Office Aaccelerators

Work from home is the current necessity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and collaboration is the major challenge of this model. Few prominent software vendors are offering free collaboration and video conferencing products to aid remote working during this lockdown period, helping employees stay home. The remote management tools fall into several categories. You need to choose correctly according to your requirements.

After thorough research and through personal experience, we have suggested some tools to make your work-life smoother while you maintain social-distance.

Project management tools:

What is the purpose of these tools: Plan and synchronize remote teamwork in an organized manner. Thus, everyone in the team is on the same page, and work doesn't get hampered.

1.       Basecamp  

The sophisticated yet easy to use project management tool, Basecamp, has every feature you can ask for. Group chats, to-do lists, file storage, docs, calendar on the same platform makes things very easy to manage. Its attractive pricing option of $99 flat for unlimited users, along with many other advantages, would prove absolutely useful for large collaboration groups both in terms of collaboration and pricing.

2.       Asana

Sleek and clean interface with handy features like assigning tasks in a tailored manner using automation and easy tracking of project progress makes Asana the top task management software among its rivals. It has been a favorite tool of freelancers, and now it has also marked a place for all the office goers, who are stuck at home due to coronavirus pandemic.

3.       Freedcamp

Refreshing user interface with easy to use dashboard and simple tools adding to productivity is the unique feature of Freedcamp. It has to-do lists, discussion, calendar, timer, etc. A decent version of a completely free organizing tool and a minimal charge for paid versions with a per-user fee makes it an excellent tool for small enterprises. Amidst all the uncertainty and global-crisis, you can try and see if the paid version works for you or not - who knows, working remotely might turn out to be more beneficial to you and your organization!

4.       Monday.com

Tracking a project's progress through organizing team members' workflow by sorting them on the dashboard is precisely what Monday.com helps you to do. Alerts of pre-requisite tasks are a distinctive feature this management tool has.

5.       Atlassian

Atlassian has made its cloud-based version of applications available for free on a broader range recently. A team consisting of up to 10 members can freely access Jira Software, Confluence, Jira Service Desk, and Jira Core.

Collaboration and Document exchange tools

What is the purpose of these tools: Documentation of work is an inevitable part of an office job. Using these tools, you can make the documents available on the cloud for the complete team.

1.       G Suite

Google already provides valuable tools like Gmail, Drive, Google Docs for free, enterprise-level has other features like admin-control with unlimited storage and other useful features like shared calendar, useful for remote teams.

2.       Microsoft Office 365 (online version)

OneDrive is the cloud storage tool that has almost all useful tools of Microsoft office and is very useful for those who (like me) can't think of life without Microsoft office. Your employees can use the software as either an online version or a desktop version - it depends on his or her need and preference. Its flexibility, ease of use, and cloud-storage makes it a decent tool for remote working.

Video conferencing tools for meetings

What is the purpose of these tools: Many a time message gets misconstrued when communicated over calls or through emails. These tools facilitate face-to-face interaction from the comfort of your home. Moreover, the juncture at which the world is standing, companies might be forced to take various drastic steps, face-to-face communications with top-level management can help to instill faith and confidence in the employees.

1.       Skype

One of the best and most widely used videos conferencing tools with the best VoIP quality is Skype. It can be used as both a desktop version and on mobile. Once you install, you can be calling your team for free, allowing seamless conferencing with your team members.

 2.       Zoom

A large crowd video conference can be managed using Zoom. Renowned organizations like Uber and GoDaddy use Zoom for their meetings. Four plans offer flexibility to choose prices according to the features. And it also has a free plan allowing up to hosting 100 members, as a basic plan.

 3.       Google Hangouts

Contact all your team members or one by one using the Google hangouts. You can make voice calls and video calls; all you need is a Gmail account.

Remote desktop tools for help

What is the purpose of these tools: Employees who are used to working together may end up facing challenges when working remotely. Additionally, you cannot expect every employee to be capable enough to resolve every problem he comes across. Need for IT support also cannot be ignored. These tools help the employees to get assistance from experts remotely.

1.       TeamViewer

Nothing can beat this pioneering software. Both the parties should have TeamViewer to use it, it is as simple as that. But the assistance it offers is incredible from fixing bad installations to file transfer between PCs. It also allows taking complete control of your PC, meaning you can access your office PC sitting at your home.

