Education

Promote upcoming sports games and school events to students and staff. Use displays to highlight dates and times for final or state exams or future days off. Create cafeteria menus that change depending on the time of day or day of the week. Have a large campus? Digital signs can point visitors in the right direction. With Rise Vision available within Airtame Cloud Apps, you can take advantage of over 400 digital signage templates. 

Retail

Window displays can let customers know about promotions or sales before stepping foot in the store. Play looped videos through the Dropbox Video app on Airtame Cloud to catch passerbys’ interest. You can quickly update and deploy screens to let customers know when the items or sizes you have in stock change. 

Corporate Offices

Share internal information relevant to employees. Convey important news or corporate messages, display real-time health and safety information, meeting room updates, or calendar events. You can use a tailored Google Slides or Powerpoint deck to get the point across.

Restaurants

Create menus to show info such as pricing, nutritional value, or ingredients. Have to change a price, or sell out of an item? Content can be quickly updated and instantly deployed across all screens with Airtame Cloud. Promote seasonal or new menu items with images saved to Dropbox or Microsoft Onedrive. With Scheduled Content, you can set your menus to change based on the time of day or days of the week.    

Banking

Provide visitors with real-time financial information such as currency exchange rates or the latest stock market changes by setting your screen to a specific website. Highlight a list of available branch services or current promotions with a PowerPoint deck. Entertain visitors while they wait for assistance with a YouTube playlist. 

Hotels and Venues

Digital directories can help guests find their way around with ease while increasing efficiency for staff. Keep guests informed of relevant information like check-out times or upcoming events with lobby signage. Promote on-site amenities such as spas, pools, or restaurants. 

Healthcare

Use your screens to show offered services or health and safety messaging. A YouTube video can walk patients through new check-in procedures or what to expect during their visit. If your practice is located in a large building, a directory can help patients find their way. 

Warehouses and Manufacturing

Digital signs can highlight OSHA information, tips on preventing workplace injuries, weight capacity signs, and more. Display dashboard information such as inventory data or other company-wide KPIs. 

No matter your organization or industry, digital signage can get your message across quickly and easily. With Airtame, you can turn your screens into digital signs, and with Airtame Cloud, you can manage and monitor all of your devices. Once you’ve purchased an Airtame 2 device, you can sign up for a free 14 day trial of Airtame Cloud Plus. Sign up for Airtame Cloud and start optimizing your screens today! 

The post How Digital Signage can get your message across appeared first on Airtame.

Rather than leave your TV on standby with a blank and boring screen when you’re not presenting, you can use the Airtame Cloud apps to display custom content and jazz up your workplace or school. You can customize Airtame’s Homescreen through Airtame Cloud, our device management tool you can access from your web browser.

We designed Airtame Cloud to make an IT admin’s job as easy as possible. One way is by giving them the option to assign user roles on Airtame Cloud to people in your organization.

That means an IT admin can safely assign your company’s marketing manager, for example, the role of “user.” This role gives them access to our Homescreen apps with no risk of the device settings being tinkered with. Assigning user roles opens up a whole world of signage possibilities with little effort.

To give you and your colleagues some inspiration, we want to show you just a few reasons why your organization needs to start using Homescreen apps.

Keep track of different time zones

Our World Clock app is our most simple app integration, which makes it an excellent app to start with if you’re new to custom digital signage. The idea is simple: display up to three clocks from different time zones on your screen.

When you have team members who work in a different timezone, keeping multiple clocks presented helps bring them a little bit closer, because it helps you envision their daily routine. In our case, it helps our Copenhagen team remember when the North America team is waking up, so we know when we can count on them to help with customer support.

Sync with your team

If you’re unfamiliar with Trello, it is a fresh way of organizing your projects with highly visual boards lined up in columns. For a  boost of efficiency, use the Trello app on Airtame’s Homescreen to display your Trello boards on a shared TV screen for everyone on your team to see.

Trello’s column design makes it easy to track your project’s progress at a glance. Not only is it nice to look at, but it also saves you the time spent trudging through spreadsheets. Let’s face it, spreadsheets are useful for tracking project results, but not very inspirational to look at.

Displaying a Trello board on a shared screen seems like a small thing, but keeping your team up to date with the latest activities on a project is a powerful way to stay aligned, especially for cross-team projects.

If the “Done” column on the Trello board looks a bit empty, it could help light a fire under your team to buckle down and get to work. And when everyone sees the “Done” column full, you can celebrate your hard work together.

Read more on how to use Trello.

Create an inspiring environment

We think workplace environment has a significant impact on productivity. People want to feel inspired when they come to work and if their office is drab, then they won’t feel energized to do great work.

Placing art on the walls creates a feeling in the room that was not there before. It’s the reason why even a doctor’s office is filled with calming pictures. With the Unsplash app on Airtame’s Homescreen, you can choose from a growing collection of stunning photography. It helps set the mood in your office so that your TV screens reflect your company’s values.

At Airtame, we have a screen by the coffee machine with a collection of coffee photography. It helps create a relaxed environment so that people can enjoy a quick break with their coffee before powering up for the next meeting.

With the Unsplash app integrated into Airtame’s Homescreen, just type in a keyword into the search function and choose from Unsplash’s many photo collections. You can even choose how often the images rotate through, from every 5 seconds to every 10 minutes.

Share team news

Our most used app is Google Slides. It’s simply the easiest way to display information in a fast, yet eye-catching way. At Airtame, we use Google Slides on the TV by our entrance in a handful of different ways.

When we have new team members, for instance, we use Google Slides to introduce them to the rest of the company with a quick picture and some fun facts about them. Other times, we share some group pictures from a photoshoot for our website, which makes for a nice conversation starter for people walking by.

The true beauty of this use case is that anyone can create a Google Slides slideshow. If you’ve already made a slideshow, it’s simply a matter of logging in with your Google account and selecting your presentation. It’s easy enough that you can change it up as often as you want.

Check out this article for more tips on spicing up your Google presentations.

What’s coming up next?

Airtame is a living product, which means we’re updating what you and your team can do with it all the time. This extends to Homescreen. In addition to the apps listed in this post, we have more amazing apps soon to be released in beta for you to try out.

The apps we have up our sleeve include Homescreen Preview, a meeting room app that would let you see whether the room is free or booked. We will also add a OneDrive integration, similar to our current Dropbox app, and a Power BI integration, which lets you display top-notch business reports and dashboards.

