Virtual Phone Systems: The 5 Best Apps to Move Your Business Phone to the Cloud

Phone calls are too difficult. Tied to landlines on a desk in your office, traditional phone systems don't fit the way we work today. After all, if you're not in the office—for a meeting or because you work remotely—how will you answer a desk phone?

Smartphones fixed this issue for personal phone calls. The most drastic difference between a traditional cellphone and the first iPhone was the Phone app. Suddenly, the phone was just another app. Your number is still tied to a physical SIM card, but you don't have to use the phone app. Today you can make calls using FaceTime, Messenger, Google Voice, or dozens of other call apps—and the Phone app is nearly obsolete.

Virtual phone systems do the same for your office number. Sure, your company still needs a company-wide phone number and answering service to route calls to the correct department and team member. What you don't need, however, is a physical phone on every desk.

Here are the five best virtual phone systems for your team, the tools that can make your office phone smart again.

Why Virtual Phone Systems?

Small businesses often start out by purchasing a single landline with a dedicated business number. This line is shared by all employees and, when it's busy, you have to wait your turn. Teams could also rely on personal cell phones—which works fine until you need to transfer a call, or need to keep clients from calling a former employee after they've left the company.

That's often when the company decides it's time to purchase a traditional office phone system like those from NEC or Ooma. These systems require a phone server, desk phone for each employee, an answering system to route calls, and lots of cable—along with a budget of around $1000 for a server and cables, $50 per phone, and $20/month per line for service. Oh, and that’s not including installation and maintenance costs.

Virtual phone systems replace all that equipment with an app. Instead of a dedicated server and miles of cable, they move your calls to the cloud. For a much lower setup cost and often lower monthly fees, you'll have a phone system that works anywhere your team may be.

What is a Virtual Phone System?

Virtual phone systems are essentially Skype on steroids. Instead of a physical phone server, you'll have an online admin app to manage your company's numbers and menu system that routes calls to the right person. Additionally, instead of purchasing a desk phone for each employee, your employees will use your virtual phone system’s app to make and receive calls to their work number from their personal smartphone.

If an employee leaves your team, you can forward their number to someone else within the company. If you record calls, you can listen to them from the admin panel online. If you're away on vacation, routing your calls to a colleague takes only a tap—and the list goes on. This gives your company a full stack of voice communications and ensures clients are never left with a dead number.

They aren't perfect though. Virtual phone systems route calls either over the internet or by redirecting them through your phone’s standard phone network. Internet calls get better by the day, and cell routed calls are even more stable, but neither are quite as reliable as a traditional landline phone. You'll also need to keep employee cost in mind, as work calls might use up their personal cell minutes or data cap.

But that's like comparing email to fax. Even with these downsides in mind, virtual phone systems are the way to modernize your business' phone system, and are the perfect way to add a company number to a small team. And, they'll only take an hour or two to set up.

The 5 Best Virtual Phone Systems

During our research, we tested fifteen virtual phone systems and narrowed our list down to five. We looked for apps that work great on Android and iOS smartphones—that's the easiest way to use a business phone system today. We also looked for those with unique features that set them apart from standard office phones, and work well with distributed teams.

And, it's worth noting that all of the services included in this list have no minimum user requirement, come with a company phone number for no extra cost, and bill you on a month-to-month basis. Additionally, all services require that calls be started in either the service’s mobile or desktop apps; none currently offer web apps for making calls.

So, let's dive in:

Icon:	App	Best for:	Price	Supports:
	Dialpad	G Suite integration	$15/mo./user	Android, iOS, Windows, Mac
	RingCentral	Custom API and app integrations	$25/mo./user	Android, iOS, Windows, Mac
	AirCall	Support and sales teams	$30/mo./user	Android, iOS, Windows, Mac
	FreedomVoice CloudPhone	An internet-powered phone on your desk	$29.95/mo./user	Android, iOS
	Grasshopper	An inexpensive, barebones phone system	$12/mo./user	Android, iOS, Web

Dialpad (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac)

Best for G Suite integration

From the creators of UberConference comes Dialpad, a phone system built for companies using G Suite. The service has everything you need from a corporate phone along with handy extras like instant messaging.

It's especially useful if you already use G Suite. Emails and Google Docs you’ve sent to co-workers or other contacts will automatically appear in the sidebar of the Mac and Windows apps when on the phone or texting those people. This is useful for reviewing documents and contracts with your team and client—or just remembering what you discussed in your last email thread.

Dialpad also offers a company directory that’s pre-filled with employee information including profile pictures and email addresses from G Suite. You can use that address book from the mobile and desktop app to easily make one-click phone calls to your co-workers.

Additionally, Dialpad’s apps have a ton of nifty usability features. One of my favorites is the ability to switch calls between devices mid-call. Start a call on your laptop and need to catch the train? No worries—just press the “switch call” button and the call will automatically resume on your iPhone.

Making calls using Dialpad’s mobile app is simple too. Just launch the Dialpad application and use its dialer to place a call from your work number. Calls can be placed over your phone’s cellular or data network—a useful option to have if you find yourself in a place with a strong Wi-Fi but poor cellular connection. And, the iOS app integrates with your iPhone's Phone app so you can see incoming calls on your lock screen or in your Recent Calls list, and call people back without opening Dialpad's app.

Dialpad Price: From $15/month per user Standard plan that includes unlimited calls, texts, and intra-office communication

Fun fact: If Dialpad sounds familiar, that's because its domain has a history dating back to the turn of the century. Dialpad Communication was originally an online calls app, later acquired by Yahoo!. Today's Dialpad dates back to 2011 and the Firespotter Labs calls app Switch that was later rebranded as Dialpad.

RingCentral (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac)

Best for a virtual phone system with integrations

RingCentral offers everything you'd expect from a virtual phone system, but with one cool twist: It integrates with tons of third-party services including Zapier, to make your phone system far more powerful. For example, you can use Zapier to log all of your RingCentral calls in a Google Sheet for easy call tracking. Or, you can log calls directly to your CRM, or use its Outlook integration to place calls right from your inbox. The service has a public API too, so your developers can create their own RingCentral apps.

The RingCentral mobile app routes all calls over your phone's internet connection. To make a call, launch the RingCentral application and use its built-in dialer or company directory to dial-out; incoming calls appear as notifications, and can be picked up by simply swiping on the notification.

Unlike other services on this list, RingCentral has an Apple Watch app too. This companion app shows text messages, transcribed voicemail, and a list of missed calls directly on your wrist. You can even reply to RingCentral texts on your Apple Watch using your standard quick responses.

RingCentral also includes a suite of useful intra-office communication tools. You can start audio and video conferences with other employees on your team—something especially useful for remote teams. Additionally, you can use RingCentral to host live webinars for an added fee. This is useful for employee training and virtual tradeshows as you can live broadcast audio, webcam video, and slideshow decks to up to 3,000 viewers from the same tool you use for business calls.

RingCentral Price: From $25/month per user Standard plan that includes unlimited calling and app integrations

AirCall (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac)

Best for support and sales teams

AirCall is a virtual phone system built for sales and support teams. The service has an advanced robo-operator with skill and time-based call routing to send a call to the person who knows how to answer their question, or who just has time to take the call.

It includes excellent call tracking and analytic tools too—an important feature for managing support teams. AirCall lets you view client call-in history, make notes about clients and support tickets, and track performance using analytics. This will help your support agents more effectively assist your clients and help leadership better understand your team’s productivity.

AirCall also works just as well for normal office phone calls. Making calls using AirCall is simple: Just launch the mobile or desktop application and use its dialer to place a call. All calls are routed over the internet, so you don’t have to worry about roaming charges or using up your employee’s phone minutes. Inbound calls appear as notifications on your phone or desktop.