Access Database programming has been around for nearly three decades. It stores large amounts of data, allows you to perform sophisticated operations to retrieve the queried data and analyze as well as present it as required. But the debate of choice always exists with the most widely used Microsoft software – Excel, due to its nearly-similar capabilities and ease of use.

Learning curve matters

Among both the tools, Excel Database Management is deemed advantageous in certain aspects. Once you know the basics, you can start and get going. It welcomes novice users also to try and implement it. And the learning curve is gentle, where you can catch up as you go according to your needs. Access is intimidating at its first look! You need to learn and understand it's working thoroughly before you get started; else, you can't initiate it in the first place. But trust us! Once you start using Access, Excel will obsolete to you.

Where does Excel stand high?

When you plan to analyze data, perform simple to complex calculations, and create pivot or chart, Excel comes to your rescue. Numeric and flat data are best managed with Excel. Statistical comparison, hierarchical view in a compact and flexible layout, various chart views, conditional formatting, what-if analysis are all a breeze with it. Real-life uses include accounting, budgeting, billing and sales, reporting, planning, tracking, calendar, etc.,

Access beats Excel here

Access tops it when you have to do regular data recording and tracking to print, display, or export data subsets conveniently using forms. It is the best choice also when your data has grown in size and complexity, when it needs to be merged with other sources, for storing nontextual data like photos, for relational linking of data, and keeping up with task management. Some good real-life examples can be organizing lending libraries, event planning, nutrition tracking, etc.

Automation for repeated actions is possible in both Excel and Access. However, because of the excellent structure definition of data in Access, it becomes more convenient to automate tasks in it.

In fact, Access is the best database solution wherever more than one set of data is maintained.

Clearer picture using comparison

Comparing the benefits of each program based on their performance and accuracy, we find the following significant differences between Excel and Access.

1.       Excel is a flat-file, and Access is a relational database.

2.       Excel data cannot be edited but only viewed using other sources, whereas Access is editable from an external source through the user interface.

3.       Data validation in Excel has limited options, and rules need to be applied before using it, but Access has it as an inbuilt feature, thus robustly maintaining data integrity.

4.       Best case and worst-case scenarios summary report comparison is available with Excel, and no such correlation is provided in Access.

5.       Pivoting and charting is more advanced in Excel in comparison to Pivoting and charting in Access.

6.       Multiple user access is supported at the documentation level, i.e., a worksheet is editable by only one user at a time in Excel. However, Access provides multiple user access which is supported at a record level, i.e., Data set can be edited by multiple users at a time, only record being edited is locked down

Knowing your needs classifies better

If you need data integrity for multiple users upon extensive data requiring a relational database, then Access is your go-to tool. Whereas data up to 10,000 records needing in-depth analysis with simple numerical data should opt for Excel. Your needs define which is better suited!

One best thing about both of them is they can be used interchangeably by exporting and importing the data between them, making it possible to use each of them at their best. Nevertheless, it has to be noted that Excel is available with all office suites, but if you are using the Office Home and Student version, you need to purchase Access separately.

Business Intelligence Tools

As a part of the SQL Database Management team, you must be aware of the robust BI tool – Power BI, which also forms a part of Office 365.

With Power BI, Microsoft has prolonged its reach into business intelligence. It is a cloud-based service that lets you build and share visually rich dashboards and reports with high-end data queries. You can connect Power BI to different sources, and collate the information on one platform for your users. By connecting to databases such as SQL Server, you can conveniently prepare charts, graphs, reports, and dashboards by working on a large amount of data.

As a developer, your support might be requested by your fellow analysts, so it's good to know this dynamic BI tool. And as a BI specialist, you are bound to get an edge over others if you have SQL server knowledge.

You can connect the SQL database to Power BI Desktop in two ways:

Import data

As you understand from the name itself, in this method, the selected tables are imported into Power BI Desktop. Then you can use these imported tables to create visuals, charts, and other analysis. In case there is any change in data, and you want to update your dashboard, make sure to replace the old data and refresh the Power BI – only then the imported data will be, and the updated data will reflect.

DirectQuery

In DirectQuery you do not import or copy any data into Power BI Desktop. A connection is built between the Server and Power Bi, and thus, you directly work with the current data. It is a visual representation of the database. While it gives them access to the real-time database, without having to click anything on the dashboard, it provides limited options of data manipulation.