How to customize your Homescreen

You can find all our apps and integrations in the Homescreen tab on Airtame Cloud. Simply follow the instructions to sync the apps with your accounts.

Have a cool app or integration idea that you want to see on your Homescreens? Let us know! Fill out our survey on Homescreen usage.

Take our Homescreen apps for a spin! Sign up for Airtame Cloud and start spicing up your screens

The post 4 ways to spice up your screens with Airtame Cloud apps appeared first on Airtame.

Trello is a great organizational tool that can help you record and prioritize work. In this article, we’ll go through basic Trello features as well as additional hacks and integrations to take your Trello game to the next level.

What is Trello?

You know that satisfaction you get when crossing an item off of a scribbled to-do list? Trello lets you experience the same thing but within an application. It’s an online platform that can help you stay on track with multiple projects.

We all worry about reaching our professional goals and can feel guilty after a seemingly unproductive day. That’s where Trello can be of great help; it’s used by individuals and teams to manage tasks and projects.

Breaking down goals and projects into baby steps can really help relieve stress. Ultimately, every achievement is a culmination of bite-sized efforts, and you should give yourself credit for everyday wins. Trello helps you set goals and track your progress so you can focus your energy on getting the work done.

Airtame has an official Trello integration, so you can showcase your project boards as digital signage on your screens. Airtame and Trello both seek to make work more efficient, and that’s why we see them as an ideal match for each other.

10 basics to help you get started with Trello

If you’d like to test out the features explained below, why not go ahead and set up a free Trello account so that you can follow along?

1. Boards

With Trello, life can be organized into boards. A board can represent a project (e.g. new website) or a period of time (e.g. March to-do list). There is no limit to the number of boards you can have within your account. When you log in to Trello, you’ll initially see an overview of all of your boards, including the option to create a new one.

Consider your board as a category to be broken down into sub-categories or “lists”.

2. Lists

Lists within a board can offer an overview of your progress by labeling them as “To-do”, “Doing” and “Done”.

This depends on what works best for you though. If you work in HR, maybe instead you’d want each list to represent a candidate for hire. A list could be labeled with a candidate’s name, with respective cards displaying their photo, LinkedIn profile link, and a list of questions to cover during a tentative interview.

There’s no limit to the number of boards, lists or cards that you can have in your Trello account.

3. Cards

Cards often represent specific tasks within a list, such as “set-up a meeting with John” or “Finish March payroll”. Cards can also represent concepts behind an artistic project or specific research sources that you’ll need to refer back to.

A card can be easily dragged and dropped between lists depending on where it best fits at a given time. Moving cards from the “Doing” to “Done” list never ceases to award a sense of achievement.

4. Menu items

Menu items within cards offer you the possibility to add a member, a checklist, due date, attachment, etc. You can use one or as many of the available features as you’d like, depending on what makes the most sense. If you’ve made a card with a checklist for improving specific skills, you would perhaps want to add links to guides and video tutorials.

You can attach files of up to 10MB from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox and/or OneDrive account. The only stipulation is that you have the correct “Power-Up” enabled (more on that further down).  

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys using different colored sticky notes to mark textbooks, then you may enjoy the “Labels” menu feature. This lets you color-code your cards based on your very own system.

5. Teams

Creating a team is an option within your “Home” page, and it offers an additional level to organizing work accordingly. You may be a content writer who helps write blog posts for the marketing team but also proofreads support guides for the customer success team. The style and goal of your work, as well as who you’re working with, may vary between these different projects and the teams you’re a part of.

6. Starring

To “star” a board is to mark it as a high priority. “Starred” boards appear at the top of your “Home” and “Boards” page. This helps you easily find the most pressing tasks without having to scroll through everything.

You can star (and unstar) a board when on the “Home” page, the “Boards“ page and while you have a specific board open. There is no limit to the number of boards that you can star, but remember that “less is more”. Trello is supposed to help you concentrate by breaking work down into manageable tasks. So it’s counterproductive to make everything a priority.  

7. Home page

When you click on the house icon in the top left corner, you will be taken back to the home page where you can choose to view “Boards” or “Home”. The “Boards” section lets you view your boards according to categories (ones you’ve starred, personal boards, etc.).

The “Home” section shows you what’s “Up Next”, which is useful for seeing which cards should be prioritized according to their deadline. Your home page will also show “Highlights” in addition to links to your starred and recently viewed boards. You can filter what you see to show “Highlights” from a specific team. Otherwise, this section will list cards that you have been mentioned in. Simply click the “reply” button to respond to a colleague.

8. Archiving and deleting

Archiving and deleting items is necessary if you want to keep your work organized. If a task is complete, or if you won’t be able to get to it until a much later date, you can click the “Archive Card” option. This does not delete the card but rather moves it to “Archived Items” (found within the “Show Menu” list in the top right).

Archived cards will remain archived indefinitely unless you choose to delete them. After you’ve archived a card, a “Delete” button will appear in the bottom right-hand corner. Once deleted, there’s no way to retrieve a card.  

9. Visibility

Managing visibility refers to who can see and edit what within Trello. A board can be either “private”, “team”, “organization” or “public”. Personally, I’ve found that having at least one board all to myself is great for staying on top of even the smallest duties (like watering your desk plant).

10. Assigning cards

Assigning cards to dedicated members makes sense if you’re collaborating with others on a task or project. You may need to pass a card onto someone like a baton depending on which stage things are at. Within a card, you use the “Members” option in the menu to add the people who are responsible.  You can remove yourself at any time from a card.

Trello is all about making work easier for yourself and others. Make sure that each person you assign a card to understands what is expected of them.

Trello Hacks

The term “hack” can be thrown around in different contexts. For this article, think of hacks in terms of keyboard shortcuts and similar tips for making use of the basics. Being able to use keyboard shortcuts while having Trello sync with other applications will give you that extra support in staying on top of your professional life.

Using keyboard shortcuts

Some people enjoy using hacks even if it saves just a microsecond. Keep in mind though that you don’t need to use every hack in order for Trello to help you; just go at your own pace.

