How to work remotely and have a productive research group

DireitoTec's work platform is based on the Slack . There are other platforms, but Slack is a good starting point for you if you're looking to build a research group or a working group that needs to communicate in a more organized and asynchronous way.

Surpassing Whatsapp

Instant communication is no longer a problem with Whatsapp. But Whatsapp has created a series of other problems for us. For us, it is a premise that work and other subjects are separated and that our researchers are effectively concentrated while they dedicate themselves to our projects. At the same time, we need agility in communication.

Well, if you are on Whatsapp, your group will be a timeline only, confusing communication. Or rather, apps like Whatsapp are made for the purpose of instantly informing a community about a single subject, preferably a simple one. Also, it is normal that you may miss some notification without severe consequences. It simply does not serve our purpose.

The solution given by Slack and its alternatives is to create a channel for each subject, so that different subgroups inhabit only the channels of their interest.

In short, Slack is a kind of set of Whatsapp groups, in the sense that each group has a timeline. Of course, it is not only that, but it is first necessary to establish some minimum understandings to understand the full potential of remote work areas.

Designing Your Desktop

Our Slack workspace changes over time, so much so we share here what's available today. We have some open groups (marked with an # icon), in which we separate some communities. In our case, the closed channels inhabited by teams destined for some financed project and within them the accountability of the project takes place.

Mastering the bots

We also have channels inhabited by bots. It's actually not that fancy.

Bots are Slack's integrations with other software, so that the messages exchanged serve as both input and output. This means that channels passively display messages in Slack when updating the status of some activity performed outside of Slack. Or, Slack itself actively sends a command so that you can operate the software integrated with Slack, through a message with previously established syntax.

It's easier than it sounds, as the usability of the tool is amazing. All you have to do is search for available integrations and invite the respective bot to your desktop. The list of apps with Slack integration is available on your shop . Choose the app you prefer and, if this is not already part of your habit, start getting used to talking to it through a command line.

A channel for every need

Going back to the subject, for every need of our group there is a channel and often there is a bot as well. To manage the spreadsheets we have the Airtable . For collaborative writing we have the channel of Draft . And to manage bibliographic references we have the Zotero .

There are also closed channels (marked with a padlock icon), as they are reserved for researchers who are in paid activity. This group reports through a kind of time sheet, called Jibble . In addition, researchers on a paid project answer periodic questions about what they have done, plan to do, and the difficulties they are facing. The bot that takes care of this maintenance is called Tatsu . Finally, we have the bot dedicated to managing tasks with stipulated deadlines, called Todoist .

Some people may find this toolbox overloaded. But the truth is that if you get involved in a complex project, you will need to manage several fronts and it is best that they are separated.

Soon we will be publishing posts dedicated to each of these tools here again and we hope to hear how they are helping (or not) your work process.