Finally, unlike others on this list, AirCall lets you get a business phone number in over 40 countries around the globe. Your company mainline and single employee lines can be assigned numbers in multiple countries, so your company can have a local presence just about anywhere.

AirCall Price: From $30/month per user Premium plan for support center features and inbound calls are unlimited and free of charge on geographic

FreedomVoice CloudPhone (Android, iOS)

For an internet-powered phone on your desk

Unlike the rest of the list, FreedomVoice CloudPhone is designed to work with a physical phone. It includes a (barebones) Polycom VVX 301 desk phone for each user on your team. These phones come pre-configured and plug into an ethernet jack; no on-site phone server or IT involvement is needed. Best of all, there’s no contracts or upfront cost for the deskphone as the phone is covered by your monthly plan.

You're not tied to the desk phone though. CloudPhone's mobile app includes all the functionality of the desk phone and can be used anywhere in the world. It's strictly a phone system, though, without text messaging or internal office communications, so you'll still need a team chat app for that.

One thing to note about the mobile app is that it routes all incoming and outgoing calls through your cellular connection, so it will use your phone plan’s minutes when on the go. However, the provided deskphone or desktop apps route calls over your office internet connection.

CloudPhone has one more interesting (albeit a bit dated) feature: Faxing. You can send and receive faxes using your CloudPhone number, then view incoming faxes on the mobile app, CloudPhone’s website, or via email. Sending faxes is easy too—just scan in your document and send it using CloudPhone's website.

CloudPhone Price: $29.95 per user per month for CloudPhone with unlimited calls and faxes, and a Polycom VX301 desk phone

Grasshopper (Android, iOS)

An inexpensive and barebones phone system for small teams

Grasshopper is different from the other virtual phone systems on this list. The service assigns one number to your company and gives each employee and department a unique extension. Customers are greeted by a robo-greeter when they dial your company, and can then dial in the extension of the employee they want to speak with. Calls are then forwarded to the respective employee's phone. Dialing out is simple too: Just launch the Grasshopper app on your mobile on your and make a call using its dealer.

Unlike other virtual phone systems on this list, Grasshopper solely relies on the cell network for all inbound and outbound calls. Like mentioned earlier, this is better for call reliability, but may put a damper on employees who have limited minutes on their phone plan.

Even though calls are routed over the cell network, Grasshopper still includes voicemail. You can record your greeting through the service’s website or mobile app and, when you miss a call, Grasshopper will skip your personal voicemail and send the recording right to your email inbox.

Grasshopper Cost: From $12/month for Pay as You Grow with pay as you go calling (6 cents a minute), one phone number, and unlimited extensions

Alternative Cloud Phone System Apps

Still can't find the perfect phone app for your team? Here are some other services to consider:

Icon:	App	Best for:	Price
	Nextiva	Nextiva is a virtual phone system that offers quick setup and great uptime. They have multiple call routing centers throughout the United States and Canada, ensuring your phone system never goes down.	$19.95/mo./user
	Jive	Jive has lots of great call routing features including time-based and fall-over routing. This ensures that your customers always get in touch with a representative quickly and easily.	$19.95/mo./user
	VirtualPBX Dash	Dash is a virtual phone system that has a few tricks up its sleeve. One of our favorites is Follow Me Calling; after your desk phone rings a certain number of times, it automatically forwards to your mobile.	$12.99/mo./user
	Vonage Business	Plan to rely on desk phones? Vonage is a VoIP solution with quick setup, but a limited array of extra options like call recording.	$19.99/mo./user
	8x8 Virtual Office	A full office telephony suite that offers virtual meeting tools and intra-company communication, designed to work with most office phone hardware and conferencing systems.	$18.99/mo./user

What Phone System is Best For Your Team?

Do you need stellar office communication features? RingCentral is the way to go. With messaging, video chat, and virtual meeting software—and webinar software if you need it—all of your company’s communication can be handled by one service.

Do you need a low-cost solution? Grasshopper is your best bet. At only $12 a month for all of the users on your team, the cost simply can’t be beat. However, the cost per minute—and potentially needing to reimburse employees for cell minutes—can add up. Additionally, team members will only have phone extensions rather than dedicated numbers. Regardless, it works well as a phone system for newer companies who want a dedicated company number.

Do you need integrations with other cloud services? RingCentral can’t be beat. It links in with tons of other cloud services like Zapier and Zoho CRM, and offers a great API that your team’s developers can use to integrate RingCentral with internal services.

Enjoy Your Stress-Free Phone System!

There you have it: The best cloud-based virtual phone systems. Whether you run an entire remote team or are an independent contractor, these services take the hassle out of managing a business phone system and ensures that your team never misses a call.

Has your team moved to a cloud phone system? Let us know what service you use in the comments.

source https://zapier.com/blog/best-virtual-phone-voip/

BOSTITCH MIIIFS Pneumatic Floor Stapler Review

The BOSTITCH MIIIFS 1-½-Inch to 2-Inch Pneumatic Floor Stapler is a stapler that is particularly designed for stapling into the floor – just in case the name didn’t give it away!

This is ideal for stapling down hardwood flooring and in the right scenario can save you a lot of time and effort that you would otherwise have to spend on your hands and knees. In fact, working with flooring can be particularly gruelling when it means crawling around on the floor and this is why it’s such a good idea to get a powerful and reliable tool that can make the job quicker and easier for you.

This is just such a tool and it features some very high-end construction and performance. If you’re a professional and you often work with flooring, then it might just make a very worthy addition to your arsenal.

As ever, we’ve been using the BOSTITCH MIIIFS 1-½-Inch to 2-Inch Pneumatic Floor Stapler for a while now in order to put it through its paces and see if it really performs as well as you could hope it to. In this review, we’ll report on our findings…

Product Description: Power and Precision

To look at, the BOSTITCH MIIIFS 1-½-Inch to 2-Inch Pneumatic Floor Stapler is nothing special. It is an orange tool that doesn’t have much to it in terms of parts and that has a long and oddly shaped handle. If you haven’t used a floor stapler before, then you may not be used to the appearance. It’s heavier than it looks though at 11.2 pounds and that’s thanks to the very solid construction. The BOSTITCH MIIIFS 1-½-Inch to 2-Inch Pneumatic Floor Stapler is made using aircraft grade aluminium, so you know that it isn’t going to get damaged over time. But if you’re worrying about the hard material against your lovely wooden floors, then rest easy. This has a nice soft rubber tipped foot to prevent scratching.

In terms of the specs, this delivers some serious horsepower as its weight and construction suggests. It can produce up to 420 inch/lbs of driving power and uses a high speed mallet-actuated operation to get the job done. It is designed for working with ½” to ¾” finished or unfinished hardwood flooring and in that context it performs incredibly well.

Pros and Cons: Serious Power for Professionals

If you’re a homeowner or a hobbyist, then you won’t need this kind of high powered specialist machine. If you like flipping houses or you work in wooden flooring though, then it will be a life saver.

The pros of this machine are its power, its relative speed and the surprisingly comfortable design. It’s also great just how durable the tool is thanks to the great high quality materials that have been used. And that durability means that the BOSTITCH MIIIFS 1-½-Inch to 2-Inch Pneumatic Floor Stapler is able to come with an impressive 7 year warranty. So if you rely on this tool for your living, then it won’t let you down.

Another plus is that you get some extra parts in the box – a floor guard, graphite mallet, adapter and two base plates.

We had zero complaints during our time with it but one Amazon review mentions that a screw started to come loose after a while and that it was quite hard to access to repair. This is likely a one-off though.

The only other con is the price – but this is a professional piece of equipment, so that shouldn’t be an issue for most looking at it.