• Pressing “enter” when your mouse is hovering over a card will make it open.
• Pressing “c” when hovering over a card will archive it,
• Pressing “/” opens the search box where you can enter a keyword such as “proofreading” in order find related cards.  
• Pressing “f” opens the filter dialog box. From here you can filter out cards by keywords, labels, members, or due dates. Anything that doesn’t match your criteria will be hidden until you remove the filters.
• Pressing  “x” clears all filters, taking you back to the full view of everything in your board.

For the full list of Trello keyboard shortcuts, click here.

Creating cards from URLs

Another “hack” is to copy and paste a website’s URL into the “Add Card” field within a list. What will happen is that Trello will generate the card’s title based on the content within the link. When you open the card you’ll see the original link, and there’ll be individual attachments for each image from that specific page. If you’re doing any kind of research, this is a great way to keep track of inspiring content.

Creating cards from spreadsheets

You can also copy and paste a number of cells from a spreadsheet. This could be anything from a to-do list to notes from a board meeting. Just like when pasting in a URL, Trello knows where the information is coming from. When you paste from a spreadsheet, you’ll have the choice to create one card for everything or a specific card for each cell.

Creating cards from emails

A third way to create a card is to forward an email on to your customized Trello email. Open a board and then click on “Show Menu”, “More”, “Email-to-board Settings” and then copying your dedicated email for that specific board.

Once you forward an email to this address, a card will be automatically generated, appearing on the bottom of the left-most list in that board. The card’s title is generated from the original email’s subject and the description from the body and any attachments will also be visible.

Using Markdown for text formatting

Trello uses Markdown, the same syntax that Airtame relies on for editing its Homescreen overlay text. If you’d like a deep dive into using Markdown with Trello, feel free to check out this guide. Otherwise, here are the basics:

• To make text bold, add two asterisks on either side: **bold**
• To make text italic, add an underscore on either side:  _italic_
• To make text very big, add one pound key (or “hashtag”) before it:  #Header 1.

You can add two or three pound keys to make text various sizes: ##Header 2, ###Header 3. Changing the font size in this way only works for the description of a card; not the title or items within a checklist.

Trello integrations

An integration, or “Power-Up” in Trello lingo, is about syncing Trello with other professional applications. You can use Power-Ups in order to pull files from online storage accounts such as Dropbox.

To activate and test out a Power-Up, navigate to a specific board within your Trello account, click on  “Show Menu”, then “Power-Ups”, then scroll down the list until you find your favorite tool and press “Enable.” 

The following are our favorite integrations.

Trello and Slack

Both Trello and Slack are great tools to help you organize your work and stay up to speed on relevant news. You can use Slack to send a direct message or follow relevant threads within particular channels of communication.

While ‘Slacking’ is great for day-to-day communication, aligning on the general strategy and keeping abreast of significant announcements, Trello can give you a better step-by-step view of how to complete an assignment (in the form of a card) as part of a larger project (in the form of board).

Trello and Slack together offer several features such as sending reminders from Trello to a specific teammate or an entire channel in Slack. You can also attach Trello cards to Slack conversations so that people can easily understand which task you’re referring to or link Slack conversations in Trello.

Trello and Jira

Jira is a software development tool that, among other uses, is great for planning and tracking software releases as well as fixing known bugs.

There are several benefits of using the Trello Power-Up with Jira You can link Jira issues to Trello cards so that people outside of the development team can keep an eye on the progress. This is especially beneficial to colleagues offering customer support, which sometimes includes reassuring an end user that a bug fix is coming soon. With Trello, you can easily see which Jira issues have been solved and which are pending. You can also create an issue report in Jira based on info sent from Trello, meaning communication is possible both ways.

Trello and Airtame

In case you didn’t already know, Airtame is a device for wireless screen sharing and digital signage. Airtame’s mission is to help people use screens better—meaning screens should be used as complementary tools to your work.

When your Airtame-enabled screen is not being used for wireless screen sharing, it can be used as a digital signage tool. When you enable Airtame’s Homescreen in the Cloud, you can choose from a variety of different digital signage integrations, such as Room Overview, Dropbox Gallery, Dropbox or a world clock. Read more about all the Homescreen app integrations here.  

Trello is one of the Homescreen apps we offer. Once you’ve enabled Homescreen in Airtame Cloud, you simply input your Trello login credentials and choose up to five lists to display on your Airtame-equipped monitor. Click here for a brief guide to our Trello app.

May the productivity be with you

I love post-it notes as much as the next stationary enthusiast, but it’s 2019 and time to ditch the paper clutter. You don’t really want notebooks and scraps strewn around your desk. If you get to use both Trello and Airtame, that’s a double whammy—getting rid of cables and paper clutter! Marie Kondo would be proud.

Are you a fan of Trello too? Let us know why you love it (or perhaps why you don’t)!

The post How to use Trello   appeared first on Airtame.

How many people have opened your email? How many sales did your team bring in? And most importantly, how much time do you spend creating spreadsheets and getting buried in reports? Wouldn’t it be easier if there was a way to display your data so that you know exactly what’s going on in your business at all times?

What is a dashboard?

The go-to solution you are looking for is dashboards. A tool that cuts through data clutter and helps you get down to what really matters. But more concretely, what is a dashboard?

Founder of Perceptual Edge, Stephen Few describes dashboards as a visual display of your business’ data that is essential to achieve your goals. This data is consolidated and showcased on a single screen so that it can be tracked and monitored at a glance. Truly helpful is the fact that the data is automatically updating itself without any assistance from the user. With the right dashboard, you can experience the satisfaction of leading your business to success.

I know what you’re thinking: so, how do I spot the right dashboard?

As the Partnerships Manager at Airtame, I’ve spent months researching dashboards that work with Airtame.

Provided that these dashboards have a shareable public link, you can copy-paste it into your Airtame’s settings, and your dashboard will display on the screen. Once your dashboard is up on a large screen, it becomes a wallboard, a term you might have heard before but never really knew what it was. The main benefit of wallboards is that they are highly visible and easy to understand for everyone around them.

Here I found not one but 27 dashboard services, that will easily help you showcase your company’s indispensable data on any office screen. To make your life easier, I’ve split them into Executive Dashboards and Social Walls, according to their focus.

Executive Dashboards

If what you’re looking for is the classic KPI dashboard that helps you keep track of your business performance, then Executive Dashboards are for you. This includes your accounting software data, your CRM, website analytics, or email system data for a broader perspective. Here are some recommendations:

Klipfolio

Used by more than 11,000 companies, and integrating data from Dropbox, Marketo, Moz, and so forth, our partner, Klipfolio makes sure that your web analytics, sales and finances, and project management goals are transparent throughout your company. I personally have a screen dedicated to Klipfolio dashboards in front of my desk and it really makes my life easier.

