients to unlock your team's creativity

There are a number of qualities that leaders hope their teams exhibit. Productive. Efficient. Collaborative. Engaged. But there’s another term that should rank near the top of this list: Creative. When McKinsey research shows that creativity is directly correlated with high performance, you want your team to feel empowered to bring their best ideas to the table. So here’s the question: How do you unlock your team’s peak creativity?

Accessing your brand assets in Miro just got even easier

This situation might seem all too familiar: You’re working in Miro, need quick access to your brand’s logo for an upcoming presentation, but can’t remember where it’s stored. You open multiple tabs, search your history, and minutes later, find the icon you need… but this endless search loop continues to pop up throughout your work day. Even internally at Miro, we know this problem all too well.

23 essential remote work tools for distributed teams in 2022

‍“Can you see my screen?” “Let me try on my earphones.” “Let me share my screen.” “Am I audible?” These are some of the things commonly said and heard in a remote workplace if you don’t use the right remote work tools. As organizations are adapting to the remote and hybrid work culture in the post-pandemic era, employees have the freedom to work from anywhere.

The Best Gaming Chat Apps in 2022

Gaming chat apps have significantly increased sales in the gaming sector. Some gaming businesses created their chatting apps to provide their users or gamers with comprehensive functionality, while others permit the integration of well-known gaming communication apps. Since there haven't been many games on the market with a chat component, mobile games with chats are gaining popularity.

What's the key to measuring developer productivity?

Developer productivity metrics are an important part of any engineering team’s growth and improvement; the right metrics can help you better forecast project timelines, understand where to allocate resources, and manage your team’s workload. But measuring developer productivity has been challenging, and, when incorrectly applied, can seem to all but wring every last line of code from overworked developers.

10 visual collaboration templates to inspire innovation

When the pandemic hit, organizations struggled to support a workforce in upheaval. According to one McKinsey study, companies were experiencing an innovation crisis. Ninety percent of executives believed that the pandemic would fundamentally change the way they do business – and just 21% felt equipped to pursue new growth successfully. Now more than ever, executives are prioritizing innovation-led growth, aiming to draw out sharp, creative ideas to shape the future of doing business.

Webinar: Collaborate Seamlessly with Zoho Projects + Microsoft Teams

Promote contextual work conversations by integrating Zoho Projects with Microsoft Teams. You can now collaborate seamlessly by bringing your Projects work items right within Teams. Watch this webinar to learn how to set up and work with the Zoho Projects + MS Teams integration.

Customer Service Trends in 2022

With 92% of consumers expecting to continue to contact customer service at or above pandemic-era rates, we are facing a future where companies that aren’t customer-centric will have a hard time surviving. This is why companies must keep up with customer service trends so that they’re able to cater to these evolving customer needs.

How to democratize ideation in your organization - and why it matters

Look at any desktop or in any junk drawer and you’re bound to see a stack of Post-It Notes. You may be surprised to learn that the idea for Post-It Notes wasn’t born out of endless focus groups or relentless brainstorming sessions, nor to fulfill a high-level corporate strategy or objective. Rather, a couple of curious employees at 3M are responsible for creating what has grown into one of the company’s most recognizable products.

10 best employee communication software & apps in 2022

An employee communication software makes communication more effective whether an organization manages remote or on-premise employees. There are several employee communication apps (besides messages, emails, and phone calls) to make team communication and collaboration easier. However, this also poses challenges to the employer – they have less control over data security and privacy.

Time Tracking Tools for Business

“Time isn't the main thing. It’s the only thing.” This quote by Miles Davis aptly summarizes the importance of time management in an entrepreneur's life. While there are thousands of time-tracking tools available on the internet for every purpose you could think of, finding the right one that suits your needs is quite a challenge. Given the pros and cons of each one of them, it’s quite a time-consuming (pun intended) exercise.

Outdoor Team Building Activities to Keep Your Team Connected and Engaged

Team building activities are socializing exercises for teams with the purpose of strengthening teamwork relationships among coworkers. These activities are an excellent approach to building upon a number of skills like creative thinking and collaboration. According to Globoforce research, workplace relationships are vital to 89 percent of employees’ total quality of life.

