Boost your productivity with these seven apps

When you think mobile apps, the names that come to mind are probably Facebook (including Messenger), YouTube and Google (Search, Play, Maps and Mail), all of which sit atop Nielsen’s list of most popular apps.

While they garner less attention, business apps were the second most downloaded category of apps on the Apple Store, according to Statista, representing 10.2% of all downloads, and second only to games at 23.4%.

Many of these apps are aimed at remote work, collaboration and boosting productivity. Lists of “the best productivity apps” have been compiled by life hackers and self-proclaimed geeks alike; we rounded up a few more by talking with current IT practitioners and technophiles.

Popular productivity apps include anything designed for internal or external communication and collaboration.

1. An example is Slack, a real-time messaging, archiving and search tool for teams. Carrie Pendolino, vice president of marketing at Open Source Storage in Campbell, Calif., uses Slack on a daily basis for internal communication and chatting with Open Source Storage employees, as well as keeping all conversations organized in set groups.

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2. She also regularly uses an app called SyncUP for external and internal chatting and conference calls, which shows up on e-mail and text. “With SyncUP, I like the fact that I can chat, send documents and hold a conference call with people outside my office,” Pendolino says. “I use it with clients, agencies and contractors alike.”

Pendolino combines SyncUp and Slack for maximum effect. “We’re building a new website, and I need input from everyone, so I set up a SlackTask to help manage the project internally, and then I use SyncUp to loop in our outside creative and development firm with some members on our internal team,” she says.

This is much easier, she says, than tracking progress by looking at old email threads and trying to piece things together. “All documents and conversations are at your fingertips,” she says. “I don’t have to remember what has been said in phone conversations or texts or emails—all the information is there at one glance and easy to parse through.”

Real-time collaboration

3. At Experts Exchange, one of the world’s largest networks for tech professionals, Gene Richardson favors Atlassian’s HipChat to communicate with teams and individuals anywhere, anytime. Currently the chief operating officer, Richardson was formerly a programmer and IT administrator, with over 20 years of hands-on tech experience in large enterprises. 

Experts Exchange has also integrated its software build processes and notifications into HipChat. “Once you subscribe to the relevant group, then you know in real time when new code has been updated, who is testing it, the results of the testing, and when it is being rolled out to production,” Richardson says. “I think one key value proposition for mobile apps is the ability to receive critical notifications or alerts on your screen. This ensures that you have real-time information that is relevant to your needs.”

4. Additionally, all of the teams at Experts Exchange converted to the Google Drive app for business about two years ago and now use it regularly. “Documents are easily loaded onto Google Drive with appropriate security and access levels, which allows us to retrieve, update and comment from mobile devices,” Richardson says.

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To keep the systems secure, the company uses two-factor authentication, employing the Google Authenticator app as the second factor. “It synchronizes and changes an authentication key every 60 seconds to ensure that nobody can use your account credentials except you and the mobile device you’ve registered,” Richardson says.

Getting organized

5. In addition to apps used for collaboration, another popular category of apps includes those that help you stay organized, almost functioning as a second, exterior brain. An example is Get It Done, a task management app for Web browsers and smartphones from David Allen Co.

The basic theory “is that you take everything you need to do out of your mind and put it into a system,” says Mitch Maiman, president of Intelligent Product Solutions, a product development and design company in Hauppage, N.Y. Whereas many people jot down to-do lists, reminders, ideas, meeting times, appointments, books they want to read—you name it—on the nearest piece of scrap paper, the Get It Done app offers a place to not just store but also schedule and track these pieces of information.

“It creates freedom for you,” Maiman says. “If you get into the mindset of religiously putting everything in there, it lets you forget all that clutter because it’s in the system.” Maiman—who uses Get It Done every day, at night and on the weekends—prefers it to other reminder or to-do list apps because it’s more robust and he can use it on his Web browser or smartphone.

6. Additionally, Maiman relies on a note-taking app – Notes Plus—to keep track of his written materials, such as meeting and project notes. “I used to record everything in an engineering notebook, but I still found that I ended up with a lot of marked-up documents, stuff on my desk and loose index cards,” he says. “I didn’t have it with me everywhere I went, and it wasn’t organized – it was sequenced time-wise but not by subject matter.”

Now, Maiman uses an iPad with a keyboard to take notes in the Notes Plus app. “It lets me organize my notes in subject areas,” he says, such as new client meetings, existing clients, personal, etc. He has even found a stylus that works well with the app so that he can record hand-written notes, as well. “I don’t remember the last time I put something in a folder on my desk,” he says.

Even when he can’t use the iPad, such as when he’s driving, Maiman has found a way to record ideas and reminders, using the Voice Note app. “You click open the app, record what you want to say, and it converts the audio to text and emails it to you,” he says. “When I get home or to the office and open my email, there’s the message. It’s minimalist and simple, which makes it elegant.” Currently Voice Note is available only for Android devices, but a beta test is in the works for an iPhone version.

7. Of course the bane of nearly anyone’s existence when it comes to staying organized is tracking passwords. Maiman uses the eWallet app from Ilium Software, which functions as an encrypted vault for secure information. “If you create a password with characters, numbers and punctuation—and maintain separate passwords for various accounts—it’s hard to remember all that stuff,” he says. Using eWallet, he can easily access all the passwords he creates.

With thousands of apps available, there is likely a productivity app for any area of your professional or personal life. With the ubiquity of smartphones and mobile apps, there will soon be no excuse for being disorganized.

Brandel is a freelance writer. She can be reached at marybrandel@verizon.net.