Managing virtual teams and making sure they are productive can be challenging at times. Using the right set of tools helps simplifying the process and amplifying the results. Here is a list of some very useful tools:

Invoicera

Invoicera is one of the best tools for managing your virtual teams. It helps in tracking time spent on projects. You can easily share important files as attachments within tasks and projects. The product helps in assigning tasks to team members and tracking their productivity. It also helps in knowing the status of each and every task and the overall work-in-progress.

Google Drive
The easy to use document creating and sharing platform helps in saving time and effort of saving important documents in the system. The tool helps in automatically saving all your documents on the drive. The documents can be accessed online from anywhere and allows the users to add comments and share them via e-mail.

Dropbox

This is another very convenient tool for storing and sharing large files. The business version helps you access the app from anywhere – Web, Mobile and Apps for Windows, Mac and Linux. The data can be synced across devices and can be shared automatically with other users and clients. The Dropbox mobile app is available across operating systems. The personal folder in Dropbox can be separated from the business folder.

Teamviewer

A tool that helps you with remote access for computers present in offshore locations. The software helps in multiple computers talking to each other for meetings in virtual environment. The remote PC can be easily accessed with the help of a number and a password. The software also enables you to access a mobile device from the PC. It also helps in easily transferring files to remote desktops. The software is a very useful tool to manage virtual teams better.

Skype
Skype is one of the most common tools to connect with and manage a virtual team. The tool helps in video and audio chats and let’s you add a group of up-to 9 people. The tool also makes it possible take or send calls to mobile devices.

HighTail
Sharing large files on the cloud is very simple with this powerful tool. Share large and important files and folders with your remote teams online. The tool provides a link of the file which can then be downloaded by the receiver with ease.

World Clock

Keeping a track of a remote team who is working in a different time zone can be very difficult. The app let’s you quickly get an overview of all the time zones relevant to you. It’s not a free app but definitely adds to your productivity while managing multiple remote teams.

Kapost
The tool is suitable for news companies and media houses looking to manage teams of virtual writers. Everyone on the team can contribute their ideas in a virtual environment and these can be approved or rejected. The tool also allows for payments to be made with respect to the work completed by individual contributors. This really helps in improving content quality of a remote team.

Slack
Slack is a virtual room that helps you share documents and review them online in a virtual room. The tool does away with email and saves a lot of effort in improving upon important documents. The feed in the tool helps keep updated of the latest in the meeting room.

Flowdock
Flowdock is a very interesting tool for managing your virtual team. It helps you integrate all the tools you are using. It allows the user to create chat threads that help in making processes really quick. The tool works across devices and platforms.

Sqwiggle
Keep a check on your remote teams with this cool app. The tool allows you to check whether the remote worker is working on the system or not. The tool has powerful features like team chat and screen-sharing that make collaboration very easy.

Cloud9

This is a powerful tool to help you collaborate all your development work from one place.
Use it to work in teams to collaborate and develop together. The tool provides a single coding environment to save time and improve productivity.

Skitch
Take and send screenshots using this easy to use tool. You can add annotations and share these files easily with the drag and drop feature. You can also markup and sketch your documents using this powerful tool.

Helpscout
Client support is an important aspect of any business and if more than one person is working on these, then the whole process can become very confusing. This is a unique collaboration tool that helps in managing the support tickets better. The tool also helps with advanced reporting for better analytics.

Realtime Board

A whiteboard collaboration is the best way to get to brainstorm ideas and make meetings more fruitful. This tool helps you do a lot of stuff like adding notes, charts and drawings to your online whiteboard. Get the free basic account and simplify your online meetings.

1Password
Easily share all your important passwords using this useful tool. Different teams can be given relevant folders with passwords in them. As a remote team manager you can be assured of your passwords with this tool.

iDoneThis
The tool is an interesting motivational and task tracking app that helps in knowing what work has been done by whom. The e-mail box shows everything done by the team, the previous day.

LICEcap
An awesome bug reporting tool, LICEcap helps in reporting bugs and collaborating online easily. The tool helps in creating animated gifs of the screen. Multiple images can be captured and used using this helpful tool.

aText
A very interesting tool, aText makes your typing tasks really simple. You don’t have to type the text over and over again. You can easily capitalize new sentences and correct double capitals using this tool. A host of other typing features make this a fairly interesting productivity tool.

Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a free online tool for social media content propagation. It is a very helpful productivity tool for social media marketing. The tool allows the user to share social media posts from multiple accounts and also helps with analysing the result of the marketing activities.

Virtual teams ensure that your business does not have to invest in additional infrastructure and also gives flexibility to hire a contractual workforce. A productive virtual team is very helpful in saving costs and improving ROI.

Author: Ved Raj

Ved Raj is a business enthusiast. He writes about startups, remote teams and outsourcing. He is working as a marketing manager with ValueCoders, a leading provider of remote development teams.

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