How to work from home effectively using great free tools

Last week, Slovenia, too, stepped into a state of crisis with harsh governmental measures, which in the history of our republic, can only be compared to the events of the early 1990s.

At a time when we, as individuals, are more actively caring for our own health and the health of our loved ones, companies face the problem of how to do business with minimal loss of efficiency. Where the nature of the work enables employees to do their work from home, business owners must implement processes and take advantage of the opportunities available to enable employees to work safely.

Meetings in person are, of course, out of the question - awesome collaboration and video meeting tools available for free

Leading global IT companies, such as Microsoft and Cisco, now provide companies and individuals with tools and software for video conferencing and project collaboration, at an extremely low cost or even free of charge. In view of the crisis situation, they recognized the great need for such a response, as many companies did not have, or have not yet organized, the use of such tools to make remote work effective.

E-mail and telephone conversations are crucial in working remotely, but often they are not the most effective ways of exchanging information. This is where videoconferencing tools come in handy. Cisco offers its Webex conference tool for free, both for individuals and businesses as well as educational institutions. For the time being, the offer is 90 days from the date of registration, but this may change depending on the situation in 3 months.

Cisco Webex Online enables you:

- unlimited number of (video) meetings, up to 100 participants,

- use on a computer or mobile device,

- screen-sharing and recording (up to 1 GB of cloud space),

- Webex Teams unlimited messaging.

Learn more about the Cisco Webex Tool - https://www.webex.com/video-conferencing.

Cisco also offers Enterprise Trial licenses for Webex for more demanding users, enabling up to 200 users, HD video sessions, Microsoft Exchange Calendar, Directory Sync, SingleSignOn, etc. Contact your Cisco Partner - Unistar PRO to access these licenses.

In addition to videoconferencing tools, uninterrupted work from home often requires a secure connection to the company's internal network, network drives, etc. For these purposes, Cisco offers Trial licenses for services such as Cisco Umbrella, Duo, and AnyConnect VPN. The latter, however, are subject to certain conditions regarding existing equipment and services. For more information, visit https://www.cisco.com/c/m/en_us/covid19.html or contact us. We will also assist you with obtaining your licenses.

In addition to Cisco, Microsoft also offers a free version of its collaboration and video conferencing tool - Teams.

The free version enables:

- up to 300 users with guest use (Teams non-user participation),

- collaboration on Office documents within Teams,

- online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint tools,

- audio and video calls with screen sharing,

- but it does not allow eg. scheduling meetings (sending an event in advance) and recording meetings.

Learn more about Microsoft Teams at https://products.office.com/en-ww/microsoft-teams/free?market=af.

Useful links:

https://www.webex.com/webexremotework.html – working from home, small/medium sized enterprises, individuals

https://www.webex.com/webexremoteedu.html – educational institutions

https://www.webex.com/video-conferencing – more on Webex