Conclusion: We’re Floored

Overall, the BOSTITCH MIIIFS 1-½-Inch to 2-Inch Pneumatic Floor Stapler is an excellent tool that is going to be a real must for flooring professionals. Other than the slightly high price, there’s not much negative to say about this machine. This will only real appeal to professionals in certain industries but if you find yourself doing this kind of work, you can’t go wrong with this powerful, reliable and well-made tool.

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/bostitch-miiifs-pneumatic-floor-stapler-review/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/163474842100

How Automation Helps Olark Give Sales a Human Touch

In the age of automation and efficiency, some tasks are better suited for a robot, or more realistically, a computer. If it's repetitive, there's a good chance a tool exists to handle it for you. But some tasks and jobs require a human touch and approach. Especially when it comes to interacting with people, as you do in sales and support roles.

For Olark's Guru of Customer Happiness, Bill Thompson, that human touch is an essential piece of Olark's process: "Sales at Olark are very much human-based. That's our big push and it has been for years. Humans talking to humans; relationship sales."

Olark is built on those interactions. As a live chat client, Olark gives you the ability to provide instant customer support or even create a sales opportunity from someone browsing your website. For eCommerce stores, having a chance to connect with a shopper via live chat is akin to asking a customer browsing shelves if they need help finding anything; it's that human connection.

Making Lead Management As Efficient As Possible

"As a small team, in a startup, the challenges we face is managing what to do with all the info, the lead generation, the followups, the tracking for metrics," Bill explains. "A lot of it was done manually for a good year and a half, almost two years."

"Every time I did a sales call, I would have to enter the information into a spreadsheet, into Google Docs. Who you are, when we met, notes about it, what you were looking to do, what your expectations were."

Now multiply that manual work by a team of three, four, five people. No matter how good your team is, manual work lends itself to inaccuracies. And pulling data manually? Bill found that he was digging through their database to figure out which sales agent converted a lead, who had followed up—it was all taking too much time.

"For scheduling myself and my team, I use ScheduleOnce, which is pretty cool. We have a landing page on our site, so if [a customer] want a sales demo or they want to call, they can go on there, click on the application, and that allows them to translate the timezone into their timezone and pick a time," Bill explains. "And then I found I can actually integrate Schedule Once with HubSpot through Zapier."

"Zapier is just my savior."Bill Thompson, Guru of Customer Happiness, Olark

With Zapier, an app automation tool, Bill built a workflow that automated his manual tasks. Instead of entering in the details of each lead, Bill built out a questionnaire form in ScheduleOnce that the customer fills in.

Now, with every new lead, Zapier creates a Hubspot contact and populates it with the information from the ScheduleOnce form, giving Bill and his team the details they need to complete the sale.

If you want to save time and create new Hubspot contacts from new ScheduleOnce bookings, this Zap is for you. When you configure the Hubspot contact section, you can even have the Zap pull information from a ScheduleOnce form, and set the Lead Status in Hubspot to 'New', just like Olark.

"Now, Zapier allows us to automatically take that lead from ScheduleOnce and boom! Sends it into HubSpot as a contact assigned to me, the sales manager."Bill Thompson, Guru of Customer Happiness, Olark

Bill's automations don't stop there: Determining whether the lead is qualified or not can come down to something as simple as whether or not they show up to demo with Olark. Keeping track of who shows and who doesn't used to be a manual task. Occasionally, Bill's team would wind up contacting folks that no-showed, losing time that could've been spent on more qualified leads.

If a customer attends Olark's demo and the booking is completed, Zapier updates the contact in Hubspot; specifically, Zapier updates the Lead Status field, changing it from 'New' or 'Potential' to 'Demo Attended' or 'Qualified'.

Let Zapier update your Hubspot lead status with this Zap:

Now, what if the customer doesn't attend the meeting and doesn't reach out to reschedule? There's a chance you might have yourself an unqualified lead. If you do, you can have Zapier update Hubspot automatically if an appointment doesn't show up. Just use this Zap:

"All the automation has just made my life a thousand percent better."Bill Thompson, Guru of Customer Happiness, Olark

Generating Sales Leads from Support

ScheduleOnce bookings and appointments aren't the only places Olark generates leads. "We have people are on Olark live chatting every day. And a lot of chats are sales related," Bill explains. Those leads would get to Bill and his sales team any number of ways–direct messages, emails–but now, Bill simplified the process:

All they have to do is to tag the call or chat with "Sales" and Zapier automatically takes it and boom, it's in HubSpot. I get an alert telling me I have a new opportunity from Help Scout that came from so-and-so, customer service representative. Here's the gist of the conversation that she had already. And they're okay with a followup. It's like a whole other sales funnel and Zapier is just my savior.

Now, Bill can review the chat or the support rep's notes in Hubspot, see what they already discussed, and go into a demo or call more informed about the lead. If you're interested in pulling information from Help Scout tickets into Hubspot contacts, give this a try:

Support as a sales avenue gives Bill a great new resource and ties back into his mission to have human connections. "We are finding that our live chatting with customers make sales because we create a human touchpoint. The good news I found is that doing a sales demo and getting on the phone with somebody sells more, so there's my job security," Bill jokes.

Photos courtesy of Olark.

source https://zapier.com/blog/manage-leads-efficiently/

The Remote Work Survival Guide

Congratulations! You just got hired for your first remote job! A world of possibilities just opened up to you: You can now work in your PJs at any hour. Set your own schedule. Travel the world.

And while remote workers have been shown to feel happier and more valued at work compared to all other workers, there is a dark side to remote work as well.

Cross-timezone communication, a lack of structure, more distractions, and isolation all threaten to overshadow the joys of remote work. But don't worry—we're here to make sure that doesn't happen to you. This Survival Guide to Remote Work will walk you through the major challenges you will face in your remote job—and how to conquer them.

---

• How to Ask for Help
• How to Make Friends at Work
• How to Balance Work and Life
• How to Set Your Own Schedule
• How to Dress for Your Remote Job
• How to Stay in Shape
• How to Not Become a Hermit
• How to Avoid Distractions
• How to Be Your Own Tech Support

---

How to Ask for Help

You sit down at your desk on your first day on the remote job. You’re pumped. You’re ready for anything. About 2 hours in, you realize you’re drinking from a fire hydrant.

About 3 hours in, you start feeling very lost as you try to sort through not only the information you need to do your job, but also backlog of Slack chats, and the unspoken norms, expectations, and rules that every company has.

So there you are, with your manager on a 5 hour time difference, unaccustomed to your new team, with more questions than you know what to do with. It’ll be tempting to push the panic button, but try these tips instead:

Find the Internal Documentation (and Do a Lot of Reading)

Most remote companies recognize the importance of beefy internal documentation to help their new employees learn the ropes. Check your intranet, internal wiki, or internal support docs, or ask your manager where you can access this documentation. Then get busy reading!

Read beyond the basics (HR policies, for example) and browse for documentation that gives you insight into the company's inner workings—customer research, for example, or the marketing team's goals for the year. Search your team chat app, even, for topics of interest to see how they were handled in the past. If nothing else, this knowledge will help you feel more connected to the company. And if you can't find the answers in your documentation…

Ask Your Teammates What They Wish They Would Have Known

You don’t know what you don’t know… but your teammates will know what they didn’t know back when they were in your shoes. So ask them to reminisce—while you take copious notes.

The best part is, you don’t need any specific agenda for this meeting. Just set up a brief call with the people you’ll work with (bonus points if their roles are similar to yours) and ask them for the advice they’d give their younger selves. Their stories will give you a lot of great information about the expectations and challenges you’ll be facing—as well as solid advice for dealing with these challenges.

Here are some questions you can borrow to get the conversation rolling:

• What have learned during your time working here that’s helped you do your job better?
• What do you wish you’d known during your first week?
• Is there anything you wish you’d done in your first couple of weeks?

