Remote Office Right On Your Phone
Apps on our smartphones can either help us with productivity or distract us. Randall Dean, an email sanity expert of Randall Dean Consulting and Training in Michigan shares that creating a central productivity panel on your smartphone can help manage a remote office from your device.
Focus on One Suite of Productivity Tools
What do you use for your primary email address and calendar? If you’re using Gmail, you might want to focus on the Google Workplace suite of products. If you use Microsoft Outlook, you may focus on the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity tools.
Why should you stick with one platform? First, these tools are designed to work together. You’ll have an easier time going from one app to another and one device to another. Second, it will save you both time and money.
For example, if you’re paying for Evernote and Microsoft 365, delete Evernote, as Microsoft OneNote has the same capabilities. Also, the same thing could be said for Zoom and Teams. These both allow you to hold video meetings – why pay for both?
Using Microsoft 365 as Office On Your Phone
Use the Microsoft 365 remote “office on your phone” setup. It gives you access to your email, calendar and contacts — one app that gives you access to three critical tools. Yes, you could build a similar mobile office using the Google Workplace apps instead.
Randall recommends the Microsoft Outlook, the OneNote app, and Microsoft To Do.
Microsoft Apps To Use
To Do is the app to sync your tasks on your phone and computer. While OneNote syncs your notes on both.
You will also want OneDrive so you can save, store, and even share all of your documents and files in one place, giving you access anywhere you have internet service. By using the OneDrive app, you don’t have to pull up these Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint continually. When you attempt to open a document, the OneDrive app will automatically launch the correct application to open the file.
Beyond video meetings and chat in Microsoft Teams, you can complete some sophisticated project, team and client management as well as multi-person collaboration and sharing.
Another essential app that Randall shared is Office Lens. This app allows you to turn your phone into a scanner. You can take a photo of a document out in the field and this app converts it to a usable PDF file. Not only that, but because it’s a Microsoft tool, you can auto-save it to a folder in your OneDrive account.
You could build a similar remote office using Google Workspace, and even possibly with Apple and other third-party app providers. That way, when you’re in the field and need to get work done, your entire office can be found in the palm of your hand.
Lastly, the key to building your phone and tablet-based remote office is consistently storing your information in the cloud, making it accessible from anywhere. In addition, the safety and security of your data is vital. If something goes wrong with your computer or phone, having everything stored in the Microsoft Cloud and OneDrive will prevent a business-ending event.
