Our Remote Team Stack: Top Project Management and Remote Collaboration Tools

oVice is a remote-first hybrid team. The project started during the pandemic when there was a lot of confusion about building a set of remote collaboration tools for remote work. 

On our journey to the market, we tried using different tools and, eventually, arrived at a selection that covered all of our internal needs – from engineering and product design to marketing and customer support. 

Now we swear by our internal stack and found ways to use them efficiently. In this post, we decided to talk more about remote collaboration tools we incorporated and share best practices for using these platforms. 

1. Office space: oVice 

About the platform: oVice is our vision of the workplace of the future – flexible, not bound by location constraints, and fully scalable. We support over 2,200 companies worldwide with customizable, easy-to-use virtual office spaces. The platform’s robust infrastructure and first-class security make it a top choice for large-scale enterprise companies and a safe place for team building and knowledge sharing. 

Why we use it: Our team is spread across the world so getting everyone to come to the same physical location is next to impossible. oVice is a space where over 150 people working at the company come together. 

Teammates from different departments or branch offices from Japan, South Korea, and the global team come here to strike up instant conversations, make decisions quickly, and work side by side. It offers the benefits of a physical office – instant communication, a structured workplace, and hurdle-free decision-making – without the stress of dress code and daily commute. 

Best practices:

• Loggin into the space at the start of each workday. 
• Customizing and branding our office space 
• Creating different floors for teams from different countries 
• Using simultaneous screen sharing for effective communication 

2. Documentation: Notion

About the platform: Notion is an all-in-one resource hub where companies can store, share, and organize internal data and create resources – help centers, case studies, and others – for external sharing. The platform comes with thousands of customizable templates for all purposes – documentation, planning, project management, and others. 

Why we use it: we love Notion’s straightforward navigation, clean interface, and hassle-free templates. It helps our teams create sleek pages in a few clicks and instantly share them with everyone in the organization. On top of that, Notion is integrated with hundreds of apps: GitHub, Figma, Miro, and more – helping us bridge different elements of the stack. 

Best use practices: 

• Use templates to simplify documentation 
• Regularly updating Notion pages 
• Experimenting with different views: table, task list, and others  – to find those teammates are comfortable with. 
• Heavily relying on the search feature for navigation 

3. Communication: Slack

About the platform: as the MVP among remote collaboration tools, Slack needs no introduction. 

It revamped workplace communication by organizing different discussions into channels and threads, introducing reactions, connecting the platform with hundreds of workplace tools, and piloting innovative features like Huddles. 

How we use it: primarily, we use Slack as a communication tool but the platform is a lot more than that. Our virtual office is integrated with the tool so we get Slack notifications when teammates or clients join the space. We connected Slack with Zapier, Zendesk, and other tools to monitor brand mentions, customer support tickets, and other interactions Most of our channels are work-related and structured by departments but we love to share fun events, news, or memes in #teatime or other channels. 

Best practices: 

• Making the most out of integrations to get a clear view of all organizational workflows 
• Setting up clear channel naming conventions so that there’s no chaos. 
• Creating a #times-name channel for each hire where teammates can share ideas and insights or ask each other questions.
• Starting discussions in channels, not direct messages, for higher transparency

4. Graphic design: Figma

About the platform: Figma is a collaborative, easy-to-use design collaboration tool for remote teams that makes creating brand assets accessible to teammates with limited design knowledge (for instance, it’s widely used across our customer success and marketing departments). 

At the same time, the tool has a powerful community and an impressive selection of plug-ins making it a viable alternative to advanced design solutions like Adobe CC or Sketch. 

How we use it: Figma is our repository of all design assets and the home of our brainstorming sessions. Here, oVice designers create banners, landing page designs, pitch decks, ad visuals, and other graphics. 

We love using Figma to collect inspiration and discuss ideas – we create mood boards on the platform and use it to record design ideas- over time, these give rise to projects. 

Best practices:

• Creating reusable asset templates to streamline content creation 
• Using community-curated plugins to add extra touches of creativity to designs 
• Have unified style guidelines for brand consistency
• Sharing feedback on the platform. 

4. UI design: Storybook

About the platform: Storybook is the tool that helps supercharge UI design, run tests, as well as interpret and share results across teams. It has a powerful organization system that helps organize and keep track of the evolution of our platform’s UI components. 

How we use it: to the oVice team, Storybook is a hub for aligning design and product teams. It also C-level executives a clear view of UI development and testing, incentivizes teammates to organize components, and promotes asset reusability across the organization. 