How to Make Friends at Work

It’s hard to make friends. It’s harder when they live in your computer. But before you decide to just give up and adopt a bunch of furry coworkers from your local shelter, try these tactics for building relationships with your remote team:

Establish Communication Expectations with Your Manager and Team

One of the hardest parts of remote work is the disconnect from your manager (or your team, if you are the manager). There are no guarantees that you’ll be in the same time zone, or even the same country.

Save yourself a lot of trouble by establishing communication expectations early on. Find out what hours can you expect your manager and teammates to be available. Know what kind of turnaround time to expect, if you regularly need review or approval for your work. Set up regular (weekly or bi-weekly) meetings to touch base.

At these meetings, take a little extra time to catch up with your team, since you may not get to interact with them regularly. Maybe swap stories about your weekends before getting down to business. Adding a personal touch to your meetings will help you form a better connection with your manager and team mates, even over long distances.

Proactively Reach Out to Coworkers

One thing we do at Zapier to keep coworkers in touch and make everyone feel more connected is to run randomly-assigned "pair buddy calls." On these calls, coworkers learn more about each other's’ jobs, lives, interests, and hobbies. In addition to being a great way to get to know coworkers you otherwise might not interact with, these calls help us to share knowledge and gain awareness across teams.

"Being remote, we don’t have the luxury of just going to another person’s cubicle and having a casual chat. Pair buddies help with this. Having the system allows us to have those casual chats and learn more about our coworkers."Paolo Papa, Zapier

Don’t worry if your company doesn’t have a system like this. Set yourself a reminder to reach out to a new coworker every week. Whether you strike up a chat conversation or set up a meeting, you and your coworker will both appreciate the effort to build a connection.

How to Balance Work and Life

You’re ready for work to finally be about what you do, not how long your butt is at your desk. You’re daydreaming about how much faster you’ll be able to do your work from the comforts of home.

Then you start to find yourself wondering if the day’s work was really enough. You’ll wonder if your boss assumes you just watch Netflix all day. You push yourself just a little longer, a little later… just this once…

Next thing you know, you’re working all day, stressed to the max, and fantasizing about that idyllic remote life you thought you were getting.

When you’re not punching in and out of work, it’s easy to feel guilty and end up overworking. In fact, remote workers tend to overwork, not underwork.

To avoid overworking and burning yourself out, adopt the mentality that Popforms founder Kate Stull gained through painful trial and error:

There is always more to do, and when you work remotely, there is no one to tell you to go home or that the office is closing, so it has to be YOU who decides when to stop. You have to decide that the rest of your life is worth making space for, and not let work take over that time.

Define Your Priorities

On Monday mornings, define the most important priorities for your week. Every morning, define the 1-3 priorities for your day. This way, when the end of your day or week rolls around, you’ll be able to end your day with confidence, knowing you did the day’s most important work.

Remote work is supposed to be a better way to make a work/life balance for yourself. So set boundaries. It’s important to get work done in a timely manner, but that doesn’t mean you need to be online or available 24/7. If your team is global, there will be people working all the time. They'll send you messages when you're "out of office" for the night. Resist the temptation to be available to them—set up a Do Not Disturb or nighttime mode on your phone and in apps like Slack.

Learn more tips and tricks on How to Avoid Burnout in a Remote Team.

How to Set Your Own Schedule

"I love being able to set my own schedule," you’ll say as you rise later than your office-working peers and enjoy a relaxed morning.

"I can work the hours that are best for me and my style!" you’ll think while binging on the latest Netflix show (just on your lunch break, of course).

"I really do get so much more done this way!" you’ll yawn as you enjoy your ~~food coma~~ power nap.

"Oh crap! That’s due tomorrow!" you’ll shout as you notice the time and begin the mad scramble to finish your project.

If you think I’m joking, just put your bookmark here and come back in a couple weeks when it’s happened to you. I can wait.

… Ready? Okay. Now, before you go running back to the comfort of a rigid 9-5, try these tools for creating your own schedule—one that’s tailored to you and keeps you on track.

Experiment with Your Schedule

When are you the most productive? When are you the least productive? You might not know the answers, but you should find out.

"While one of the best benefits of working remotely is flexibility, that can turn into too much pliancy over where work ends and life begins."Janet Choi, Customer.io

Experiment with your days. Test different routines and a few different sets of working hours. Take notes on productivity, efficiency, and happiness so that you can "test" which schedules work best for you.

Maybe you do your best work in the early morning after a brisk exercise regiment. Maybe you’re a night owl and do your best if you can sleep in and start work later in the day. Maybe some days you'll have to take a late night or early morning to meet with a teammate across the world. It's okay to set different schedules for different days of the week! You have so much flexibility in this job—use it to find the rhythm that’s uniquely best for your work and productivity. (Just make sure to keep your team up to date on your availability.)

To get you started, read up on the experiences of one remote worker and her productivity experiments: Experiments with Time: How to Take Back Your Day from the Grip of Procrastination.

Enforce Your Schedule

But even while you're experimenting, you need to strictly enforce the schedule you set—even if you change it tomorrow. Work the hours you set for yourself, then make a clean break between work and home.

"My home is my safe place, and I need to respect and honor it just as I try to do my own sanity by keeping a schedule."Mercer Smith-Looper, Campaign Monitor

Try setting up a consistent appointment at the end of your day—even something as basic as making dinner or going for a run—to help you make a clean break between work life and home life. I confirm from personal experience: this will really help you close out your work day.

And when your day ends, make sure it ends. Sign out of Slack and email. Close down your computer. Let your coworkers know you won’t be available until X time tomorrow. Spend the rest of your day refreshing yourself and enjoying your life, so you’re ready to hit the ground running again tomorrow.

How to Dress for Your Remote Job

Flexible schedules, ability to work from anywhere in the world, and positive cultures are all great perks of remote work, but let’s be honest here. We’re really in this for the "pants optional" part of remote work.

I love wearing my PJs as much as the next person (okay, possibly more—PJs are my default state of dress unless I'm working at Starbucks or on a conference call). But there comes a point at which comfy goes too far. You’ll know it when you see the horror in the eyes of the UPS guy, trust me.

Taking care of your appearance is a sign of respect to yourself. It will make you feel more respected and more professional.

Shower regularly. Pretend you have somewhere to be, and put in the effort to look good for it—even if that somewhere is only your local coffee shop. Having a grooming routine is also one great way to signal to yourself that you’re beginning your workday, and that it’s time to be productive. (Plus, who doesn’t like the feeling of putting on their PJs at the end of the day? Don’t rob yourself of that pleasure by wearing your PJs all day!)

So find clothes that make you comfortable by all means, but also find clothes that signal to you that you're on the job and that you're doing something worth getting dressed for (and not just counting the hours until you're asleep again).

How to Stay in Shape

If you've ever eaten bacon, popcorn, peanut butter, and a bowl of Froot Loops over the course of an hour and called it "lunch," you might be a remote worker. If walking to the mailbox constitutes exercise, you might be a remote worker. If you've ever gone the better part of the week without setting foot outside, you might be a remote worker.

And that’s a problem. Because if you’re going to fully enjoy everything the remote life has to offer—travel, flexibility, productivity, balance, autonomy—you need to take care of your body.

The good news is that, since you work from home, you have more control over your environment. At an office job, you can’t control the available snack options. But you choose what you buy at the grocery store. If you don’t have the willpower to resist the Coca-Cola in the fridge, just don’t buy any. It’s as simple as that.

With exercise as well, you no longer have the excuse of "having no time to exercise before work" and "being too tired when I get home." With the whole house to yourself and a wide selection of great exercise programs available on the Internet, you really don’t have an excuse not to get your heart rate up at least 20 minutes a day. Or hey—why not get a gym membership and exercise your social skills while you exercise your muscles?

