If you’ve worked with Jollity any time in the past decade, you know that we love our productivity tools. We’re not afraid to try new things, explore new features, or deep dive into the kbase. This is part of what makes us agile and keeps us efficient. Here are a few of our favorites and their notable features.
Heads up: some links below are affiliate or referral links. If you sign up through them, Jollity may earn a commission or credit at no extra cost to you. We only recommend tools we actually use.
Missive
Ever wonder how we all seem to be in the loop, even if we’re not technically on the project? It’s largely thanks to the collaborative nature of Missive (referral link) and the shared inbox structure. Though we each have our own inboxes, support requests drop into a shared inbox that all team members can access through their own Missive permissions. We can easily move individual emails into the shared space, collaborate on an email with another team member, or loop in the dev team to make sure we got the details right. This also means we almost NEVER communicate internally via email. All email communication is reserved for external communications with clients and vendor partners. So how do we stay so connected, you ask…?
Pros
- Collaborative emails
- Chat threads
- Merging & splitting email threads
- Unified email signatures
- Google integration
- Clickup integration
- Shared inboxes
- Mobile app, desktop app, & web based options
Cons
- Pricey for large teams
- No Microsoft integration
- Moderate learning curve
Ever wonder how we all seem to be in the loop, even if we’re not technically on the project? It’s largely thanks to the collaborative nature of Missive (referral link) and the shared inbox structure. Though we each have our own inboxes, support requests drop into a shared inbox that all team members can access through their own Missive permissions. We can easily move individual emails into the shared space, collaborate on an email with another team member, or loop in the dev team to make sure we got the details right. This also means we almost NEVER communicate internally via email. All email communication is reserved for external communications with clients and vendor partners. So how do we stay so connected, you ask…?
Slack
Quick questions, gut checks, and sidebars happen via Slack. This not only keeps us in constant communication with each other, but it allows us to build the rapport that makes our team great. (For more on that, read Hannah’s article on managing a remote team). These ‘huddles’, as they’re called, are usually unscheduled and speak to our no-ego environment — nobody is afraid to ask a question or find out how something works. It’s also how we learn more about each other. We know Ana has a cat, Gucci, because he often attends video calls by very helpfully sitting on the keyboard. We know Jake has two new puppies, Herbie & Hank, because one of them is usually getting into trouble. Weberson and Moisés are passionate about music and you’ll often see an instrument or two in the background (we are contemplating a Jollity band name, submissions welcome). For quick and nimble communications, Slack is our go-to for staying connected.
ClickUp
For documentation and ongoing conversations, nearly everything else runs through ClickUp (referral link). All client work, projects, timelines, budgets, time tracking, new business, and internal marketing efforts happen inside of our customized ClickUp workspace. We are constantly learning about new features, applying what works for us, and adapting as needed. We’ve established custom fields that standardize how we capture data. Our custom, color coded statuses make it easy to see where a task is in its lifecycle at any given moment. Visibility to each team member’s queue lets us know who is under water and who has capacity so we can make adjustments as needed. We’ve incorporated their ‘Brain AI’ features to streamline repetitive processes and power our internal knowledgebase. And the ability to share resources externally means we can give our clients a peek into this structure with dynamic timelines and usage reports.
Fathom
Fathom (referral link) is our favorite AI meeting recorder and transcription wizard. If you’ve been on a Zoom call with us in the past few years, you’ve probably seen it quietly attending meetings. What you may not realize is that it’s the secret to our awesome recap emails. Most teams use some sort of meeting recorder tool these days, but the Jollity team is very particular about the quality of the output. After testing a variety of tools, including those built into some of our other existing platforms, still nothing has beat Fathom for transcription accuracy and ease of use.
Markup
Markup is the tool that makes our web feedback process quick and easy. Much like marking up a PDF — as its name implies — we are able to display your website’s pages inside the Markup interface. This gives you the ability to add comments on-page, load copy and images, test interactions, and use page navigation natively. No need to grab your own screenshots or attempt to explain which ‘button’ you’re trying to give feedback on. Drop a comment on the item, and you’re done. Not only is this efficient for our clients, but we use it regularly during internal QC so it’s already tightened up by the time it gets to you.
Figma
In the ‘olden days’, Adobe Photoshop was the queen of digital design. Mocking up websites was cumbersome, created huge files difficult to share via email, and much of the interactivity was conceptual until the design actually went to dev. Figma solved all of those problems. With Figma, we pre-set baseline best practices for size, scale and responsiveness, so our designers can get started quickly and spend more of their time building unique web experiences. Figma is a web-based platform, so page designs can be shared with a simple link via email. Much like Markup, feedback is shared with a simple comment on-page. And our designers can even create dynamic prototypes, so you don’t have to ‘imagine’ what the button hovers will look like. We can just show you.
Zight
I may have saved the best for last. Zight is our screencasting platform, and it is a common thread across all our tech tools. At Jollity, we cannot help but be helpers. We want to share what we know, but we also realize that we are very nerdy, and long techy emails are no fun for the neurotypical. Enter…screencasts. Quick references get a screenshot, with a highlight or arrow pointing to an example of the issue. Longer explanations get screen recordings, where we just show you what’s going on and explain it simply (you may hear terms like ‘gremlins’ or ‘wizardry’ — do not be alarmed, we do know what we’re talking about). This tool also comes in handy for our customized user guidebooks or training sessions. We’ll never gatekeep or hold your site hostage, so if you want to know how to do something, just ask. You’ll likely get a screencast that you can easily pause, reference and rewatch as needed. All of these assets are stored securely through Jollity’s AWS-powered storage, because data management & security are baseline requirements for any tool we consider.
The Wrap Up
Obviously, there are a lot more tools that contribute to our success. Honorable mentions to:
- 1Password — keeps internal and client creds secure, with robust permissions by users, groups and vaults
- Mixmax — there are many meeting scheduling tools out there, but this one has great Google integrations for checking team availability
We are always researching new tools that will streamline our tech stack and add efficiency. Let us know what questions you have, or what platforms we should check out next!
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