Online Tools For People Who Work Off-Site

By Elizabeth Wasserman

When she's collaborating with colleagues on projects over the web, Rose Stanley's co-workers would never know that she is telecommuting from her home in suburban Arizona. "Unless my dog starts barking in the background," Stanley says, "they don't have a clue where I am."

Stanley, work-life practice leader for WorldatWork, a Scottsdale-based non-profit organization of human resource professionals, started telecommuting after 12 years on the job so she could spend more time with her young son. "I live an hour away from the office," says Stanley. She realized she needed more flexibility once her son started playing T-ball and had to be at practice at the same exact time she would normally be driving home from work.

The truth is that Stanley can perform at home just about every task she would do in the office thanks to new technologies that allow her to use the Internet to meet virtually face-to-face with colleagues and collaboratively work together online. Some of these technologies are expensive and can be provided by employers, who now allow 12.4 million American workers to telecommute from home at least one day per month. But other technologies are available for low or no cost and can be used by the growing ranks of the 17 million Americans who are self-employed to communicate with clients, customers or partners.

Online collaboration solutions
If you're an employee of a company that allows you to telecommute, your organization may already have collaboration software or monthly or yearly subscriptions to online applications from some of the major technology providers, such as Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe, Google or Apple, or startups, such as Zoho or Yugma.

"If you're working for a company, typically you would expect the company to buy the software," says Jack Nilles, president and founder of JALA International, a firm that consults with companies setting up telecommuting programs. But as with any telecommuting arrangement, he says, you need to negotiate this with your employer. For the self-employed, there are some free products available online. Beyond email and instant messaging, telecommuters now use tools such as:

• Wikis With wiki web sites, telecommuters in various locations can all contribute to the same file or project. For example, you and your colleagues could create a wiki article that included your company's best practices for creating client proposals. Wikipedia is an example of a popular consumer wiki. Free wiki software is available from "wetpaint", "PBwiki" and "freewiki"
• Calendaring Online versions of your office calendar or appointment book can now electronically check the schedules of team members to find agreeable meeting times or appointments. Free shared calendar products can also be found at "bravenet".
• Communal whiteboards Online whiteboards allow you and other web conferencing participants to view the same screen and make notes that everyone else can see in real time. Free online whiteboards are accessible from GE and "skrbl".

File-sharing resources
If you need to share large documents with co-workers or clients, email is not always a viable option. At the same time, to do your job you might need access to files stored on your company's internal servers. Some telecommuters can gain access to shared files by connecting to their offices over a virtual private network (VPN), which your IT will have to set up for you.

For the self-employed, there are online services that allow you to share projects or files with partners or clients. For $30 per month, file-works lets you rent space on their servers to store and share files. Apple offers iDisk for $99 per year, which buys you 10GB of storage to share files, video and photos. Xdrive offers 5GB of free online storage (which would allow you to share hundreds of average-sized Word documents) or up to 50GB of storage for $9.95 per month.

Conferencing tools
Web conferencing is also growing in popularity for employees working off-site. For example, Stanley is collaborating with a colleague in Seattle on a textbook project. Their project file is too large to email back and forth. So they use an Internet-based program from Microsoft Live Meeting to work together. They can talk, look at the same document, and annotate the document as if they were seated in a conference room together.

Web conferencing can include audio and/or video conferencing, in addition to other tools, such as IM or chat, white boarding and document sharing. Many companies now buy monthly or yearly subscriptions to web-conferencing services such as those by Microsoft, Webex, or GoToMeeting that allow employees to web conference virtually every day.

For the self-employed, subscriptions to some services are available for as little as $39 per month. Free video calling is available via voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) provider Skype, providing that you have a webcam, computer and broadband Internet connection.

For Stanley, adding video to conferencing enhances her relationships with colleagues. "There is a more meaningful relationship connection when you can see someone," she says. "Just don't wear your fuzzy slippers when on camera."