Remote work: our experience
#byod, #microsoft 365, #office 365
As you might know, IT Partner works as a distributed team. Since 2014 (some of us even earlier), we have been working and collaborating remotely. It wasn’t a simple shift. You should challenge yourself every day because you have YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, and all these other distractions around. Also, you may have kids and pets, too. As Jimmy Kimmel said yesterday, “Did you know you can make coffee at home?” And he even spelled his name on a cup correctly :)
So, we have some simple advice based on our experience on how to organize your remote work and stay both productive and creative.
- 80% of remote work is chats. Communication is king in these circumstances. For us it is particularly Microsoft Teams as a chat\calls\meetings tool. And you should like its "do not disturb" function. A constantly blinking chat kills concentration.
- Also, chats are just words on a screen. It does not express any emotions. If you want to say something important, better place a call to colleagues and say it by voice.
- But before calling, schedule a meeting! Microsoft Outlook and Teams have great calendar support and time management tools.
- Meetings may be recorded; Teams make it simple. And it should be followed up by an email.
- In remote work, there is a lure to start working without getting out of bed. This idea is bad. You should have a quiet working zone. It's hard to craft, but it really matters.
- Save files to the cloud so you can coauthor within the Microsoft 365 suite of products. Users should save individual documents and drafts in OneDrive, where files are private by default but can be shared. They should save shared documents to the Teams or SharePoint sites where your group works.
- Share links rather than attachments in email to make sure everyone's using the latest version of a document.
Do not hesitate to ask us about remote work. We will be able to help, rapidly.
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2020-03-19