Working from home in these quarantine times.
Fotos af Andrea Piacquadio fra Pexels
As I am writing this, the Danish government has just shut down most of the country to try to slow down the spread of Covid19, aka the Corona virus. A lot of people are being advised to work from home whenever possible. For more and more people, this is actually quite possible, and a lot of people do it already to some extent. With cloud based solutions and shared drives, we can do just about anything from our laptops, but we need to know how. That’s why I’ve gathered a list of the tools I use for working all over the place. I will also try to explain how these tools can be used in an efficient way.
File Sharing
Most people somehow have to work with files. So how do we share these? There are a few different scenarios we need to consider.
I need to grab a file and do some work on it, for me.
I need to have access to a series of files that other people work with as well.
I am creating something to deliver to other people.
While this list is not exhaustive, it is at least the most common situations I run into. In the first case, you can put the file on a usb drive, send it with WeTransfer, or even in an email. The thing that is important to realise is that you are effectively creating a new instance of the file, and the revisions you do will not be present in the location you grabbed the file from. This requires some structure, to avoid missing versions or updates, or double versions of files which can lead to confusion.
The second situation is probably more common, and is one of the places where cloud based storage just makes your life so much easier. If you are not on a cloud based solution yet, you can probably set up a vpn connection to your company, allowing you to map a server path to a drive, so you can access the files as if they were local, though much slower. When working with data that has to be kept very secure, this is probably the most common situation. My preferred solution though, is to use Google Drive or Dropbox, setting up a folder on your local machine that mirrors drives on other computers, storing everything, with changes, in the cloud and syncing with your local drive. This means that you can actually work very quickly, as the sync is being done in the background. Just remember to set up which folders get synced, so you don’t all of the sudden start to sync the complete server to your local drive. With this solution other people can work on the files and in the directories as well, just as if you were on the local network.
In the third situation, where you need to deliver files, you can either send them via something like WeTransfer, or share file links directly from dropbox or google drive.
Tools:
WeTransfer: A simple tool that allows you to share large files quickly via email.
Google Drive: Lets you mount a cloud folder as a local drive, either just for you or shared between multiple users.
Dropbox: Pretty much the same as Google Drive, but sometimes a bit simpler and less restrictive, which can be good and bad depending on your situation.
Collaboration and Communication
There are tools like google docs, office 365 and others that allow you to work in the cloud. But your work circumstances will often dictate the tools you can use, so I won’t focus on those. Instead, I’ll focus on the two I find most useful. Namely Zoom and Slack.
Zoom is the new skype, to be honest. It does not require special accounts and is horribly easy to set up. Video conferencing with tons of features, and the ability to be quite a lot of people, with no lag and with great quality video. I know it can seem like there is not much difference between Teams, Skype, Facetime and Zoom. But Zoom is agnostic to whatever other tools you use, which makes it a true gem.
For more casual communication or for just keeping updated, could we please stop using email? It turns out, we can! Enter Slack and Discourse.
Slack is more of an instant messenger and Discourse feels like a good old forum. So depending on what you are doing, either will solve it. Slack is great for quick check-ins and questions, while Discourse is great for more detailed updates and questions that you want to have easy access to.
Tools:
Zoom: A really great, free (to a certain extent) video conferencing tool.
Slack: Probably the go-to realtime messaging tool.
Discourse: A great application for setting up message boards for less time sensitive communication.
Remote Access
In some cases, you need to be at your workstation in the office. When you’re at home and still need to do this, you can use various remote desktop solutions. The most used ones, as far as I know, are Teamviewer and Microsoft Remote Desktop. Both of them are great, but they can be quite expensive and require different amounts of setup. I’m quite sure they are more secure than the alternative I’ll suggest, but it all depends on your work situation.
I have recently been introduced to google Chrome Remote Desktop, which is blazingly fast, and it’s free. You just need to be logged into your google account on chrome on the machines you want to be able to control, which can of course be an issue.
Tools:
Teamviewer: A remote desktop app that allows control of remote machines from just about any device you can imagine.
MS Remote Desktop: The defacto standard.
Google Chrome Remote Desktop: A great and free alternative.
Security Concerns
Ok, so we have the tools, but we need to be aware that this whole movement of working remotely opens our businesses up to some severe security implications. I am guessing that we will see a torrent of cyber crime in these weeks or months to come, as people are working from home and some security parameters need to be relaxed. But what can we do to lessen this? I have a few suggestions that I subscribe to.
VPN
To be honest, you should never connect to the internet without one. At least not if you are not on a trusted connection at home or at the office. But as soon as you are doing work across the internet, you really should be using a VPN (Virtual Private Network). That way all communication will be encrypted, and much harder for anyone to intercept in a useful way.
Encryption
If you are mirroring files to your local drive, you should always make sure that your local drive is encrypted. I think most laptops will do this by default these days, but make sure filevault or whatever your OS uses is on, and that you are encrypting your drive. If someone steals your laptop or usb drive etc, it will be encrypted and very hard to extract. But that leads to the next thing…
Passwords
We all hear about keeping your passwords secure etc, and that’s oh so true. But it is just as important to keep your laptop and OS account locked with a password!
Physical Security
Now that you have access to all your company data at home, or at the coffee shop (which you shouldn’t if you are quarantined, but hopefully that will end soon), it is important that you consider physical security. Don’t leave your laptop in public places (heck you shouldn’t leave it in the hotel room when travelling without locking it in a safe). If stolen, there is no guarantee that the data can be kept safe. Also, when working remote, it can sometimes be in public places where people can look over your shoulder and see things they should not. So be aware of your surroundings!
In conclusion
With these tools, that are generally free and very easy to use, you should be able to do a lot of your work from the safety and comfort of home. I would love suggestions to more tools and workflows. Stay safe out there.