Cyfe

An all-in-one business dashboard app, Cyfe’s goal is to help you make better business decisions by bringing all of your business performance data under one roof. However, to benefit from its full potential, you would have to sign up for a Premium account.

Curious to hear more? Check their tutorial.

Plecto

With varied integrations, such as Zendesk, Pipedrive, Podio, leaderboards, and custom recognition features, Plecto will drive your team’s motivation sky high. If sales are your main focus, Plecto is what you’re looking for. Also, I must say the pricing plan is quite eye-catching.

Want to check all of their features? Click here.

Datapine

Small, medium, large companies – it doesn’t matter. Datapine can provide you with accurate KPIs in the most professional way, be it management, finance, sales, or marketing-related. Plus, I really enjoyed their customer support. For example, booking a demo and understanding their product took no time at all.

Click here for a tutorial teaser of how it works.

Axosoft

Monitor your workflow, connect to an ever-growing list of tools and services, and make sure that all relevant stakeholders in your projects get the essential details with Axosoft. I would also add that these dashboards load very fast, so you won’t have to worry about delays in your content.

Tableau Public

By connecting and visualizing your data in a matter of minutes, Tableau Public can make you forget about the old-school spreadsheets and reports that used to clutter your life.

I like the fact that Tableau has a broad service offering. Also, they are pretty active in terms of social events. So if you have any doubts, you can always check if they’re holding an event in your neighborhood.

Want more insights on how to use it? Click here for some guidelines.

Cervinoboard

Integrating Facebook, MailChimp, Google Analytics and Adwords, and many more, Cervinoboard focuses on online marketing agencies. They deliver smart services that save a lot of time for agencies that wish to deploy and maintain large amounts of dashboards. A few newer services are still in beta, but this is a young startup to watch.

Dundas

A business solution that is able to monitor data from a wide range of industries. From banking and finance, education, government to pharmaceutical transport and logistics, retail, and so on. With more than 20 years of experience on the market, Dundas has dedicated over 7 of them to their dashboard project development.

However, if you want to explore their service offering, you should definitely consider signing up for a Premium account. If this sounds like a deal, get started with a free trial!

Zoho

Boosting your sales, managing daily activities, or stepping up your productivity game – Zoho has helped business professionals take care of all these for more than a decade. If I were looking for a very complex software provider, I would most likely choose Zoho.

Want to get a better sense of your data? Watch this video!

DashThis

Be it SEO, SEM, PPC, or social media, DashThis has got your back. It automatically gathers all your client data into one dashboard report.

If you are a digital agency, DashThis dashboards might be just what you’re looking for. But feel free to check their demo videos here.

AppInsights

Lets you easily combine the data your team needs and has customizable dashboards. What else is there? Oh, yes, the fact that it can be tailored to nearly every market from digital agencies to server admins and sales teams. Quite a tool for startups, I’d say.

Plotly

Incredibly user-friendly features and very intuitive dashboards. Not to mention the sharp design of their live graphs. Sometimes, it can take a while to load, but it’s worth the wait. The pricing plan: really appealing.

Learn more on how to use Plotly by clicking here.

SimpleKPI

The name says it all because SimpleKPI is just that – simple. And when it comes to monitoring your business reports, that’s what you want. The visuals are nicely put together and easy to understand.

Databox

Databox has a clever drag-and-drop editor that makes data visualization a breeze. It has a ton of integration options so you can connect all data sources, no matter where you want your information to come from.

Sisense

This AI-driven analytics platform offers ready-to-use business intelligence dashboard reports for a wide variety of industries. You can experiment with sample KPIs, data sources, and visualizations for topics such as social responsibility, education, SaaS, and more.

See all their options as well as dashboard examples here.

Screenful

Screenful is the easiest way to visualize and share your project progress using data from your existing tools. It integrates with the most commonly used tasks management tools such as Jira, Trello, Asana, GitHub, and Asana.

The visual dashboards allow tracking key production metrics such as lead and cycle times and help detect any project bottlenecks.

Grow

Many services can’t offer a swift implementation but take months to get your solution up and running. Grow claims they implement 8x faster than competitors, meaning you don’t have to wait to get started with analyzing data. You can create role-specific KPI dashboards for an unlimited amount of team members, which is also a nice feature.

Geckoboard

Sometimes, one dashboard just isn’t enough. That’s why Geckoboards lets you display several different dashboards on the same screen. You can even add your own logo for a customized look and feel that matches your brand.

Target Dashboard

You can automatically merge data with this service. That makes it easy for you to get an overview of all metrics, goals, and KPIs without having to worry about the time spent trying to do it yourself. Target Dashboard includes support in their pricing plan, and that’s something we applaud. Bills can pile up when problems arise if support isn’t included, so that’s definitely something to look for when choosing a dashboard service.

Octoboard

With Octoboard, you can create public dashboards for easy sharing with other teams or clients. Octoboard also offers activity monitoring for brands and bloggers on social platforms. For those out there that want to glance at competitors while simultaneously looking at their own engagement, this is superb. That’s why I’ve put it as the last in the executive dashboard section because it would fit just as well in the next section; social walls.

Social Walls

Presumably, you want to track your social media lifespan or organize a kick-ass event. Social walls can help you stay on the pulse of your social media community – both in the office and at the conference center. These are some suggestions that caught my eye.

SocialWall Pro

SocialWall Pro provides social walls to reach, engage, and connect live audiences at events, meetings, conferences, brand activations, and online.

It’s a fully stacked solution, supporting all major social media channels, plus SMS, emails, and web messages. You can also use cool added features, like a gamification tool, sponsorship presentation, and performance analytics. 

Strea.ma

Want to keep track of your social media activity for a certain event or conference? With so many platforms out there, why not bring all of them into one easy-to-use display so that everyone can see your tailored stream of content unfolding in real-time? Start with a free trial and then you can decide among Plus, Premium, or customized plans.

Juicer

Meet Juicer, a social media aggregator that sets your filters up, moderates your posts, and analyzes your social media engagement. What’s more, Juicer has 18 integrations and a modest pricing plan.

Worth giving a try!