10+ Best SaaS Product Review Websites of 2022

SaaS product review websites are essential for business owners or users in making informed decisions. With all due respect to SaaS companies, they are so prone to SaaS product promotion that they boast about their products in the same way a mother would about her children in the content they produce, intending to capture users' attention. I'm sure they have confidence in the capabilities of their SaaS products, but it's clear that user needs are essential when narrowing down the product options.

How to Create the Ideal Shift Schedule (Free Template Included)

A well-thought-out shift schedule can be your competitive advantage, especially in industries that need to operate 24/7, like healthcare and law enforcement, and in companies that need to offer round-the-clock support. Not only will a customer service representative’s shift schedule impact their overall mental and physical health, they also disrupt sleeping patterns – which can affect an employee’s energy and durability.

Internal Communications and Digital Transformation

What does a movie about baseball have to do with digital transformation strategy? If you’ve ever seen the film, Money Ball, it’s the story of Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A‘s baseball team, who’s charged with a Herculean task—building a winning baseball team on a shoestring budget. But since he’s pretty good at math, he pioneers the field of sabermetrics—the empirical analysis of baseball stats to find players with untapped potential.

7 Ways To Improve the Skills of Employees Remotely

Remote work has become a part of our present, and in the near future, it will attract almost all areas of our life into its comfortable environment. No one says that chefs will cook food for us in restaurants remotely, but the accountant, manager, managers, and some other employees can choose this path and take work outside the restaurant for a couple of days a week.

Is your team using too many productivity tools?

Everyone has experienced it at some point. You’re sure that your teammate shared that key bit of information with you somewhere…but was part of a Jira issue? A comment on a Figma mockup? A long-lost DM between you, your teammate, and someone else a few months ago? If you spend more time hunting down the right information than you do actually using it, you may have a tool overload problem.

You can't beat burnout alone-but you can start here

Burnout is not a feeling. Burnout is a physiological and neurological condition that can take months to develop and months to undo. Throughout the working world, both burnout and imposter syndrome are pervasive: Asana’s Anatomy of Work research has found that seven in 10 knowledge workers experienced either burnout or imposter syndrome in the last year, with an average of 42% experiencing both. These data suggest that the root causes of burnout and imposter syndrome may be linked.

Common Courier Troubleshooting Solutions for Developers

If you’ve worked on a digital product, whether as a developer, product manager, or business leader, you know that the most common problems in software development are rarely as straightforward as “bugs.” The root of the problem tends to require a little more trial and error. Using Courier is no different.

Connect your workflows with new apps from Airtable, ClickUp, Gtmhub, Unito, and Smartsheet

If you’re an Airtable, Clickup, Gtmbub, Unito, or Smartsheet user, your workflows are about to get even smoother and more connected. With Miro’s robust new slate of apps and integrations, you can move your projects from ideation to planning to execution with ease. With our tools for streamlining the transitions between phases of work, the status of your tasks automatically stays up-to-date in all your go-to-tools, like magic.

How Rewards & Recognition Can Improve Employee Engagement

As far back as 776 B.C., Olympic athletes competed in ancient Greece for fame, honor, and glory. City-states used the Games to assert influence and importance. Do you know what the only official reward for winning in the ancient Olympics was? A crown of olive leaves. Not as valuable of an award as you might think for one of the biggest events in the ancient world. Not that we think you should reward your Employee of the Month with an olive wreath.

How Courier Became HIPAA Compliant

When thinking about handling PII (Personally Identifiable Information) for SaaS companies, standards like SOC 2 compliance and GDPR immediately come to mind. One of the most sensitive types of information for a tech company to handle, however, is actually PHI, or protected health information. To be able to handle this type of data, a company must become HIPAA compliant.

10 best practices to effectively manage distributed teams

Working from home is the new norm, with most employees embracing remote work. Flexible work models have plenty of benefits for both employees and companies while having little to no negative impact on productivity levels. However, distributed teams have their own challenges. Managers must adapt to workers in different time zones, implement asynchronous communication, and ensure remote workers are still engaged.

How Can a Board Portal Improve the Cybersecurity of Financial Institutions?

Security should be the utmost concern for all financial institutions for various reasons. Top on the list is to protect customer and client assets. By strengthening cybersecurity measures, financial companies can ensure that customer data is protected — eventually securing trust from stakeholders. This calls for financial boards to integrate advanced security measures across all governance practices, including meetings and data management.

