Brosix customers around the world use their private team networks to stay connected while working remotely. Whether you have an entirely remote team, or are working with just a few remote colleagues, there are numerous ways you can use Brosix to stay connected and efficiently collaborating.
We’ve created this guide to offer some practical tips on how to make the most of your Brosix private team network regardless of where you and your team are located. Drawing on our own insights and feedback from our customers, this resource will help you get set up for remote work.
Remote work can present many unique opportunities, but also several potential drawbacks. Chief among these are related to the security of your team’s communication, and the focus of your team members’ work. Working in one office space means you can provide an onsite secured network, as well as direct supervision of your team.
Brosix was created with exactly these challenges in mind. You have full administration over your private team network, allowing you to adapt it to your remote team’s needs. Your network also comes with fully encrypted communication channels and is hosted on secure servers, meaning your remote team members can communicate securely regardless of where they’re located. Brosix has a wide range of further security measures as well, providing a holistic approach to cybersecurity.
Regarding keeping remote team members focused, all users on your private team network must be authorized by your network administrator. This means that unlike free IM platforms, communication over the network is limited to work contacts, thus avoiding potential distractions. You can also control which features each network user can access, adapting your private team network as you see fit.
The first step in setting up for remote work is making sure that team members are connected with the right colleagues. Brosix’s administration features allow you to manage contacts in a way that makes sense for your team. For the best results, our clients often create custom contact list groupings at different levels- departments, teams, etc.
Turning to an officemate for a quick chat is one of the best benefits of working in the same physical office. Often the best ideas are born exactly through this sort of unstructured interaction.
Luckily Brosix can help you recreate these interactions remotely. The Chat Rooms feature can provide the necessary virtual space for your team members to collaborate, regardless of their location. We’d recommend creating rooms at the project, team and managerial levels, if applicable to your organization.
Working remotely means there’s no opportunity to post important messages on the company update board, or quickly gather your team for an announcement. This can make it a challenge to keep your team members informed about the latest news.
The Welcome Module and Broadcast Messaging features can help. The former allows you to send network-wide announcements as menu action items. Many of our clients also use the Welcome Module as a way to guide team members to a specific web page containing important information from their organization as soon as they launch Brosix.
With the Broadcast Messaging feature you can send a message to a large group at once. Whether it’s an already existing contact group, or a custom group, you can quickly send off updates and announcements.
Staying up to date on your remote team’s network activity is an efficient way to both stay informed, and never lose track of important communications. Your Brosix private team network has features which easily allow you to track and store user activity locally and on secure servers.
Brosix’s User Activity Log feature allows you to securely store user activity on Brosix servers. With this feature you can create custom reports on user activity, allowing you to easily keep track of your remote team’s work. You can also set custom expiration times after which user activity records are deleted.
Brosix also stores Chat History locally on users’ devices. These records can be synched across multiple devices, for example if your remote team members use both Brosix mobile and desktop apps. This allows your team members to easily keep track of their communications.
One of the most common questions among teams considering remote work is “how will I be able to send and receive large files?” Email and cloud storage services, for example, place limits on the size of attachments, as do most public IM platforms.
Brosix’s File Transfer feature allows your remote team members to send and receive files of unlimited size. You can send single or multiple files to any number of contacts on your network. This peer-to-peer feature also employs automatic scanning for all files by using the preferred antivirus software installed on user computers, which makes file transfers completely secure.
Whether it’s through a projected presentation, or simply sketching something out on the whiteboard, meeting in person has the added benefit of allowing for easy visualization. Recreating this remotely can be difficult, and this can inhibit your remote team members’ productivity.
Brosix has several features that can help your remote team hold productive virtual meetings. The two features that clients highlight as the most effective are the Virtual Whiteboard and Screen Sharing features.
With Virtual Whiteboard you can create and present custom visualizations. This allows team members to hold more productive and efficient remote meetings, have interactive discussions and brainstorm new ideas. Screen Sharing allows you to share your screen directly with a team member, giving you the option to present directly from your own computer.
Knowing team members’ availability while working remotely can be a challenge. Unlike working in the same office, it’s difficult to tell when a colleague’s free for a quick chat or consultation.
The User Status feature can help your team members stay informed about their colleagues’ availability. You can use one of the three standard statuses (online/ away/ busy), or create your own custom text status, for example- “out to lunch,” “in a meeting,” “out of the office,” etc. Our clients share with us that for the best results it’s important to set guidelines around how and when team members update their status.
Even though you’re working remotely you still need human-to-human interaction. That’s where Brosix’s Video Chat feature can come in, allowing you to hold face-to-face meetings with colleagues. This is a great way to stay connected even from a distance.
Brosix’s Video Chat supports individual and group calls. For group calls, it’s necessary to manually set up individual calls between each of the group members. Once this is done, your team members will be ready to meet.
Online collaboration is a great way to boost productivity among remote colleagues. Brosix presents you with many options to directly and effectively collaborate with a team member.
The Screen Sharing Remote Desktop feature allows you to grant or receive access to a team member’s computer. This is an efficient way to train employees, provide IT support, or demonstrate something to a team member directly on their computer.
The Screenshot feature allows you to instantly take and share a screenshot from your computer with any number of colleagues. This is an efficient way to demonstrate a certain process, capture a problem you’re facing, or simply share a visual record with colleagues for more efficient collaboration.
Be sure to check out the Brosix blog for more information on how to make the most of remote work, and the Brosix Knowledge Base for more information on specific features. Some of our most useful resources on remote work include:
White Paper:
Working Remotely: Statistics, Data, How and Why
Blog Posts:
How to Make Remote Work Your Reality in 2020
Your Company Needs a Remote Work Policy. Here’s What to Include.
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