Walls.io

Unleashing your hashtags and building your social wall with data integrated from over 15 platforms is a no-brainer if you go with Walls.io. Keep your audience updated with Walls.io’s customizable next-generation social wall and your next event is sure to be a success.

Basic no-frills dashboards

Suppose you are only looking to create and share your slide decks. Or maybe you want to focus on showcasing your data through charts. Here are some no-frills options that work great:

Slides

Slides allows you to create and share great complex presentations online, in your very own browser without the need to download anything. See for yourself by clicking here.

Project Manager

On the hunt for real-time dashboards for your business? With Project Manager, you can combine powerful project planning and scheduling features with collaboration tools for teams, plan waterfall projects, and adjust due dates. Project Manager takes project planning to a whole new level, I must say.

Datawrapper

Into maps & charts? Then Datawrapper is the optimum solution for you. Back up your presentation with this great visualization tool and you might just get some applause by the end of it.

What’s your favorite dashboard? Who should I look into next on my hunt for great dashboards you can use with Airtame? Let us know in the comments!

Curious about what we do? Here’s a short video explaining how Airtame works:

The post 27 dashboards you can easily display on your office screen with Airtame 2 appeared first on Airtame.

We’ve listed all the business meeting apps and tools that we find helpful. They are compiled into the following categories: Planning, Communication, Virtual meetings, Feedback – and Everything else.

There is some overlap in functionalities for some of the apps, just as some apps have similar features. They won’t all fit your needs, but some might solve the most obvious problems you face in a business meeting – both before, during and after the meeting occurs.

Apps, like many other digital tools, should support your work instead of creating more clutter. We think this list contains many suggestions that will help with exactly that. Consider this list a grab bag of possible choices where you can mix and match to your specific needs.

Jump straight to each category by clicking one of these links:

• Planning
• Communication
• Virtual meetings
• Feedback
• Everything else

Set yourself up to be a business meeting A-player and check out our 50 golden rules for better meeting etiquette.

Planning

This is the organizing phase of any meeting. It’s where you ask yourself how much time you need to set aside, who should join and what you’ll be discussing. Take note of these handy planning apps:

Zapier

Note-taking, calendar bookings, virtual meetings… Not Zapier. This is the app that connects all your other apps, and it’s awesome because you can automate workflows and routine tasks.

For example: If you get an email prior to a meeting in Gmail with an agenda attached, Zapier is triggered and copies the attachment from that email to your Dropbox folder while immediately alerting you in, say, Slack. Alternatively, you could set it up to trigger a video conference when your meeting appointment is about to begin. The possibilities are endless.

Source: Zapier

Zapier is a killer automation software, and when we say killer, we mean it. Because it kills all that time-consuming, annoying legwork you’d typically have to do yourself, leaving you with extra time and a smoother workflow.

Calendly

No matter what software your team or people outside of your organization are using, Calendly is embracing them. It makes it easy for you to organize meetings and let others pick available times because they’re not restricted to one calendar system.

It’s also the system that we use to process demo and support calls, and it’s invaluable for our Sales team. With it, all of our customers or potential customers can book a time to get an introduction to Airtame or get help with an issue.

Pick

Set your availability, share a custom URL with the people you want to meet with and have them book a time slot that fits your schedule. Pick is hassle-free and straightforward, and that’s something you can’t have enough of in business meeting settings.

FirstAgenda

If you’ve ever dreamt of having your own secretary, you can stop now. Assistant by FirstAgenda is basically like your personal assistant in an app.

Even cooler, Assistant uses speech recognition and machine learning to record your meeting and send out a summary afterward with the most important keywords from the meeting. Important decisions are archived, and you don’t have to worry about losing the minutes ever again.

Hypercontext

Streamline your meetings, whether they’re one-on-ones or include the entire team. Hypercontext allows users to create shared agendas anyone can contribute to, take notes you can automatically email out at the end of the meeting, and create post-meeting next steps to follow along with whose responsible for what.

JotForm

We love JotForm. This easy to use form builder will help you communicate more effectively across larger teams. Need to align on meeting availability? Use JotForm. Looking for team feedback on your last sales sync-up? Use Jotform. The no-frills UI makes the tool easy to use and and intuitive.

Communication

Communication is more about collaboration and teamwork than anything else. Even with the right amount of prep, your meeting isn’t destined to succeed unless you know how to stay in touch with the key people around you.

Great communication tools won’t just help you stay focused; it will help up productivity levels as well. Why? Well, good communication is a guard against missing any critical steps, omitting others or losing track of your purpose.

Slack

We’ve mentioned Slack earlier as a great time management tool, and we have to add it to the top of our list of useful tools for better meetings. If your inbox is always cluttered, how will you know what to focus on?

Slack is the best internal communications tool out there, and with its many app integrations, you never have to worry about things getting lost again. Set up meetings, forward agendas, remind invitees to attend and keep track of follow-ups. It’s also applicable for 1:1 video calling/screen sharing, something we often use when working remote.

Slido

Business meetings are not only about agendas and project assignments. More than anything, they’re about the people attending, the audience.

Slido is an audience interaction tool for meetings and events, where attendees can help drive the conversation with questions during the meetings or engage with live polls.

Comments and questions can be presented with a name, or anonymously. The anonymity will help bring forward more honest answers.

Dropbox Paper

None of us are strangers to Dropbox, the cloud storage service. Not all are aware that it’s a useful tool for more effective meetings. How? With files and folders online, you can share it with other team members and visitors, and you can even collaborate directly with others in Dropbox Paper, a document type designed for team collaboration.

It’s a useful tool for brainstorming or project-based meetings, where team members all need to contribute to one document.

It looks a bit different than Google Docs, maybe even refreshingly so. Many online collaboration tools are based on old-school paper formats, something only necessary if you have to print it afterward. It’s nice to see a format that isn’t tied to the past.

iBrainstorm

What’s better than a creative collaboration tool? A creative collaboration tool app! All your sticky notes and fancy ideas all have a place in iBrainstorm, just better organized and more accessible. It aims to replace the whiteboard, and because of its user-friendly interface, we can see how that could happen.

Evernote

Evernote has been called the best note-taking tool by many. We’re fans too. The platform provides several smart templates that make business meetings more productive, such as Meeting Agenda, Project plans, Timelines, and many more.