This isn’t just a generic health PSA. A poor diet and a lack of exercise can severely impact your productivity, making you more tired throughout the day, more irritable, and more subject to brain fog and stress. Do yourself and your career a favor: take care of your body.

Learn How to Hack Your Diet for 2, 3 or Even 10x the Productivity.

How to Socialize

At first, you’ll hardly notice it. You’ll be enjoying the lack of office drama and distractions. Then you’ll start to feel a bit restless, but you won’t know why. Shrugging that off, you’ll hold a conversation with yourself to figure out your lunch plans—PB&J or grilled cheese?

A few weeks later when you have to meet with your financial advisor, you’ll realize that conversation is hard. You’ll Slack-message your coworkers when you get home and emoji-high-five about how much better it is to just text everything. Next thing you know, you’re calling 911 just for some human interaction.

Faced with your own impending hermit-hood, you have a choice. Either you order from Amazon Prime every couple days just to chat up your local delivery guy, or you can try this:

Work at Your Local Co-Working Space or Coffee Shop

Wait a second, you might be thinking. Isn’t the whole point of remote working that I don’t have to work in an office?

While that’s true, sometimes, shaking up your usual environment is the best thing you can do for productivity. One reason for that is the Hawthorne Effect, which shows that people improve their behavior when they are being observed. This is especially helpful if you're having trouble with procrastination or have hit a mental block on a project.

Check sites like Desks Near Me or CoWorker to find a space close to where you live.

Paying for co-working space not appealing to you? No worries. A few hours a day for a couple days a week at your local coffee shop will also help you feel less isolated.

Check out Workfrom to find the best places to work remotely in your city, then go learn How to Work at a Coffee Shop Like a Pro. Follow those tips and people won’t even know you’re new to this whole remote work thing!

Invest in Your Community

Remote workers enjoy a flexibility that’s rare for full-time workers. Exercise that gift every now and again by giving back to your community. Participate in events in your local or religious community. Meet an old college friend for coffee. Have lunch with your spouse, parents, or family one day a week. Find a cause and volunteer time.

Not only will this keep you from talking to your cat, but it’s also a great way to give back to your community.

Invest in your professional community by attending networking events. A quick Google search on networking event + your location + your interest or industry should bring up several results. Meetup is another great place to look for networking events. Chances are your local Chamber of Commerce also hosts or recommends networking events.

So look around, try out a couple different events, and—most importantly—get out of the house every once in awhile!

How to Avoid Distractions

Send an SOS to the world, because your S.O.S—or, Shiny Object Syndrome—is about to get bad. Offices, for all their flaws, at least try to be distraction-lite zones. When you’re at home all day, there’s no social pressure standing between you and your TV, gaming console, or favorite books.

And don’t forget that you’ll now be spending your day in a less-than-perfectly tidy house. So no matter how lazy you used to be about the housework, I guarantee it will start calling your name just as soon as an important project comes up.

Learning to manage and avoid these distractions is critical for the remote worker. There are a lot of great apps to help you fight distractions online, apps like RescueTime, Freedom, and FocusBooster.

Unfortunately, these apps can only help so much when distractions also exist in your physical space. The true key to avoiding these distractions is to strengthen your willpower.

Read our best strategies for building up your willpower and avoiding distractions: Strengthen Your Willpower: How to Build Perseverance and Avoid Distractions

Procrastinate Productively

Counterintuitive though it may seem, there are times when procrastinating can actually help you to be more productive in the long run. "Procrastinating" techniques like taking a power nap, meditating or doing yoga, or journaling will actually make you more productive.

Practice productive procrastination, and avoid losing yourself in your favorite TV or your looming housework. There will always be housework, and its immediate nature can make it a big procrastination magnet. But you’ll thank yourself later if you focus on "procrastinating" in a way that rebuilds you instead of draining you.

Learn more about How to Procrastinate Productively.

Take Breaks with Purpose

Everyone needs to take breaks—in fact, taking breaks will help your mind reset and refocus, making you more productive in the long run! The trick is to take breaks with purpose.

Schedule regular breaks throughout the day. Don’t just break focus from your work whenever you feel like it—schedule your breaks ahead of time.

Then, be fully present when you take a break. Don’t let yourself drop into a half-work, half-distracted mode. Your work won’t get done well, and you won’t feel rested either. When you take a break, even if it’s just 5 minutes, be all there. Forget about work and just relax. Then get back to it.

How to Be Your Own Tech Support

You know all those remarks your grandmother makes about your generation being too reliant on the Internet? Well, nana, we just proved you right. Working remotely puts you completely at the mercy of the Internet—or, more accurately, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and power company.

Your remote job also sets you up as the one-man office management team. This means you are the tech support. So it’s time to come up with a good contingency plan if you can't get online or experience hardware or software problems.

First, when you start your remote job, make it a priority to know who you should talk to if you need help setting up your virtual private network (VPN) access or if you need to troubleshoot something. Even if the role is informal, there will be someone in your organization with the tech know-how to help you (or at least point you in the right direction).

But sometimes the problem isn't anything you can fix—a power outage, or trouble with your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will be the fault. These things happen—but they don’t have to ruin your work day.

Have a backup plan. We recommend getting a mobile hotspot mifi that you can use when your Internet becomes unreliable, or use your phone's personal hotspot to get online when your home internet's down.

At Zapier, every team member has a Verizon Jetpack Mifi to use in case of Internet emergencies (from power outages to delayed flights at the airport). This way, our team can stay connected and productive no matter where they are. If your company doesn’t automatically send new employees a hotspot device, see if it’s something you can expense.

---

Hopefully this advice helps you as you navigate the world of remote work. But here’s the ultimate advice for your remote job: you have the flexibility, the control, and the smarts to tailor every solution to every problem you’ll face while working remotely.

So don’t be afraid of trial and error! Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and find the rhythm that works best for you.

Everyone who works remotely is still learning and evolving in their remote work style. So come and join us in the journey!

Want more guidance on your remote work journey? Check out these resources:

• Want to get the full scoop on remote work? Download our Ultimate Guide to Remote Work

• Learn how to overcome The 7 Biggest Remote Work Challenges

• Setting up your new home office? Here’s 8 Items for Every Remote Worker’s Wish List

• While you're setting up that shiny new office, don’t forget to factor in your health and comfort. Read Productivity and Ergonomics: The Best Way to Organize Your Desk

• Remote work means you can work from anywhere—but can you be productive from anywhere? We think so. Here’s how to Be Productive Anywhere: 8 Proven Strategies for Better Remote Work

Illustrations by Loraine Yow.

source https://zapier.com/blog/survival-guide-to-remote-work/

Ace College and Your Career with These 6 App Workflows

There’s no denying it—software and technology play a massive role in pretty much every industry.

Yet even while software know-how is becoming a standard requirement for jobs, most colleges won't teach you even the basics of popular business software. It’s up to you to find and learn the software that will help you impress employers.

The good news is that many of the top business apps offer a freemium model, so you can start gaining skills with these tools right away, even if you're a broke college kid. As a bonus, you can use these apps to make yourself more productive and efficient with your studies.

That's where Zapier comes in. Zapier is a tool that helps you build code-free workflows between the apps you use every day, so you can spend less time on robot-work and more time on the skills you’ll take into your future career.

Experiment with workflows between hundreds of the Web’s most popular business apps. From G Suite to Slack to Trello, MailChimp, Asana, and Pipedrive—you name it, and you can probably build an integration with it.

And yes—put it on your resume. (In fact, many job openings these days even list experience with or knowledge of using Zapier as a requirement or a plus.)

The following Zapier workflows will help you get familiar with some of the best business tools on the market, while also helping you to organize and manage your schedule, tasks, notes, and projects.