Creating a Unique "Welcome to The Team" Kit for New Employees

The famous saying “first impression is the last impression” is certainly familiar to you. Even if you’ve heard this pearl of wisdom before, you have to acknowledge that it still stands true and can be applied to almost every circumstance, including employee onboarding. According to research, an efficient onboarding is essential to maximizing your employee’s work performance.

Virtual Whiteboard Sessions: 8 Best Practices to Enhance Remote Team Collaboration

There is no doubt that collaboration is the fuel that drives innovation and team productivity. And virtual whiteboard sessions, among other means, can significantly boost collaboration in remote work environments. Through virtual whiteboarding, teams across levels and locations can easily brainstorm ideas. Moreover, unlike analog whiteboards, virtual sessions capture discussions in the digital space, making them accessible for use after the session.

Evolve your communications strategy with Simpplr's modern newsletter

Whether you view email newsletters as a valuable vehicle for company-wide updates or as noise that weighs down your inbox, the fact is that email isn’t going away, and neither is using email newsletters for internal communications. If your primary method of employee communication is by email or email newsletters, you’re not alone.

What Is Digital Transformation?

The term ’digital transformation‘ is a lot like love. It means different things depending on who you ask. IBM, a long-standing technology leader, offers this mouthful: “us AI, automation, hybrid cloud and other digital technologies to leverage data and drive intelligent workflows, faster and smarter decision-making, and real-time response to market disruptions.” Still kind of nebulous, huh?

5 things C-suite leaders need to understand to optimize hybrid collaboration

Hybrid collaboration is complex. It’s not just about “in the office” or “not in the office” — it’s also about leadership, connection, creativity, and the technology that enables your teams to adapt. Over 77% of companies have adopted a hybrid work model, but how can executive leadership optimize it for their teams? Here’s some of the lessons we’ve learned to help leaders cultivate hybrid collaboration.

Everything you need to know about collaborative meetings

In business, meetings can feel like wasted time more often than not. It’s true that no team gets anywhere without a collaborative spirit and tight lines of communication. But there’s a reason for the saying, “too many cooks spoil the broth.” Trying to engage everyone in everything with no process and structure for doing so can lead to stagnation.

Innovation Matrix: How to Elevate Product Development Within Your Company

In an ever-evolving marketplace, companies have to constantly innovate new products or update existing ones to satisfy customers. A stagnant product line can lead to customers choosing newer or better products from competitors. Ideas drive innovation. But leaders have a tough time sorting through the hundreds of ideas from different concepts, teams, and products. Categorizing and prioritizing these ideas can help teams focus on the innovations with the highest potential for success.

Ready, set, goals: What's New in Asana, July 2022

Great things happen when teams see the value of their work. But often, strategic initiatives are disconnected from day-to-day projects, leaving employees uncertain about their top priorities. According to the 2022 Anatomy of Work Index, nearly 1 in 3 employees can’t see a clear link between their day-to-day efforts and their company’s goals. To fulfill an organization’s mission and be effective, teams must have clarity about their goals and what’s needed to achieve them.

How to Write a Strategic Plan and What it Should Include

As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Whether you’re a lumberjack or not, there’s a powerful truth to Lincoln’s wise words. And that’s the importance of planning. Coming up with a solid strategic plan is a crucial aspect of any business. How can you expect to achieve your objectives if you don’t know what you’re aiming for?

Which is a Better Option: TeamSpeak vs Discord?

Are you having trouble deciding between TeamSpeak vs Discord as the best platform? Then this blog is for you since it will help you make an informed selection. The development of games, from the release of the first arcade game in 1972 to the recent launch of cloud games from Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, and Google, is quite impressive. Unless it's a puzzle or a little fun, no gaming company would consider releasing a game without making it compatible with chatting apps or offering in-game chats.

How Can Team Leads Encourage More Voices In Virtual Meetings

Virtual meetings have undeniably improved workplace communications. With so many remote team communication tools with advanced features like Q&A, breakout rooms, chat, reaction icons, virtual whiteboards, and so on, it has never been easier to ask questions and seek ideas from meeting attendees. But, think back to your virtual meetings this week. How many of them were successful? Are awkward silences the norm in your meetings?