Share notes with your teammates, tick off items as the meeting advances and present your documents in slide mode. For individuals, Evernote is a great help. For teams, it’s a time-saving productivity boost.

Virtual meetings

More and more people are connecting to conferences and meetings online. For that to happen as smoothly as possible, you need a video connection that works and tools that drive your presentation.

Smart and simple apps for virtual meetings are especially helpful for blending in-house employees with remote workers when meetings are scheduled so as to not to leave anyone out.

Skype

Skype is quite probably the biggest competitor on the video conferencing market.

Because Skype is a Microsoft product, security is a big issue. So if you’re keen on that plus excellent integration with other Microsoft packages, then Skype could be what you’re looking for.

Skype for Business is free for up to 25 people to use. For larger corporations, Skype for Business has various plans that unlock more features and the capability of hosting bigger meetings, for example as a part of the Office 365 business essentials package.

Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts, a free HD video call service with instant messaging features and great conferencing options for up to 10 people and group chat for up to 100.

As it’s a Google product, it easily integrates with Gmail. Using machine learning, the Hangouts Meet service in Google Hangouts gets better at suggesting meeting times and booking meetings over time, which is a pretty cool feature.

GoToMeeting

We also want to mention GoToMeeting, a web conferencing software for conference calls. GoToMeeting hosts up to 100 callers.

It’s especially convenient for organizations that have colleagues all over because conferencing and even demonstrations are easy. You can share or turn over the control of the meeting if more than one is in charge and record important meetings for playback later.

join.me

Lastly, there’s join.me. join.me works directly from the web, meaning business meeting guests or remote workers don’t have to download external applications or the like.

It’s quick to host and join meetings with join.me’s simple interface. It removes the hassle of having to download cumbersome software, and there are lots of opportunities to personalize and work together.

We could have slack here for internal meetings as well

Feedback

Sure, meetings can be valuable without follow-ups and feedback, but we don’t believe they’re truly great if you’re not listening to inputs on how to improve.

Continuous feedback should be easy to track, follow up on and plan accordingly to afterward. These apps all help with the process of reaching organizational as well as individual employee goals.

Taplause

Taplause is a feedback management app. It’s designed for managers and business owners who aren’t in regular contact with customers or users. Taplause gives you all the negative and positive feedback instantly so you can focus on solving the issues that come up.

Duuoo

Besides team development and feedback, you want to focus on individual performances as well. Duuoo helps you secure actionable results through a performance management tool that keeps track of 1-on-1s, feedback, goals, and performance.

TruQu

You can’t reach your organizational goals without continuous feedback. TruQu is an easy feedback solution where you can ask and receive real-time performance feedback as an employee or customer.

This will help encourage employees and help them identify areas that might need improving, as well as tracking their progress.

Everything else

Team building isn’t just a Friday Bar exercise or something you do because HR said so. Regular team building exercises can increase productivity and higher job satisfaction, simply because you know who you have in your corner every day.

Even for regular-based business meetings, small teambuilding exercises such as survey questions before a meeting can help your team work more effectively and respectfully.

Kahoot!

Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform. You can administer quizzes, discussions and surveys, all in a game-based, mobile environment that grabs the attention of meeting attendees in a fun way while everyone gets to know each other.

Conclusion

It doesn’t have to be a hassle planning a meeting and following up. Find the right solution that’s going to keep you and your team motivated and more productive about setting up meetings, communication with your team and improving your business meeting structure with the right feedback.

Let us know if any of these apps work for you or if there are any other awesome apps out there you’d like to see on the list.

The post 19 must-have apps for better business meetings appeared first on Airtame.

And now we are ready to launch a few new features to make that Airtame Cloud experience even more heavenly.

URL refresh rate for background content

Our website application allows you to display a public URL on your Airtames’ Homescreen – transforming the blank or otherwise turned off TV screens around your workplace. Nothing new there, but we have just launched the ability to manually set periodic refreshing of your configured and presented URL. That’s up-to-the-minute content from a website or intranet, straight to your standby screens!

The Airtame Cloud Website App now allows users to specify an interval for the periodic refreshing of their configured URL. As of now, you can set the refresh to 10-minute, 1-hour, 12-hour or 1-day intervals.

How to set it up:

1. Enable Homescreen view on your Airtame.cloud account
2. Select the device/devices that you want to show the Website app on
3. Click on Switch App
4. Select Website
5. Enter the URL you want to display and select Page Reload Interval
6. Save and Apply settings

Discover more opportunities for your homescreens with our World Clock, Google Slides, Trello and Unsplash apps.

✋ Current limitations with URL background content

Airtame’s background web browser cannot show all website content. Additionally, please keep in mind that Airtame loads URL in iFrame. These are the current things it does not work with:

• Video playback
• Java, Flash, Silverlight, WebGL not supported
• Sites that requires login, like Facebook (due to lack of ways to provide input)
• Animations
• The refresh only works with HTTPS based pages at present

Note that this feature is only available from the cloud, and not the “Homescreen Background” selector in the desktop app.

User roles and Group permissions

A lot of our customers have multiple locations and campuses in which they are using Airtames. Sometimes that calls for local admins and supporters, who just need to see and administer Airtames in their own local environment.

To help with this we’re now launching user roles, meaning that you as an Airtame Cloud organization owner can define what groups of devices that your Airtame Cloud account users can see and what level of permissions they will have.

There will be 3 roles that you can assign your users under:

Administrator:

The admin is a role that has access to all options and groups of devices in the cloud. This role can also create more groups, invite users and set permissions for other users.

Manager:

The manager role can access all settings to devices and add new Airtames to his/her groups, but you can specify what groups the manager can access. Managers cannot add groups, invite users or change user permissions.

User:

Users only have access to the Airtame devices via the Homescreen tab in the Cloud. Users can change what apps and Homescreen settings that are set on Airtames, but not access settings, add Airtames, invite users or change user permissions. You can specify which groups users can see.

☝️ Owner:

This is not a selectable role. There can only be one owner of an organization and they hold the exclusive rights to delete the organization account, once all other users have been deleted, as well as the ability to move the ownership role to another user.

The post Powerful new updates to the Airtame Cloud appeared first on Airtame.

Highlights:

• New apps: We’re introducing the first few apps. Cross-team collaboration with Trello, awe-inspiring photography from Unsplash for daily inspiration, integrated clocks for seamless teamwork, Google Slides to improve display of information, OneDrive and Dropbox for displaying image galleries, and Homescreen app, a sneak peek of our newly redesigned Homescreen.