Best practices:

• Store one component per file 
• Create an easy-to-understand architecture for components 
• Integrating Storybook with other design tools 
• Committing to the CSF file format 

5. Marketing: HubSpot

About the platform: HubSpot is a robust CRM software for businesses that supports inbound and outbound marketing efforts, helps align sales and marketing teams, and provides them with remote collaboration tools needed to connect with prospects – easy-to-design landing pages, email tracking extension, and many more. 

How we use it: our team uses HubSpot to monitor the sales pipelines, run email outreach campaigns, design landing pages, and other assets, and track deals. It’s a common ground for sales and marketing professionals that gives departments a clear view of the customer journey. 

Best practices: 

• Integrating all sales workflows into HubSpot 
• Leveraging the power of templates for productivity and time-saving 
• Using the HubSpot email extension 
• Create custom views to get a personalized view of our contacts 

6. Customer support: Zendesk

About the platform: Zendesk has one of the most powerful customer success toolsets out there – it CS representatives a centralized view of client communications across many channels – email, social media, and others. 

Also, it helps create a wide range of client-facing resources: product guides, FAQ pages, and more. Through integrations with Slack and other collaboration tools for remote teams, Zendesk helps clear tickets immediately and build a strong bond with clients. 

How we use it: our CS team relies on Zendsk to store client data, manage tickets, and have a centralized hub for customer communication. We heavily rely on the built-in dashboard that gives a full view of customer success workflows and monitor the success rate of interactions. 

Best practices: 

• Experimenting with customer views 
• Integrating Zendesk with Slack 
• Building and fine-tuning a Zendesk help center. 

7. Tracking customer journeys: Hotjar

About the platform: Hotjar streamlines customer feedback collection and helps marketers monitor on-site interactions. The platform offers heat maps, feedback surveys, and website session recordings. 

How we use it: our team uses Hotjar to see how website visitors interact with the home page and other pages – how much time they spend on each section, what drives interest and propels meaningful interactions. This data helps us improve the interface and make data-driven website decisions. 

Best practices: 

• Creating heat maps for high-traffic pages and monitoring bounce rates 
• Embedding Hotjar surveys in customer support emails 
• Regularly go over session recording to see how the way users interact with high-traiffc pages changes over time. 
• Using the platform for UI A/B testing

8. Automations: Zapier 

About the platform: in the world of integrations Zapier in the revolution. The platform made connecting any apps with your internal stack a straightforward task, accessible for those with no coding experience. 

For dynamic, productivity-driven teams like ours, the platform’s ability to save time and take care of monotonous routine tasks is a life-saver. 

How we use it: while different oVice teams use Zapier, it is most impactful in supporting marketing operations. Our global marketing manager skillfully uses Zapier to manage and track leads, generate reports in Googel Sheets, and collect ad data from different channels. Also, we integrated Zapier into Slack to keep track of oVice brand mentions on Twitter. 

Best practices: 

• Building and filtering the email list with Zapier 
• Creating autoresponders 
• Integrating Zapier with social media 

9. Creating diagrams and charts: Miro

About the platform: Miro is a visual collaboration platform that brings teams together for brainstorming, building visual mindmaps, creating wireframes, and keeping track of organizational workflows. 

How we use it: Different oVice departments have their own ways of using Miro. Our HR department created an organizational chart that helps connect teams within the organization. 

Customer success relies on the platform to map out user onboarding workflows, and our sales team use the tool to create visually appealing charts and strategic documents (SWOT analysis, customer journey map, and many more). 

Best practices: 

• Taking the time to explore layouts and find the right one 
• Organizing all Miro boards in an easy-to-understand system 
• Using Miro for collective brainstorming and real-time discussions – the platform’s range of remote collaboration tools is a powerhouse. 

10. Automating pull requests: Atlantis 

About the platform: Atlantis condenses running and merging into a single 6-step system. It reduces the number of Terraform coding errors and encourages engineers to organize their requests. 

How we use it: Atlantis helps our team reduce the strain running terraform commands puts on the local machine. Also, a detailed review of pull requests facilitates change tracking and gives newcomers a headstart. 

Best practices: 

• Following the standard procedure outline on the home page
• Group/matching repositories to Atlantis instances
• Using Workload Identity to associated GKE and Google Service Accounts 

This toolset covers a wide range of tasks across our sales and marketing departments. We’d love to do a deep dive into our engineering challenges and the tech collaboration tools for remote teams we use to create a scalable, high-traffic platform like oVice. 

If you want to add oVice, a customizable virtual office platform, to your list of remote collaboration tools, you can test our solution for free for 14 days. If you want to ask our team product-facing questions or have a chat on digital transformation, catch us at the oVice tour space.