5 ways to keep remote employees engaged via communication

Over the next few years, remote working will become more popular. Numerous businesses and workers are now realizing the benefits of remote working as they have grown accustomed to it. Digital workplaces are a new normal after the outbreak of COVID-19. This significant career change was undertaken by millions of workers throughout the world, and companies also had to adjust accordingly.

How Web Development Relies on Powerful Website Feedback Tools

There are numerous website feedback tools out there. However, the variety of feedback applications allows you to quickly see which tool is best for your business. Considering the digital marketing outlook, there are so many tools listed that it can become virtually impossible to estimate the best outcome generated by each. Forbes describes conversion rate optimization (CRO) as providing a 223% ROI which is a real business indicator that has a direct impact on revenue.

How to Create and Share Your Company's Core Values with Your Team

Developing and implementing strong company values can totally transform your business – it can help managers to make better decisions, stakeholders to hire the right people, and employees to exemplify the best parts of your business culture. While they may seem insignificant, establishing clear core values can be a huge asset and play a big part in elevating your company.

The Employee Experience as a Human Experience

Simpplr partnered with Ragan Communications to explore this theme in our 3 Approaches to the Strengthening Employee Experience eBook. We see that the workplace is in a time of change and that it may never return to the way it was before. The new remote reality has been proclaimed as something that will not go away.

What's New in Asana - Asana Goals edition | July 2022

Welcome to the July edition of What’s New in Asana! This month, we have a special edition look at Goals. Asana Goals enable you to link your organization’s mission with day-to-day work in one shared space. With the addition of My goals, you can see how your work contributes to the organization's objectives and easily navigate between your organization’s mission, company goals, team goals, and the goals you own.

10 best instant messaging platforms

Instant messaging platforms are more popular than ever. With the rise of instant messaging giants like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat, we can only expect more intense communication via texting. Moreover, instant messaging platforms are taking over business communication as well. Lean and user-friendly messaging solutions have taken over telephone, faxing, and emailing. They enable teams to communicate and collaborate more successfully, even in a hybrid work environment.

Real Time Communication with Live Support Software

A live support software system is a handy tool for businesses. It is a great way to provide customer support for your business. It allows real-time communication between employees and clients; hence it can be a great addition to your customer service arsenal. Well, while chat systems are becoming more and more popular, there are many types of live chat software out there. Some are free, some you pay for, and some are even cloud-based. But don’t fret.

What makes a successful agile team in a hybrid world

To meet the challenges of the future, businesses have to stay agile. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that in 2020—one of the most challenging years on record—businesses with agile practices outperformed non-agile teams on almost every dimension that matters. Agile organizations saw greater customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and operational performance than their competitors.

Getting ready for the App Directory: The messages tab | Slack Platform | Slack

The messages tab of your App Home provides a great way to interact with your users, but if configured incorrectly, you may have issues during the App Directory review process. Slack Developer Advocate Sandra Illi Villarreal walks through some of the things you’ll need to consider to help your review go smoothly

What we launched in June 2022

Our mission to empower teams to unlock new ways of collaborating motivates us every day to invent powerful-yet-simple tools. This month, we released features and updates to help you keep your projects on track and your workflows united, with fresh frameworks, a new shape pack, improved integrations, and more. To see how Miro’s newest innovations can help your team work better together, check out our roundup of releases from June.

How to reduce video meeting stress with science

If you work from home, you’ve faced this dilemma: You want to show face during a video meeting to signal engagement with your job, but video meeting stress is the unavoidable consequence when you go on camera. It’s been more than two years since millions started working from home, and by this point, we’re all tired of seeing our own faces.

The Skills for Collaboration: What You Need to Know About Working Effectively as a Team

When it comes to working together, we could think it’s all about delegating tasks and letting people be, right? Yet, this premise is far from the truth! Effective collaboration allows for different points of view and interpersonal skills to be brought together to reach a common goal. Therefore, to build a collaborative environment, you need to develop collaboration skills; this is exactly why we are here!

