Manager’s life is always about juggling duties. They rarely get a sigh of relief while managing multiple tasks. You can bet that on top team management tool of completing your daily tasks, you have to attend meetings, coordinate with team members across a hybrid or remote setup, hear their complaints, and face your boss.
It is difficult to get work done while simultaneously supporting and motivating your team. The juggling of duties requires finessing and support.
The blog discusses IT managers’ best project management tool and productivity apps.
Let’s review their features and capabilities.
Slack
I am sure you must have heard about Slack. It is an instant messaging app, much like WhatsApp, except it is used for professional purposes. However, Slack also sends messages, videos, files, and pictures to your peers and bosses within your organisation.
It streamlines chats into unique channels, which keeps the conversations organised. You can judge its popularity by the fact that people use it as a verb to describe an instant message. For example, I will slack you the documents.
Key attributes:
- Responds to messages within a conversation (threat) to avoid confusion
- Easily attaches files to messages
- Also, it has a wide range of emojis
- Has the ability to create multiple channels for different teams, people, and projects
- It is highly compatible with other productivity apps like Salesforce
- Its basic plan is free, but you can upgrade it for a pro and business plan with additional cost
Todoist
As the name suggests todoist, this is a task management app. This award-winning app boosts performance and productivity by helping users meet their deadlines. Moreover, it reminds you of your to-do list or pending tasks.
However, the most exciting thing about the app is that it is highly flexible, customisable, and allows users to enlist, categories, sort, and prioritize tasks. Therefore, managers and their subordinates may use it for personal and professional life.
Key attributes:
- Turns emails into things-to-do
- Can copy paste multiple lines to turn them into tasks for the user’s convenience
- It has a customisable swipe gesture.
- Enlists, Sorts, and assorts tasks based on the assigned person (manager)
- Highly compatible with apps like Slack, Google Suite, etc.
- The basic plan is free for active five projects, and the paid plan starts on five-plus projects.
Automate.io
What is that one thought that always lurks in the minds of managers? How do they eliminate tedious tasks? Automate.io is the answer to all your questions. It does not require coding and helps integrate two or more web apps in a few minutes.
It also creates workflows that automate most of your tedious and exhaustive tasks. Managers can amplify their productivity and boost the team’s performance with it.
Key attributes:
- Conducts simple integrations to complex workflows with a drag and drop builder.
- It does not require IT support or coding.
- It contains pre-built templates for automated workflow
- Automates repetitive and redundant tasks with team account
- Has customisable workflow with a diverse range of built-in tools such as conditional logic, timers, calculations, formatters
- It is compatible with Slack, Trello, Salesforce, etc.
- It has a forever-free version, whereas the personal, professional, and robust plans come at a monthly price.
Hive
This is a widely used task-management app. Hive is preferred by managers and their teams equally. Moreover, it helps in accelerating and streamlining tasks. Also, it integrates all the workplace & team management tool and apps into one dashboard.
It becomes easier for the managers to manage their projects, have multiple conversations, send emails and have calls under one roof.
Key attributes:
- Allows you to chat with your team in real-time with the Hive chat feature.
- Enables collaboration with the team using a shared inbox and channel.
- Automates workflow by eliminating repetitive tasks.
- Helps to project timelines and ensures adherence to deadlines with the app’s AI-triggered alerts.
- Sends alerts in case of project risks.
- It is highly compatible with Slack, Google, and Microsoft.
- For individuals and small groups, it has a free version. However, an upgraded team plan comes at a cost. It has a 14-day free trial period.
Trello
Trello is one of the commonly used and helpful task management tools. It works for individuals and teams as well. Additionally, it comes with boards, lists, tags, deadlines, stickers, and cards for different tasks. However, it is excellent team management tool for small groups and managerial tasks.
It allows you to choose a background wallpaper of your liking, just like Whatsapp. You can use boards to jot down to-do tasks, colour code different subjects, and push them into the completed category when the job or project is over.