PS: We’re offering 6 months of Zapier's premium features free to students and faculty, so be sure to sign up and start experimenting.

---

• Stay Organized with Less Effort
• Get Assignments in Your To-Do List App, ASAP
• Don’t Let Due Dates Sneak Up on You
• Supercharge Group Project Collaboration
• Share Notes with Friends
• Manage Student Organizations

---

Stay Organized with Less Effort

Google Calendar. Works like magic.

"[My Zaps] helped me stay on top of my work from week to week by making sure I was setting clear goals and reflecting on how the last week went."Nat Eliason, entrepreneur, Carnegie Mellon Class of '15

Assignments, tasks, and deadlines—oh my! With so much to keep track of, it’s tough to stay on that "yellow brick road" leading to good grades. You know being more organized would help, but do you really have the time to step back, figure out, and set up a good organization system?

Yes! You do! Or, more accurately, the robots do. Set up an automated system for your notes, deadlines, and tasks—then forget about it and focus your energy on getting that paper done.

For example, entrepreneur and Carnegie Mellon alumni Nat Eliason set up a workflow of weekly Trello cards, new weekly and monthly Evernote notes, and a series of reminders to help him set aside time for reflections and goal setting in the midst of his busy schedule.

Take notes on tasks and assignments in class via Evernote or OneNote and have them automatically create reminders, calendar events, even tasks in your to-do app of choice with these Zaps (our word for automated workflows).

If a lot of your class communication comes through email, leverage your inbox to trigger workflows that send relevant information to the place where you can actually act on it.

(For example: professor emailing you reading assignment PDFs or very detailed emails? Automatically send them to a Google Drive folder with the notes and materials from your class, so you don’t have to dig for the PDF later. You can even have Zapier text you when a new file hits your Google Drive, so you don’t have to obsessively check your .edu address.)

Get reminders about all your important classes, deadlines, and assignments—in the way that fits most naturally with your workflow. Whether you want to receive text message reminders or just want to make sure that your calendar (aka, second brain) is always 100% up to date, these Zaps can help:

Get Assignments in Your To-Do List App, ASAP

Gmail and ToDoist

You’re juggling a lot of credit hours. Hyper-organized though you might be, sometimes it’s just too easy for an assignment to slip through the cracks. So why risk that last-minute panic when you could make sure your assignments always make it into your inbox—automatically?

Here’s how it works. With Email by Zapier you can set up a custom @zapiermail.com address. Then set up a mail filter in your .edu mail client to auto-forward assignment emails to your new Zapiermail address. This custom email address then acts as the trigger for a workflow that you define in Zapier. Your forwarded emails will then go straight to your favorite to-do app as a new task, with the details you define in Zapier.

Do your teachers send emails with lots of assignment details in the message body—details you don’t want to miss? Or are your assignment titles not included in the email subject line? Use Zapier’s Email Parser tool as an extra step to extract key details from your professors' emails and send those details into your to-do app.

Voila! Now your to-do list will automatically update with your latest assignments and what you have to do to complete them, so you can focus on actually doing those assignments.

Don’t Let Due Dates Sneak Up on You

Send your tasks directly to your calendar

Assignments, quizzes, exams, group project deadlines—there’s a lot to keep track of at school. Let Zapier help you focus on actually doing the work by taking over all of your reminders.

Simply track assignments in the to-do app of your choice, then set up Zapier to automatically copy task deadlines to your calendar. (Alternatively, you can set up your own deadlines in Google Calendar.)

You can even add a step to your Zap or create a separate Zap to text you a predetermined time before the deadline. A recommendation? Either add several reminders, or set your reminder a day or two before the deadline. That way, if you’re behind (and we all procrastinate), you still have some buffer time to get your work done.

Supercharge Group Project Collaboration

Track project ownership and progression with Trello.

Group projects often bring with them many heartaches and hurdles. But never fear—there’s an app for that (well, actually several). Two of the most important success factors for group projects are good communication and having enough check-ins and solid deadlines.

"I've used Zapier to send me text/Slack notifications for new bug reports on group programming projects. That was always very helpful."Nat Eliason, entrepreneur, Carnegie Mellon Class of '15

If we had to recommend just a couple of apps for managing your group project, we’d have to include Slack, Asana, and Trello. Slack is a team chat program that allows you to organize discussion channels and use notification bots. Asana is a free project management tool based around shared checklists. Trello is a kanban board project management tool that helps you track your tasks through stages.

Learn more about each of these tools and how you can use them for your group projects in 20+ Productivity Apps for College Students and Young Professionals

With these apps and Zapier, you can build a streamlined workflow for your projects that supports communication, keeps your project on track, and monitors deadlines. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Share Notes with Friends

Collaborate on notes with Google Docs

Google Docs is a powerful collaborative tool. Get a 365º view of your classes by comparing notes with your friends and classmates—automatically. Take notes in Evernote or OneNote, then let Zapier use those notes to create Google Docs that are shared with your friends (since everyone has a Google account, right?). Then it’s easy to comment or collaborate within Google Docs, to share ideas, perspectives, and discuss the material.

Manage Student Organization Work

Quickly send mass emails with Google Sheets and Gmail.

Getting involved in one or more student organizations is a good idea for many reasons, including developing crucial soft skills, building your network, and buffing up your resume. But it’s also a lot of work.

Take a good hard look at the work you do every day in your organization. Does all of it really require your unique human skills and oversight? If the answer is "no," take a look at some of the ways you can automate the repetitive and time-consuming parts of your role, so you can focus on the parts that you really care about.

Do you do marketing for your student organization? Zapier can lend a hand, from helping you automate social media, to managing forms and subscribers, to helping you curate your blog or newsletter.

Are you an administrator in your student organization? Zapier can help you manage club finances, recruitment, and project management with free tools like Paypal, Google Sheets, Trello, Gmail, and many more.

With 6 months of free Zapier and access to hundreds of great free apps, there’s a lot you can automate on a limited—or even no—budget. For more ideas, visit our Zap Templates Collection for quick ways to automate social media, project management, file management, human resources, and more.

---

As with many things in life, the best way to get started is to dive in and start experimenting. Try new app combinations while building your own workflows. Have fun with GIFS. Find new ways to build efficiencies into your schedule. Automate your way around daily hurdles.

And when you finally step into that shiny new career, you can be confident knowing that the robots work for you.

Want more tips to help you succeed in college? Here are some of our favorites:

• 20+ Productivity Apps for College Students and Young Professionals
• How to Gather Research and Create a Bibliography in Google Docs
• Tagging Tips: How to Organize Files and Other Information with Tags
• Build the Perfect Productivity System with Paper Notebooks and Digital Tools

Graduation image by Baim Hanif.

source https://zapier.com/blog/automation-for-college-students/

eSight Eyewear Helps People See Again with Zapier

Noah Kates Rose didn't have a typical first day when he started as a Business Analyst at eSight Eyewear. "That day, I was watching a demonstration of this gentleman who came in with his wife holding his arm because he couldn't see. We get him in the chair, start the demonstration," Noah explains. "It was like night and day."

"He had tried [the electronic glasses] on once before by the time I met him. Because it was his second time wearing it, I was seeing a guy who realized the potential of it." Before eSight, this man only had his peripheral vision; he was unable to see details in his central vision, like the head of a screw. "He put [the eSight eyewear] on, immediately knelt down to the floor, pulled a screwdriver out of his belt, and started unscrewing our outlets and screwing it back in because he can't do that without eSight," Noah says. "It was unbelievable to watch, especially because it was my first day here."

"He was just going around the room and unscrewing everything, screwing it back in, and talking to his wife about how much fun he was having."- Noah Kates Rose, Business Analyst, eSight Eyewear

eSight does something extraordinary: They help the visually impaired see again with the eSight 3, a head mounted display utilizing a high speed, HD camera, a custom vision profile, and user-based settings to bring sight back.