Best Remote Management Tips and Tools to Boost Team Productivity

Many people prefer to work remotely because they don’t have to commute and enjoy more flexibility. It gives them the opportunity to tailor their schedules to fit their lifestyles and find a better work/life balance. According to FlexJobs, 60% of women and 52% of men will quit their jobs if their employers do not offer remote work. Having to manage remote employees can be challenging for managers who still have a traditional mindset.

Dynamic fields and conditional logic | 30 Days of Form Demos | Jira Service Management

For Day 3, learn how to show and hide questions from users with the new form builder in Jira Service Management. Build your first form without even logging in: New to Jira Service Management? Get it for free today: Click here to see all the videos in this series: Subscribe:

Top Reasons Every Company Needs Business Communication to Succeed

Management problems are not uncommon in large, multileveled organizations. In many cases, the root of the issue lies in the communication channels between employees, stakeholders, and management, which causes information to be lost or distorted. Poor communication hampers decision-making. It also creates conflict and silos within the company. According to research, 86% of business executives and employees acknowledge workplace failures to be products of weak communication.

Element launches Chatterbox!

It’s a surprise to most people that the majority of embedded chat is not end-to-end encrypted (E2EE). And that’s perfectly understandable. You’d automatically think that a healthcare insurance firm would provide its customers with E2EE webchat. Or that when you’re in your bank’s app, the live chat would be E2EE. But it’s generally not the case. Test it out now - open your banking or healthcare app and ask if the live chat is end-to end encrypted.

Why asking, "How are you feeling today?" is so important for managers leading through change

When you’re driving change to your stakeholders—be it the executive team, your employees, the board, or even the customers—the situation comes with its own gravitational force. “You have every opportunity to lose trust and to see it erode. So being genuine and getting it right really matters,” Anna Binder, Asana’s Head of People, explains to me in her matter-of-fact style during a recent phone call.

Hybrid is breeding a divided workforce-stay connected with a shared digital workspace

As we shift into a new world of hybrid work another glaring trend is emerging: the workforce is more divided than ever. Today, people work in silos, ideas get lost in separate tools, and isolated teams lead to disengagement, work waste, and slowed progress. Among employees who self-identify as disengaged, 75% are actively looking for new work. The reality is, we have a digital economy, which requires a new way of working that is digital first, multi-team and multi-location.

The Art of Listening and the Science of Learning From Feedback

Simpplr is introducing an innovative Live EX platform feature to transition into a new era of Internal Communications. The new reality is that the world of internal communications is evolving. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic changed the employee experience. Many workers found themselves isolated, and leaders had to learn to institute technological changes to cross those divides and provide clarity around organizational priorities and values.

Maximizing your existing tech stack investments with Slack | Frontiers 2022 | Slack

Join Slack’s Sr Product Marketing Manager, Clara Smyth, to learn more about how to maximize your existing tech stack investments – whether they are Microsoft, Salesforce or other tools and technology. Learn how IBM has made Slack their engagement layer to activate their investments (Microsoft O365) and how they created a new digital HQ for all employees with Slack.

Field and question types | 30 Days of Form Demos | Jira Service Management

Check out all the field types available in the new Jira Service Management form builder. Welcome to Day 2 of the Forms for Jira Service Management 30 Days of Demos. Build your first form without even logging in: New to Jira Service Management? Get it for free today: Click here to see all the videos in this series: Subscribe:

Top 6 Cloud-Based Management Platforms for IT Teams

The cloud-based service market was worth more than $270 billion in 2020. In 2022, the numbers have gone up even more. Every business now wants to migrate to the cloud, and for good reasons. Cloud-based management platforms make it easier for any business to scale. At a time when every process is digitized, not opting for a cloud management platform makes very little sense. It’s the single biggest contributing factor to the success of several small businesses.

11 Best Project Management Tools for Teams in 2022

Project management is a critical part of business processes. Without an effective project management app, tasks can quickly fall behind and deadlines can be missed. In today’s blog post, we will be discussing the 11 best project management tools for teams. These tools are sure to help you stay organized and on track with your projects!

How to become a DevOps engineer

It’s a big industry, software. There’s a lot of money to be made, and a lot of fun and satisfaction to be had. With skills in DevOps, you’ll always be in demand – as a freelancer, or as an employee. But DevOps isn’t for everyone, and it’s certainly not an easy ride. Let’s look at what it takes to practise DevOps, and how to become a DevOps engineer.