5 Productivity Boosting Apps for the Office

There’s always someone in the office that’s reluctant to embrace new technology through fear of unfamiliarity, uncertainty, over-complication and unnecessary failure of the system. However, these productivity boosting smartphone and tablet apps are sure to convert even the most technologically suspicious in your team.

UK smartphone repair firm Fone Angels runs through five apps that you need to download now!

1. QuickOffice – iOS, Android (Free)

Viewing office documents on your smart phone has never been a particularly arduous task; most handsets will let you open a variety of standard file formats like Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Where the difficulty lies is with editing them – which is where QuickOffice comes in.

QuickOffice allows you to edit and share MS Office files including Word documents and newer XML spreadsheets, including integration with most cloud storage products such as Dropbox and Google Docs. This cuts out the need to transfer files to a Windows machine to make a few minor amendments.

2. Google Drive – iOS, Android (Free)

If editing on the fly is a necessity in your day-to-day working life, then Google Drive brings the best bits of cloud computing and files sharing together. There’s a Google Drive application for pretty much every device out there, from desktop computers to smartphones and tablets – there’s also the standard browser-based version if not.

This means that you can virtually 100% guarantee that your colleagues will have access, or the ability to access, Google Drive for things like sharing files or editing documents. Everything is stored on the cloud, and all amendments are instantaneous, so you can be sure everyone’s working to the same up-to-date version.

3. Asana Mobile – iOS, Android (Free)

Ansana is a great piece of both desktop and mobile software which effectively gives you a workflow and organisational system without the need to use multiple pieces of complex software, or pour cash into developing something yourself.

It’s an incredibly streamlined application that runs incredibly smoothly and is very user friendly – meaning that even the less technical team members will be able to use it. It can be used to manage team-based work, personal projects, meetings and events, negating the need for multiple applications and giving you one central system.

4. Air Sharing – iOS (£5.99)

Air Sharing is a fantastic little app for your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch which works especially well with colleagues in the same office. The application allows transferring of files between devices on the same wireless network; any iDevice running the app can appear as a ‘wireless hard drive’ on desktop machines, with files easily transferred by drag-and-drop, and the auto-detection of other devices running Air Sharing results in seamless file sharing between other Apple devices.

With a wealth of common office file formats supported, you can transfer, view and even edit documents from your phone, while seamlessly exchanging data with any other connected devices. Put simply, it removes the headache of connecting and transferring files the old fashioned way.

5. Meeting Minutes Pro – Android (£2.99)

You wander into the boardroom countless times each week, with notes hastily scribbled onto a notepad with no sense of organisation or way of recounting what was actually discussed with any kind of clarity. Even well document paper records become cumbersome and difficult to manage and sift through – which is where the technological integration comes with Meeting Minutes Pro. The app allows you to store details of all meetings; their time, location, date, subjects and items on the agenda.

There’s also seamless integration with your calendar, allowing to you to import events and meetings stored here to save time. All previous meeting can be viewed from the database within the app, or exported as PDF or HTML files for viewing on other devices.

This guest post was written by Tom McShane – business blogger, tech lover and writer for UK-based Fone Angels, who provide professional repairs for iPhones, iPads and a range of other smartphones.