• All in public beta: There’s no out-of-pocket expense with the launch of these apps. Homescreen is still in public beta, meaning you can try them out and take full advantage of their benefits.

• Your first step into digital signage: We’re working on more awesome things at the moment, all leading towards unlocking the power of digital signage. These apps are just the first baby beta steps, so stay tuned for more updates
• Download the new 3.2.3 firmware and get started!

Digital signage is popping up in more and more places, and with these four apps, you’ll be able to see the magic too. Digital signage means centrally controlled, customized content distribution to one or more screens. Turn blank screens into eye-catching, relevant content sharing surfaces right away. Start communication with customers, students, employees or visitors.

Sharing the right information at the right time can be a challenge – unless you have the right tools. With the right tools, you’ll be able to share calendars, notify staff about events, the lunch menu, upcoming visitors, birthdays or display mind-blowing photography to captivate passer-bys.

Schools, hospitals, banks, corporate offices and many more organizations are all looking for a simple and effective way to share information with their audiences. With a seamless experience, employee morale is boosted and productivity increases.

With our latest additions to the Airtame Cloud and firmware version 3.2.3, we’re pleased to now offer a smarter and more effective way of utilizing digital screens. Through Airtame’s Homescreen product, users will now be able to use Trello, Unsplash, World Clock, and Google Slides as the first few apps of many.

Our new apps

Trello

Trello is a web-based project management tool. It provides a platform for planning and organizing projects, and it’s a useful way to keep track of updates and ideas.

If you already use Trello in your workplace, you can now showcase the content on screens via Airtame. Set up sprint boards for your office space, shared to-do lists or weekly digests. You can choose what columns to show on each TV or let the board spread across multiple screens. It gives you a much better workflow, especially because you’re able to change the size of the text and how many details to show.

Unsplash

Unsplash provides beautiful, high quality, free images, and photos. Visual stimulation is proven to have significant, positive impact on your work environment, for increasing creativity, and serving as daily inspiration to both employees, clients, and visitors. In fact, in an office with art, employees worked approximately 15% faster than those in the lean office.

With our Unsplash app, you can set up amazing backgrounds for general inspiration, to celebrate, create good vibes or simply because it looks good. Set the mood with the right images and use your screens to the fullest when you’re not streaming to them.

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World Clock

Keeping track of time is essential for any organization, especially if you have colleagues or customers in different time zones. With our World Clock app, you can set up to 3 clocks to stay in tune with the time in the timezones of your teams and clients.

Google Slides

Google Slides lets you create and edit amazing online presentations, for free. It lets you work effortlessly with other people since more than one person can access the presentation at the same time and make changes. But there are several other ways to use Google Slides. Format a slide show to present an updated calendar, the agenda of today’s meeting or a rotation of fun pictures.

Digital signage with Google Slides offers a lot of benefits for your organization. Welcome your clients, share company calendars, set up dashboards or even use it for displaying the lunch menu. Slides are updated automatically when edits have been made.

Airtame’s Google Slides app within Homescreen makes picking and changing presentations easier than ever. You’ll be sure to find many exciting use cases that turn your screen into an easy digital signage solution.

Homescreen

The new Homescreen app lets you preview our completely redesigned Homescreen.

Not only does it have a sleek new look and feel, the Homescreen app also has new functionalities. Use the conveniently placed clock to keep track of time. Or sync your meeting room calendar so you know at a glance if the room has been booked or not.

Dropbox Gallery 

Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud storage services for business and personal use. It is a central place to store and share files with your teams. 

With Dropbox Gallery, select a whole gallery of images from a Dropbox folder, and make them stand out with our styling options.

OneDrive Gallery

OneDrive is another popular cloud storage service for business and personal use. As a part of Microsoft’s Office 365 suite, it is a favorite among enterprise-level companies.

With OneDrive Gallery, select any OneDrive folder to display a gallery of images. It’s that easy.

Free to use in public beta

Homescreen will continue to be in public beta and unpaid at the moment, giving you the opportunity to explore these apps in their raw form without having to pay a dime. Our goal is to unleash the magic that professional screens hold, and to help you get accustomed to the power of digital signage. Besides Trello, Unsplash, World Clock, Google Slides, Dropbox Gallery, OneDrive Gallery and Homescreen Preview, we also have Website and Image listed as apps. With them, you can showcase simple websites and custom background images. You might want to use it to show a static site, dashboard or wallpaper.

A step into the future

We recently won a substantial grant from the European Union, which will go towards developing an open integration platform for professional displays. That means we’ll be launching many more apps in the foreseeable future, so stay tuned for more product updates.

We also want to hear what apps you think we should build next. Find out more info right about the technical setup.

It could be a platform you’re already using at work that you want to see integrated to your screen automatically. Or it could be a “so-crazy-it-might-work” partnership that would change the way your workforce use and think about screens. Let us know here.

The post Start using screens better with the brand new Homescreen apps appeared first on Airtame.

I’m very dedicated to my work (duh), but as any Millennial, I’m not always as disciplined as I would like to be. Efficient time management is vital for employee satisfaction and a healthy, realistic work-life balance. It’s about healthy habits, and they take time to implement.

There are many solutions to help you find better flow in the workplace – we even created Airtame as a way to reduce clutter and improve productivity. Here are a few simple suggestions and our favorite apps to help you become better at time management.

Lists, lists, lists everywhere!

Time management is a Monday morning subject. I start every week off by writing a list of my upcoming assignments. I actually prefer to use pen and paper because writing things down physically gives me a better sense of where I’m at. But wouldn’t you know it, I sprinkle a few apps on top of that too.

One of the most powerful tools for time management is having a plan. Whether it’s a plan or general to-do overview, lists help you focus on the task at hand. Try not to overcomplicate lists or make them too excessive. Use a notebook or a planning tool to keep track of your progress and sort information. Set up columns like “to do”/”doing”/”done” or “delegate”/”handle now”/”follow-up”. Choose the system that works best for you and stick to it.

For a collective overview of ideas, notes and other kinds of information, I suggest Evernote, either for personal or business use. It functions as a platform for your own thoughts as well as collaboration across teams. I use it for general to-dos, travel recommendations, even grocery lists.

