Literary anything can be used for collaboration

 OneNote is a document sharing platform by Microsoft which is designed for notes and project planning.  It is more complicated than other basic document sharing software such as Google Docs due to OneNote's design as a sort of online notebook.  OneNote allows the users to share and collaborate on multiple documents at the same time.  The notebook like structure of OneNote allows for a hierarchy of documents to be created and organized as the user sees fit.  For example, a user may create a document on a topic then add multiple documents under that one as subtopics or have a document for a project outline with the steps necessary to implement different phases of the project nested underneath. Creating a Notebook:  To create a notebook the user must go to File select New then choose the location to save the notebook. Next, name the notebook and click create notebook. Upon creating the notebook the user is given the option to invite people which will be covere...

TeamViewer TeamViewer  allows for the remote access and control of another person's computer.  The primary uses of TeamViewer  are internal tech support and remote assistance.  The ability to control another person's computer has some distinct advantages over screen sharing.  Being able to show someone how to accomplish a task is much faster than guiding them through the task.  The two main disadvantages of TeamViewer are that users must be careful when taking control of other people's computers and the potential risk of a security breach.  While TeamViewer does require a session ID and password generated by the user whos computer is going to be controlled it can still be somewhat unnerving to people to have their computers controlled by someone who is not there. To deal with this users controlling other's computers must be clear about what they are doing and why when using other people's computers.  Due to TeamViewer granting access to a computer...

  Zoom Zoom is an program which allows teams to hold video conferences.  Zoom become a popular solution to the issue of distance learning and working from home during covid 19 quarantines.  Zoom's positives include that it is completely free to use for people joining the meeting, and the ease of use of the software.  Only the person hosting the meeting will have to make a zoom account, and the host can make a free account with the only downsides of restricted meeting length and the lack of some premium features.  Zoom does have some issues when it comes to security which Zoom has been improving on over time.  Hosting a Meeting:  In order to host a meeting you must first log in to your zoom account.  If you have not done so already create an account by clicking the sign up for free button in the lower right corner.   You can do so for free by providing your birth date, an email and creating a password. Once you have logged in select the host m...

     Slack is a professional messaging app built for a business and corporate environment. Slack is a lot like Discord which was discussed in a previous post, but Slack was designed with a corporate environment in mind and doesn't have a lot of the more "gamerish" features that Discord has. Slack aims at being simple to use so a business can move their whole communication structure easily to the platform. Slack achieves this with subscribable channels. You as a user get to choose which channels that you receive notifications for. This allows communication to be split up and not aggravate people for getting notified for something they are not involved in.       A lot of how Slack is used is based off of Discord, so the steps are nearly identical. Instead, I'll go over how Slack is different than Discord and why you might want to use it over it or another communication tool. Slack  is more professional      Slack is inherently more pr...

       GroupMe is a group messaging app that connects with your existing cell phone number. It is really simple to setup and create groups. All that's needed is a group name and people cell phone numbers that you add to the group. Once everyone's in the group, you can start chatting. It is really simple, so it doesn't contain a lot of features, but it does allow you to like messages, reply to others, share files, and chat in general.  It's simple!      GroupMe is as simple as just entering a name for your group and entering in everyone's phone numbers. Once everyone's in, the chatting can commence.       The only downside of having such a simple platform is that there is no built in moderation features. If someone needs to be removed from the group, their messages will stay and that is sometimes undesirable depending on what that person has said.      Another downside of GroupMe is that it is "single-threaded" co...

     Discord was made as a place where gamers can get together an play together, but it has evolved to be used for much more than that. Discord has become a platform where anyone can easily create a group and hang out with their friends. How does it work?      Discord allows users to create "servers" where other users can be invited to join. Once a user joins a server, they can chat in several different channels that are created by the owner of the server. The use of channels allows multi-threaded communication so that conversation chains are not derailed by a completely different topic. Creating a server     These steps go over how to create a Discord server where your group can collaborate. Step 1: Click the plus icon on the left side of the screen Step 2: Either choose a template, or start your server from scratch. For the purposes of this guide, I'll select "Friends" Step 3: Discord might want to know more specifics, so in this case I chose...

  Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides) is a cloud-based services offered by Google. Google Docs is a word processor, Sheets is spreadsheet program and Slides is presentation program. These allows users to create, edit, format and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. These are commonly used as collaborative tools to work on a document. Multiple users can edit and work on them in real time. Google Suite offers security by allowing the owner of the document to allow certain kinds of access to other users, for example, to edit, view and comment on the document, spreadsheet and presentations. All these programs basically work in the same i.e. creating, editing and sharing files is done almost in the same way.  For this blog I will demonstrate how to use Google Docs and compare it to Google Slides and Sheets whenever necessary. Similar to Google Drive, Google Suite programs also is available on multiple platforms which enables users to view, edit and comment on the...

  GitHub is a cloud-based service/platform that allows programmers or software developers to manage and store their code. Users can even track and control the changes they made to their code. GitHub is mainly used to share users' code and to collaborate on shared work. Multiple users can collaborate on GitHub to develop a single software or program. GitHub offers free service to it's individual or team users for public repositories and upto 500GB of storage and 2000 actions for private repositories (you will fully understand this once you are done reading the entire blog post). It also supports a command line version to manage everything. A few key terms and concepts to fully understand GitHub are: Repository It is a location where all the files for a particular project are stored. It is like a folder on a computer. Each repository can be accessed using a unique url.  First thing that a user needs to do to use GitHub is to create an account: Go to Github.com and click on...

Google Drive  is a file storage service developed and offered by Google. Users can store their files on Google servers and even share those with other users - colleagues, teammates, customers,  friends, family,  and many more. The service is being offered over multiple platforms like Web, Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. This helps user to access, edit and share their files across multiple devices. The Google Drive service is linked with users' Gmail (Google's email) account so anyone with a Gmail account can use this service. The service is free of cost up to 15 GBs of storage and then charges a small amount based on the amount of storage the user buys. Google Drive offers a secure storage with all the files stored with highly secured encryption method.   How to upload or create a file on Google Drive: To use Google Drive, the first thing a user need to do is to browse to  Google Drive  and login with Google email account.  To create or upload a file, u...

      When most people here mention of Microsoft suite tools, their immediate thoughts go to the most well known examples; Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. While these tools are among the options provided by office suite, many others are available as well. This post will be discussing some of the many options, as well as the systems put in place to enhance compatibility between these solutions. The solutions discussed in this post will include: Word (regular and 365) PowerPoint (regular and 365) Excel (regular and 365) OneDrive Two other solutions that will be briefly mentioned here, but will be expanded upon in later posts are Outlook , and Teams . Office suite vs Office 365?

      Microsoft outlook is primarily an email management service, it allows the user to manage multiple email accounts in one platform. On top of that, Outlook also includes a calendar service to assist with scheduling and managing time. The software encourages managing events on the calendar dynamically through emails, including ways to link calendar events in emails. Additionally, it is compatible with other Microsoft software services, most notably Microsoft Teams , in which case meetings on teams can be scheduled via Outlook, as well as the teams and outlook calendars being able to be synced.  Email Management

       Microsoft teams is a software offered by Microsoft that is designed to facilitate online communication and collaboration. It's offered services include, text based chat, file sharing, and calendar planning. Teams is also designed with cross compatibility between other Microsoft office applications in mind. This post will go more in-depth into some of the cross compatibility features offered, as well as the capabilities of the applications itself. Due to the nature of teams being designed for compatibility and collaboration, it is a capable software on it's own, and gains even more features when used in conjunction with other Microsoft suite software. One notable software that Teams works well with is Microsoft Outlook Basic Functions