A child plays with Legos thanks to eSight.

According to the World Health Organization, 285 million people have visual impairments. About 14% of that number—39 million—are completely blind. Others have macular degeneration, which causes central vision to deteriorate, leaving only the periphery. Two of those people are eSight founder Conrad Lewis's sisters.

"[Conrad] tinkered away for many, many years until finally, he came up with something that worked," Noah says. "But it was pretty bulky, so he brought in this little team of engineers to create a much sleeker device." More than just vision, though, eSight is giving back careers, weddings, and most importantly, detail.

Automatically Turn New Appointments Into CRM Contacts

That makes eSight a popular device. eSight's cameras capture what the person looks at, feeds it to state-of-the-art algorithms that improve the feed, and then displays the video to the wearer. Its popularity means scheduling lots of in-person demos to show how the technology works. Before eSight started using app automation tool Zapier, each of their clients would spend at least 30 minutes responding to scheduling emails. eSight's Vision Advocates spent about an hour's worth of work per client—just on scheduling the first demonstration.

"There was the initial [call], a second one where we would book [the appointment], and a third and fourth reminder call. And often, another missed call in between because people have trouble with their phones," Noah explains.

Noah had to find a solution that would improve the scheduling experience:

"I found a company called Acuity Scheduling, which is an incredible scheduling software. Everything about it worked perfectly, we just needed it integrated into our Salesforce [workflow] so we could still do our own tracking and analytics. Using Zapier, we were able to connect them and it revolutionized the way we do demonstrations.

An eSight Vision Advocate during a demonstration.

Now, Zapier takes care of both scheduling appointments and tracking each customer's records. Instead of exporting the information from a new appointment and importing it into Salesforce to create a new record—or even worse, manually entering the details—Zapier will do it all. From pulling new appointment details to searching for or creating a customer record, Zapier does it automatically.

Noah added a step, too: In Acuity, you can create forms that your customer needs to answer when making an appointment. Zapier pulls the data from those forms into a Salesforce custom object specific to that customer (custom objects store information related to a customer).

If you want to try creating or searching for new customers in Salesforce when new appointments are scheduled in Acuity, give it a shot:

If you collect information when scheduling appointments and want Zapier to send the answers to Salesforce, try this multi-step Zap:

Once that initial appointment is held, Acuity can send out followup emails with different forms or questions to be filled out. Noah explains that those followup forms and questions help eSight development a vision profile, which customizes their eSight device.

Noah likes to keep Salesforce up to date on each of eSight's customers—whether they were able to see facial details, their reactions, what worked, and what didn't. "It became way more transparent for our clients," Noah says. Having the client fill out a quick, post-demo form means Zapier does all the work bringing information from Acuity to Salesforce.

If you find yourself constantly moving data from Acuity to Salesforce, updating custom objects individually, take a load off and let Zapier do it:

"It sounds like a major project, it took me not even two days."- Noah Kates Rose, Business Analyst, eSight Eyewear

Automating Daily and Weekly List Creation

Depending on your job, you might have specific, easy-to-define goals you're expected to hit each day/week/month. But what happens when your job is a little more fluid? At eSight, Noah's role as Business Analyst has a main goal: Make the company better any way you can.

"My role is pretty much free reign, and it's the greatest job in the world because that's how I like to think. Whether that's the process, the tools we use, the office space we use, anything," he says. How do you measure making the company better? It starts with two Trello lists.

"On every Monday, I would have to create two [Trello] lists: "Monday, July 3rd" and "Completed Tasks List Monday, July 3rd to Friday, July 7th" and then I would have to drag my tasks into the completed list." This meant setting a reminder first thing Monday morning to go in to Trello create the lists again and again and again.

"To keep track of someone's actual accomplishments and their project work, I figured it was absolutely dependent on combining a great app—Trello is a fantastic app—with Zapier's functionality to make it even better."- Noah Kates Rose, Business Analyst, eSight Eyewear

Noah combined two actions into one, simple Zap. First, using Schedule by Zapier, Noah has Zapier create a new Trello list every weekday at 8am. Once that's finished, a Zapier Filter step comes into play: If today is Monday, Zapier creates a list for completed tasks for that week. If it isn't Monday, the Zap stops, resetting itself for the next morning:

Bringing Efficiency to the Masses

Building efficiency into existing workflows—especially someone else's workflow—takes precision but oftentimes, blunt force. "I send emails out to the whole company sometimes just being like, you know, I don't want to make it sound too promo-y, but "Have you ever done something twice in the same day?"" Noah says. "When it's software related and it's manual entry work I definitely reach out to people, tell them that I'll build them this app to make their life easier."

Without Noah's clever workarounds and desire to always improve a process, eSight's clients would have a slower, less streamlined experience scheduling demos—and a harder time getting their eyesight back. "Really, that's my job here, to make the company run better. I make it my responsibility."

If you'd like to see eSight's great work in action, check out the Moments section of their site by clicking here.

Photos courtesy of esighteyewear.com.

source https://zapier.com/blog/scheduling-appointments-new-crm-contacts/

Better Brainstorming: The Most Effective Ways to Generate More Ideas

The hero is faced with a huge—potentially insurmountable—challenge. A random event or object sparks their creativity, and suddenly they devise a brilliant solution to save the day.

As romantic as this narrative is, it’s also highly unrealistic. Most of us don’t spontaneously develop genius ideas. We have to put ourselves in the right conditions and work hard to think of ideas.

That’s where brainstorming comes in. Brainstorming helps us be innovative on demand—that is, when it works. It can also quickly be a waste of time discussing random ideas. If you want to generate great ideas, the key is to brainstorm effectively. Here's how.

The History of Brainstorming

As central as brainstorming feels to modern work culture, it’s actually relatively new. In 1948, advertising executive Alex Osborn published Your Creative Power, a book with a chapter on brainstorming or “using the brain to storm a creative problem—and doing so in commando fashion, with each stormer attacking the same objective,” as he defined it.

Alex Osborn's brainstorming activity conducting

Osborn said his team used this technique to generate 87 ideas in 90 minutes. To help others take advantage of its creative power, he outlined four primary rules:

1. No negative feedback
2. Focus on quantity over quality
3. Use others’ ideas as launchpads
4. Encourage big thinking

Brainstorming was a huge hit. It’s become one of the most popular ways to come up with new ideas. But as anyone who’s ever sat through endless—and unproductive—brainstorming sessions knows, it can also be a huge waste of time.

To make sure both your independent and group brainstorming sessions lead to novel (and useful!) ideas, experiment with these 12 strategies both on your own and with a group.

5 Ways to Brainstorm on Your Own

Independent brainstorming may seem like an oxymoron. However, Osborn’s own research shows it can be more effective than group collaboration. A 1958 Yale study found people working by themselves developed twice as many solutions to creative puzzles as those in groups.

Try these strategies next time you’re solo and need to spark some creativity—and perhaps give them a try before your team brainstorming sessions, to come ready with ideas.

1. Find Word Associations

Leadership trainer Andy Kelund recommends choosing a random noun (ideally one that’s unconnected to the focus of your brainstorming session) and combining it with your brainstorming focus. Use the union as a springboard for more ideas.

Suppose you want to host an event for your customers. You open a dictionary, flip to an arbitrary page, and see the word “frog.” This reminds you of the frog your school photographer used to bring to picture day to make kids smile, which inspires you to hire professional photographers to take LinkedIn headshots at the event.

Kelund says if the first word doesn’t work, just pick another.

Or you can use a tool like Word Association Lookup (shown below) or Visuwords to explore word associations:

2. Use a Prompt

Just as writers use written prompts to find inspiration, you can use prompts to think of your next brilliant idea.