Key attributes:
- Provides a quick overview of cards carrying all the tasks
- It has a simple and intuitive drag and drop builder
- It has a card record archive section
- Allows in-line editing
- It is highly compatible with Todoist, Slack, and Google tasks
- The basic plan is free, but add-ons like support, automation, and integration plans incur a cost
Google Workspace
Formerly known as G-suite, Google Workspace has a worldwide presence with more than 6 million business users. It is an excellent medium for balancing communication, collaboration, and operations. The different stacks of Google Workspace include Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, etc.
Most of us must have used Google docs for our assignments or Calender for keeping a tab of essential tasks. Therefore, it is a foundational tool that enables a productive work environment. Moreover, you can also use your Google account SSO for security purposes as well.
Key attributes:
- Allows you to track time for each task on your calendar
- Allows you to create events and organise your time and deadlines
- You can minimise distractions by turning off notifications
- Also, it simplifies chat through native chat, video calls, and emails
- It optimises your major tasks with the inbuilt capabilities like tags, comments, link access, sharing, etc.
- This digital Workspace offers a free trial run for 14 days, and later the pricing starts for additional time and features provided.
HubSpot
Hubspot is one of the ideal productivity apps for managers. It is a multipurpose cloud-based app that provides sales, marketing, and customer support using CMS solutions. Also, it automates major tasks and communication throughout the customer lifecycle.
IT managers prefer Hubspot as it optimises the lead generation process, SEO, social media, marketing automation, communication, landing pages, etc.
Key attributes:
- It organises the time by prioritising tasks and projects in the calendar to keep a tab of the work plans.
- Optimises workflow by using customisable triggers, notifications, alerts, and updates.
- Highly compatible and integrable with other apps like Slack, Shopify, etc. It also effectively syncs the data across all major apps and platforms management tools.
- Sets up communication bots and automates all communication and collaboration across emails and chats
- It also has an introductory free trial for a week, after which the cost incurs for additional features.
Toggl Plan
Toggl Plan is a super easy-to-use team management tool. It is difficult for a manager to manage a team while staying up-to-date with the projects. Toggle helps in such situations. It has a visual project timeline format which includes task boards.
Additionally, the task boards allow managers to plan, track, and monitor workload and performance on time. Additionally, it has a simple yet intuitive drag-and-drop edit feature. With Toggle plan timelines and taskbars, you also track who’s responsible for what and when. Thus, it paints a complete picture of all the projects.
Key attributes:
- It helps you judge the team’s capability and capacity to take on projects and meet deadlines.
- Enables managers to balance chores without burnout
- Kanban task boards present a visual representation of project performance along with file attachments, comments, tags, etc.
- Enables a task checklist for task and project completion
- Keeps up-to-date information
- Highly compatible with Google Calendar and Slack
- It is free for individuals, but monthly pricing starts for team projects and unlimited tasks.
TickTick
TickTick is yet another exciting productivity-building checklist app. Managers find it very easy to use for their everyday tasks. It is a straightforward, convenient, and easy-to-use app.
However, it has some very robust features which allow users to manage their operations efficiently. Moreover, it has location-based settings.
Key attributes:
- Enables voice input to create the checklist
- Sends reminders and notifications by assigning a due date to your tasks
- Sends multiple messages to remind of a task nearing completion
- It uses a promo timer to get rid of the distractions
- Highly compatible with Gmail, Amazon Alexa, and Spark
- It has a free offer for the basic plan while the premium plan charges yearly
Zoom
Pandemic made Zoom a staple in the daily workflows of managers in conducting meetings. However, it was just a video conferencing app at one time, which later evolved into a communication tool for all business tasks.
Along with supporting video calls, it assists with call centres, webinars, and more. Since it offers a large group capacity, most businesses use Zoom for their communications.
Key attributes:
- Effortlessly schedules video conferences from your events calendar.
- Automates communication and improves collaboration across departments and whiteboards.
- Moreover, it allows managers to share screens and record meetings.
- Also, it is highly compatible with different platforms like Asana and Slack.
- It offers a free trial for a month. However, it charges for paid plans and premium services per annum.
Apart from these, there are a lot of other apps that improve a manager’s productivity and speed. Moreover, these apps help automate and accelerate operations with planning, time management, goal setting, and communication.
So, download these team management tool and game changing apps for a better experience and enhanced productivity.