January 15, 2008

Working Remotely and Sharing Documents Needn't Be a Pain

I just got an email from Microsoft informing me that my Microsoft Office Live Workspace was ready.

I signed up to try it out a few weeks ago and now I can test it out. There's so many tools available to help you easily and economically share documents. Microsoft's solution is just one. Others include Catalyst Web (you can visit them at the Third Annual Small Business Summit 2008), WebEx's WebOffice Google Docs and dozens of other great solutions.

Simpler solutions such as Box.net and YouSendit focus pretty much on just document storage but not collaboration and other tools.

If you find that you keep copying files to a USB key or carrying around an external hard drive. There's no excuse why these solutions should not be backup solutions only. Use a web based document sharing service as your main "remote work" tool.

What's nice about these tools is that you can stop living in email.

Email is a great tool, but when you find that you're duplicating attachments and losing track of which file is newest and digging for documents related to a project but stored in the wrong folder - you'll crave a document collaboration system.

Many of the better systems integrate with Outlook in some way and/or at least have connectivity to email so you can minimize the screens you need to work out of.

tags: collaboration , communications , remote | 0 comments