As an Oracle WebCenter consultant at Fishbowl Solutions, I have a number of tools that I use that keep me happy and productive. Whether or not you are a software developer, these tools can do the same for you and your business.
Slack
Unless you’ve been hibernating for the last year or so, you’ve probably heard of Slack. Haven’t adopted it for your business yet? Here’s why you should.
Slack facilitates contextual, transparent and efficient communication for teams. Slack helps organize your communications into “channels.” Working on a project with Fishbowl Solutions on a WebCenter project? Create a Slack channel and centralize your communications. Quickly share files with the entire team, and “Slackers” can give instant feedback. On the go? Slack goes with you via mobile, of course. Slack provides direct messaging and private channels, too.
Even better, Slack lets you integrate dozens of apps, so that you can centralize all of the services you and your team use. Send calendar reminders and events, search for documents, even start a Skype call. Slack is team communication for the 21st century (with custom emojis!).
Twitter and Evernote
Twitter
and Evernote are my number one/two combo punch for staying on top of all things development. Twitter allows me to keep up to date with the latest news and trends in the web development world. I can peruse dozens of articles every day with information I want to store for later use. I save links to the best articles in my Evernote account, which I have organized into different notebooks for various topics. For example, I’m working on a presentation for Collaborate 16 on Oracle JET, Oracle’s new front-end JavaScript framework. Anything interesting I see on Twitter re: Oracle JET goes right into my Evernote notebook. It makes keeping track of news and information a breeze.
Trello
Trello is the application for list-making over-achievers (like me). I organize my to-dos into different “boards”, depending on the project. I have a different board for each project I’m working on at Fishbowl. As I think of something I need to do, I can quickly add it to the appropriate to-do column. When I’m busy with a task, I put it in the “doing” column, and then slide it on over to “done” when finished. I can keep up with my task flow, it’s motivating, visually appealing, and goes with me where I go. Trello also allows me to share tables with others for easy collaboration. Oh, and did I mention I can integrate Trello with Slack (insert custom Slack emoji here)?
Toggl
Toggl is a fantastic little desktop timer tool my colleague Nate Yates introduced to me. We consultants at Fishbowl Solutions need to keep very accurate timing of the hours we spend on different projects. Toggl allows me to input my different projects, and then just click the appropriate button when I start working on it. It keeps track of my time for the week on each project. It makes keeping track of my time simple, so that I can focus most of my time on creating responsive single-page applications for Fishbowl Solutions customers.