If you want to organize your tasks in a simple setup, Wunderlist works like a charm. Add and complete tasks in an efficient way and stay on top of your to-dos.

Learn to say “no, not right now”

We’re not suggesting that you say “no” to colleagues because an assignment isn’t to your liking. But saying no to here-and-now tasks outside your schedule is a powerful and efficient time management tool. It minimizes interruptions, both from colleagues and other projects. It’s also closely related to delegating tasks, see below.

Pass the baton: Delegate tasks

We often bite off more than we can chew. Even the best version of yourself needs help and support every once in a while. Delegating tasks doesn’t mean you’re running away from them, but you can’t do everything everyone asks of you, it’s just not possible. Don’t be too proud to ask for assistance. You know that you would help your team, and your team is there for you as well.

Assigning responsibilities can free up your time for important assignments and have the benefit of acknowledging other team members’ abilities. It helps crush silo-thinking and foster collaboration, which I am all for, and Airtame, fortunately, is too.

Never push a task onto another person forcefully, especially if you’re the only one capable of taking it on. Instead, build a strong team with paramount communicative skills. That way, you know when to delegate and when to assist.

You’ve probably all heard of Slack. It’s team collaboration made easy with a simple tool for messaging and file sharing. It’s an Airtame favorite and has helped us reduce inbox clutter to a bare minimum. In the past, I’ve stressed over receiving too many emails that didn’t always need my attention, but that I felt they required. Using Slack is a pain- and stress-free collaboration tool, and I can only give it my highest recommendations.

Another household stable is Basecamp, which makes project management more transparent and digestible. We use it to track progress, evaluate projects and work seamlessly across teams.

Know what you want to achieve

In many ways, productivity is about getting your priorities straight. Are your task business critical, does it require assisted resources only available under limited conditions, is there a hard deadline? Align your priorities with the critical objectives, timeliness and team efforts needed.

At Airtame, we use Favro for task management. It provides a platform for planning and organizing projects, in a team or independently. It’s an efficient tool to help you and your team stay focused in work environments where constant updates are inevitable. Besides a personal Favro board with tasks I need doing, am currently doing or have already done, I share Favro boards with the content team as well as other teams within Airtame. If I’m needed for a task, someone will tag me to make sure I’m alerted. Oh, and then there’s the satisfaction of dragging a project from “doing” to “done”, which I love.

We’ve also recently become aware of ProofHub, an online project management tool. Some of the features they offer include discussions, notes, to-do lists, milestones, timesheets and custom reports. All of that is sure to help you keep track of planning and progress.

Take timeouts

You should take time to sit and stare out the window, go for a walk or do nothing. Leave time for relaxation, read the newspaper or take a quick nap. It’s often when we least expect it that inspiration strikes. Your body works in cycles of energy, and when you’re maxed out, your body will try to rest even though you’re still working. Taking a breather every now and again allows your body to regain energy and your brain to recharge its batteries.

Timeouts relieve stress and anxiety while also helping you regain focus. Guided meditation is great for that extra relaxing boost, and when talking about guided meditation, it’s impossible not to mention Headspace. Learn the power of meditation through a cute and simple interface and increase mindfulness every day. The daily reminders serve as a light wake-up call that I need to relax and clear my head.

Achieve laser focus

I’m like a puppy sometimes. Not because I enjoy attention, but because I too suffer from a short attention span from time to time. I want to focus on everything at the same time, leaving me distracted. If you’re anything like me, you need tools to tighten focus and curb procrastination.

There are several apps out there that can help you focus. I like Forest where you plant a virtual tree for every task at hand you need to focus on. If you’re distracted, the tree dies, but if you stay on target, your tree will flourish.

Need a complete break from distractions? Cold Turkey has your back. Say no to the apps on your smartphone that takes time away from productivity. My guess is that’s many. A personal favorite is Offtime, which offers a similar, digital detox to help you stay focused. Track how much time you’re actually using on your phone with Moment and set daily limits.

Break projects down

It’s difficult to grasp the entirety of a big project and starting it can make you feel hopeless. In all probability, you will sway from the big project and either procrastinate or divert your focus area to other, smaller projects that aren’t as important. Break projects up into smaller bites that are easier to grasp and set deadlines for each part.

Logging task time is almost always a hassle, and it takes time away from productivity. Use Toggl to get reports on time usage and a full overview of time spent so you can prioritize effectively going forward.

Have a look at this comprehensive Toggl review that Time Doctor recently published.

Know yourself

The ancient Greek aphorism (or mind-boggling maxim from the Matrix) “gnothi seauton” or “know thyself” often comes to mind when I try to optimize my working routines or better myself in general. To achieve more significant results and be the best you can be, take time to work out what your limitations and strengths are.

Take the inner body clock. Some people are productive in the mornings, whereas others are serious night owls. You know doubt already have an idea of when your performance peaks. In any high-performance team and company culture – like we think we have – it’s important for managers and above to know how to get the best out of their employees. That means capitalizing on when they’re most productive, capable, and effective.

Similarly, this means a change of location can also help steer time management, especially if you work in a pretty vocal and potentially distracting office space. We encourage people to get out more, find that snug office nook where distractions are limited, take a walk to the local coffee shop, or take the day working from home where you can be more on top of your time.

Stay healthy

Needless to say, productivity isn’t at its highest if you’re at your lowest. Do you get enough sleep? Give yourself enough time to recover from a long day of activities? Sleep deprivation can lead to damaged memory functions, so be sure to get enough sleep and schedule time to rest properly.

Track and analyze your sleep pattern with Sleep Cycle. Not only will Sleep Cycle help you get the most out of your rest, it gently wakes you up in the lightest sleep phase too.

But sleep isn’t the only thing with an impact on your health. Exercising can enhance brain functions. When you work out, endorphins are released, which reduces stress and ups creativity. They say sitting is the new smoking, so remember to stretch those legs every once in a while. Even going for a short walk has similar benefits to exercising, or standing up now and then. StandUp! reminds you to get up and move around while Hydrate Daily helps you stay hydrated.

These are what we consider to be the most valuable time management habits and apps, but there’s no golden rule to unlock a perfectly timed workflow. Select what works for you and create strong habits out of that. We think you’ll feel less frustrated when you stop stressing and start organizing.

Do you have other tips for efficient time management? We want to hear them!

The post The essential tools and apps for unlocking better time management appeared first on Airtame.