Hi, Bruce Naylor, your Frugal Tech. Hey, I want to talk to you about working from home. You know a lot of us do it everyday but you know there are a lot of people who would like to but maybe they're not so sure on the technology they need to have to make that happened.
So the purpose of this video today is to kind of talk about some of the tools that are out there in order to effectively work from home and some of the things you may need. Now I will tell you right upfront that you pretty much have to have a broadband connection to really make it work. So what are some of these things?
What I’m going to do is kind of a two step process. First thing we’re going to talk about is connecting with your office and the second part we’ll talked about communicating with your co-workers.
So let’s get right to it and let’s talked about some of the things that are out there right now that allows you to work from home and the first thing is the Outlook. It’s called Outlook web access and basically don’t need anything more than a computer running web browser to get in there and look at your email. You're going to be able to look at your task, your calendar, a reading respond email pretty nicely. The down shot is, is though you can’t really access like your personal Outlook folder is back and works running like that with the Outlook web access. So first, really all you're going to be doing you know it might be a really good solution for you.
Another thing that you may have to have is called the VPN. VPN just really is a title for the internet between your computers there at home or on the road and to the corporate or home office network and that’s what the VPN is. And so your computer is just like it was connected back to the network to the office and that it allows you to think and do things like share files and folders and all that sort of thing as well as you can use the full version of the Outlook client. It is a little bit more complex to setup, probably need your some help with the IT department to get all that going and if you’re trying to do it through a dial up connection you're probably be pretty disappointed with the results.
Another tool is called remote desktop connection or the remote desktop RTC. Now look this is a real Microsoft technology that I’m talking about but there are some free things out there as well. But essentially what this does is it allows you to use your remote computer, your office computer remote control it from your PC at home or out on the road. You may have to connect to your company computer network first before you can connect to your computer. This is typically going to be building to the Vista business edition and the Vista ultimate editions.
I think the Vista home basic does not come with RTC. Now that being said there are some other tools out there as well. I happen to like log me in free which is very, very nice for that sort of thing. It doesn’t cost you anything to remote control your computer back at the office. There is also good to my PC which is a paid service.
There is a lot of different ways you can do this and with the web based versions you don’t really need to connect to the office network first. So it’s very, very selective if you’ve ever give those role and now finally another device you can try, the course is your Window smart phone or your PDA.
Depending on what you’re trying to do, your role is getting your exchanged email or your contacts, your calendar, your task and all that maybe you will look at some documents. Somebody sends them to you. Smart phones are okay but they're really now won't substitute for a laptop or a PC. It’s just kind of a quick and dirty kind of thing. And maybe that’s all you need to work from home, I don’t know that’s going to be your requirement. You sit down and write out those requirements. So those are different ways to connect to your work PC but what about the other part of a work like it were connected by how do we communicate with people and what kind tech tools are out there for that.
Well, the first thing of course is email. And you know it’s a great way of exchanging a lot of information, you can do that to a lot of different people. You can send documents back and forth via email. But there is a down shots that if try you to do everything for email of course is ones a lack of timers as possible people were applied to email right, when they get an opportunity to. It’s not really good for brainstorming or that sort of thing. It’s not really a meaning tool not designed to be that, so what's the next step?
Well, the next level would go with instant messaging programs such as Windows Live messenger. There is others out there and people out there personal preferences as what’s best out there but for the sake of this video we’ll talk about Windows Messenger.
Well now, that gives you a one-on-one real time type of conversation which is very, very nice to have but still not, it’s not really good for more than a one on one type of meeting. Yeah, you can kind of get groups together and that sort of thing. And also it doesn’t keep it like an automatic written record of conversations like an email series of emails with. So keep that in mind.
Now if you wanted to conduct meetings, there is a lot of different tools to do that. There is a Windows live meeting which you can get. There is a Go-to meeting. There is zonal has a Frugal little meeting applications several different ways to do that. I like those types of applications because typically you can have multiple people invited in the meeting. You can have an audio conferencing going on so people have a dial in number and pin code and you can get documents to share this pretty new presentations and all that remotely.
So it makes real time brainstorming collaboration a whole lot easier. So that’s another technology you want to keep in mind, now what about things like sharing documents and working on projects together and all that. Well, you know Microsoft has their Live workspace, Google docs has a systems over has a system. Some are free. Some you have pay for but essentially in the Microsoft version you can synchronize contest tasks with the project to your Outlook client. People can check documents in and out. Very, very nice this is kind of a in the clouds digital workspace. Some are free. Some are paid for.
So there's a lot you can do there. There are some limitations generally based on the amounts of the stories face that you're going to use. And remember these are all used in the internet. So those are some of the technologies for connecting to the office as well as of course meeting and collaborating with people but don’t forget the good old fashion telephone and it’s still a great way to do business. So don’t forget telephone conferences. Just remember one thing, don’t move out and multi task when your sitting here on the phone conversation trying to focus on that, we really can't hear you typing in the background on something else.
So I wanted to finish this with a few little tips and these are kind of more towards somebody maybe who is and then so you rent your own company but try to get some tell and committee done. You know we make appointments with people but let's make sure that also you make appointments for phone calls. And stay focused on the conferences, I said down try to multi task when you’re doing a phone conference.
Ten weekly staff meetings and make sure that you know people see at least once or twice a week there at the office and kind of stay in the loop. And remember to stay on the line as long as you can because there's some folks that just get the opinion that you're not working because if you're online you know you might be working 40-60-80-70 hours a week at your job. Now remember be proactive, reach out to people, don’t wait for them to get with you if you feel like you're some information you get to receive.
These are some tips and some technologies used for working at home. I love to hear it from you and get your input on this. I’m Bruce Naylor, your Frugal Tech and make sure to join us at www.FrugalBrothers.com. And remember if it's within your shot not making any money or saving you money get out of there. I’ll talk to you later.
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