Packs of creative work cards known as “method cards” were popularized by design agency IDEO. These cards would include different prompts to help you think, say, about the material you'd use or the customer group you're focusing on. You can find example decks on Method Kit, with brainstorming prompts for projects, personal development, product developments, startups, marketing and PR, workshop planning, personas, and more.

Method cards are often used to spur creative thinking

You can find the original IDEO method card set on Amazon—or you can create your own method cards from a PDF template.

Alternatively, ask a coworker to make up a prompt for you. The best prompts are pretty abstract phrases (like “Describe your challenge or goal to a five-year-old” or "Do the last thing first"), so your colleague doesn’t need to be familiar with what you’re doing.

3. Use a Visual Jumpstart

Pick an interesting image that’s somehow related to the focus of your brainstorm. For the customer marketing event brainstorm example, you might select a photo of customers, a conference, or people mingling. Search Google Images for a photo to use.

Write down everything that comes to mind when you look at that photo: phrases, memories, and related thoughts.

Once you’ve completely exhausted your associations, review the list and see if anything jumps out. If you can’t find an item with obvious potential, try combining two or more thoughts.

4. Give Yourself Boundaries

It seems counterintuitive, but boundaries can make you more creative. The fewer resources you have to work with, the more inventive you have to be—perhaps a way to tap that superhero gift of coming up with solutions in crisis.

To benefit from this effect, take whatever problem or opportunity you’re trying to brainstorm for—and amp up the difficulty.

For instance, if you have three months to create a new user acquisition strategy, ask yourself how you’d approach the same project if you only had one month—or a day.

Perhaps you have a $10,000 partner marketing budget. Challenge yourself to create a plan using $5,000 or even $500.

Use the solutions you develop as a springboard for your fully-fledged idea, or surprise your manager by hitting your goal before the deadline or under budget.

5. Take Away Boundaries

On the flip side, giving yourself mental freedom can also help you innovate. Try imagining you had as much of one resource as you wanted to get the job done—whether that’s time, money, expertise, or help from your co-workers. What would you do?

Take that idea, and scope it down.

As an example, suppose your company is opening a new office, and you’re responsible for the PR campaign. If you had a blank check, you might buy Snapchat Spectacles for every attendee and turn their videos from the night into a cool promo video.

Because you don’t have an unlimited budget, you turn this idea into paying for a Snapchat filter, encouraging participants to add your brand on the app and giving prizes to those who send you Snaps.

7 Ways to Best Brainstorm as a Group

Group brainstorming can be productive—with a little structure. Here are some of the best ways:

1. Create Diverse Teams

Rather than holding a brainstorming session with your team or department, create a cross-functional group of people from all different parts of your company to benefit from diverse viewpoints and skills.

Research suggests adding new team members with current ones will improve the quality of ideas. Northwestern sociologist Brian Uzzi studied 474 Broadway musicals and found those with “intermediate” levels of social intimacy were three times more likely to do well with both critics and the audience—as opposed to those with "high" levels of cohesion, aka teams who always work together.

Fresh voices lets you avoid groupthink—but if a group is too unfamiliar, people often clash. Having a range of relationships gives you the best of both worlds.

2. Try Brainwriting

Just as how the first number you say in a negotiation tends to influence the final outcome, the first ideas people share in a brainstorming session affects the entire discussion.

Kellogg professor Loran Nordgren explains that sharing ideas in groups isn't always effective. Thanks to conformity, “early ideas tend to have disproportionate influence over the rest of the conversation. They establish the kinds of norms, or cement the idea of what are appropriate examples or potential solutions for the problem.”

One solution? A process called "brainwriting." Participants write down their ideas before or at the very beginning of the meeting, and then come together to talk about them.

Brainwriting example from one of Zapier's team retreats

Ideally, ideas are anonymous. Consider having team members put their ideas on Post-It notes on a wall, then ask everyone to vote for their favorites.

Alternatively, you can use a free app like Candor. Candor sends your question to your participants, gathers their responses, and turns each idea into “cards” that you can use to organize your discussions.

3. Use the 6-3-5 Method

One variation of brainwriting, the 6-3-5 method—where 6 people generate 3 ideas in 5 minute—is a simple way to generate 108 ideas in a half hour. You need six participants—ideally not more, as the meeting would become hard to manage. If you only have four or five team members, this method will still work (although you’ll have fewer ideas).

Give everyone a separate piece of paper and ask them to write down three ideas in five minutes. Then have them pass their paper to the right. They have another five minutes to write down another three ideas before passing their papers to the right again. Repeat until their paper makes its way back to them.

It's like the game of telephone, reinvented for creative brainstorming.

4. Brainstorm with an “Outsider”

Sometimes, all you need is a new pair of eyes looking at your problem. Ask someone outside your company to brainstorm with you—ideally, someone who’s in your role at a company that’s not in your space or a direct competitor. For example, if you work in co-marketing at an IT software company, you might brainstorm with a co-marketing professional at a tourism business.

Send each other your questions or prompts ahead of time (like, “I need a name for this new product” or “I want to grow email sign-ups by 20% this month”). Then take turns brainstorming together in-person, over chat, or on Skype.

5. Flip your Worst Ideas

If the mood in your brainstorming session becomes negative, don’t try to fight it. Make that energy productive with the “worst idea” exercise.

Ask everyone to write down their craziest, most inane, least feasible ideas. Then challenge them to somehow turn those ideas into good ones—either by changing or adding a key detail, or doing the opposite of what they proposed

You might end up with some fantastic suggestions. Even if you don’t, everyone will be more productive after stretching their minds a bit.

6. Encourage Criticism

"Debate encourages divergent thinking and enhances the quality of thought and decisions of the group."- Charlan Nemeth

One of Osborn’s core brainstorming tenets—“no criticism”—is misguided. Charlan Nemeth, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, found that groups encouraged to debate generated 20% more ideas than those told not to critique each other’s ideas.

Besides telling your team members to give constructive feedback, you can harness this effect by setting up debates. First, come up with a question or a prompt. If you’re searching for ways to increase webinar registrations, for example, you might ask every member of your team to prepare a creative idea to drive registration that costs less than $1,000.

At the brainstorming meeting, then, pair your members off. Have them debate their ideas one group at a time. You might give the first person three minutes to explain their proposal, four minutes for their partner to ask questions, one minute for their partner to critique it, and two minutes for the first person to defend it. Then ask the second person to present their proposal.

For an added twist, tell partners to switch ideas. Not only will this exercise force your team members to challenge their own assumptions, it’ll also put them into problem-solving mode.

7. Share Inspiration

Brainstorming shouldn’t be an isolated event. To foster a constant stream of ideas, create a shared file where everyone can store their random thoughts and inspiration. That might be a Trello board, Google Drive or Dropbox folder, Pinterest board, or just a text file or Google Doc that everyone adds ideas to.

Ask people to mull over a specific prompt such as “Develop a user-generated content campaign,” or find examples of a bigger theme like “Brand awareness plays.”

You can even create a room in your team chat app for brainstorming. This approach makes it easy to riff on each other’s ideas; for instance, one person might link to a noteworthy campaign, while another might comment with a related thought three hours later.

---

Brainstorming isn’t typically that productive. Add some structure, though, and you can turn a random stream of thoughts into actionable ideas that will actually produce great results.

Still stuck? Check out our guide on How to Generate More Good Ideas—which recommends that you need to come up with a ton of ideas, even bad ideas, to find the good stuff that comes to the surface.

Have your own brainstorming tricks? We'd love to hear how you and your team come up with great new ideas in the comments below!

Title photo by Max Pixel. Brainstorming diagram via Spanish Wikipedia user Gwaur. IDEO method cards photo via andybardill. Group brainstorming photo by fsHH.

source https://zapier.com/blog/brainstorming/