Today we are going to talk about collaboration tools for freelancers and how you are going to show your projects progress with your client, how to share your ideas with your clients. And I'm going to show you a lot of great tools online available. And I'm also going to show you some methods I normally use. No, the first tool I really love about it is Asana and it is a task based project management tool. And it can, you can have 15 team members on a free account and I think it's premium account is also very cheap. Now, the great thing about it is the onboarding is very easy.

The navigation is very easy dashboard, inbox, my tasks list calendar and files view. And you can see over here, I have used it today for the first time and I didn't get any problem using it. Okay, so I think their interface and their user experience is great. So I really recommend if you are doing a project that is going to take like one month so I think it is good that you keep your client updated. Okay, add them invite them over here, create a free account on Asana and you can also manage your daily tasks with it. Okay, you can have team conversations team calendar, you can add project from here.

You can see at the bottom I have I've added the project over here and you can invite people from here and once you have created your project, you can go to the project and you can see here is my view you can add tasks at sections containing different tasks, then you can change the view with conversations calendar, you can see over here, I have assigned the task to myself and it is giving me that on 13th I have to deliver the design hierarchy and color scheme and on 20th I am going to add basically out and form into place Okay, so this is how it is going to be viewed by my client and if I take them that I have done this step and this one this one he is will be updated that I have completed all this these things this is how it is going to be showing my progress.

And also he can see all the files if I am designing or iterating on a design he can see all the files or attachments I have. Okay, so I really like its view. If you click on any of the tasks, you can see that in the last lecture, I showed you some timers and time tracking apps, and one of them was this T metric and you can see it is right now showing me over here also I can tag it. And you can see over here I can comment on it right commands. And you can see over here, Charlie is selected over here, okay, so also I can attach files, I can love this or something like that. I can assign dates over here, and I can delete this task.

Others are Hidden over here so very intuitive or very easy to use interface and I really give it a go. I think it is the best app you should really try using it. Okay, so now why what these apps give you they give you an edge that your clients think that he is a really professional Freelancer and he is not just a freelancer Okay, so this is the tip you need to make your client feel professional that he is using or dealing with our great guy and awesome Freelancer and really stealthy ninja freelancer. Okay, now the second tool I'm going to share with you is this one, this is really great. I just discovered it few years ago and it is called real time board.com and I think it is great for a lot of tasks. It has a lot of templates.

You can see I have loaded one of them you can see it is called basically real time board. You can share and as your ideas, your images you can see over here, I can insert a lot of things via URL. I can capture images, I can upload images, I can share my Google Drive, Dropbox. So this is really great. I can even upload or show my videos over here. Okay, so you can create wireframes you can create visual designs, you can create your storyboards, you can create your customer journey maps or whatever you can iterate your ideas show and get your thoughts or thoughts of your client and really get going with this ideation and prototyping tool.

Okay, so I really love it. It is one of the best for ideation and creating getting thoughts of your clients mind and see what is going on in your clients head. Okay, now the third one I'm going to discuss is again, one of the best basecamp.com and it is also a project management or collaboration tool, and I think I should give it a go 100% It is one of the best. It's the user experience, even onboarding experience was great. You can talk to your clients and talk to a team you can have both. You can see both over here.

Right now this is my dummy project. If I change to other projects, it will be something else. So I haven't added anyone other than me. So it is mama Destin from here. Now chemistry fire is basically chat over here then they have messageboards discussion on topics to rules or activities. Okay, so automatic check ins what we have done today or whatever is going on.

This is my schedule. And documents and files I have uploaded with all my to dues and tasks are going to be over here. Okay. So if I click over here, you can see it is showing me that create a new list. So this is very nice. My project name is over here.

And this is I think, for a client clients name so I think that this one is And this one are better than this Trello Okay, so Basecamp and Asana are really great. Also this real time board is great for ideation and sharing your ideas or getting ideas from your clients and or his organization. Okay, now Trello is also very popular but the main problem I see in it is that it shows you different boards, you can create different boards for each project like you can see over here I have created one project and I have added three cards over here. And you can see there are tasks in each card for me, I think even I'm, you know, using I have used this two times still, sometimes I feel it a very difficult task to you know, upload my files over here you can see in in this area, there is no signifier or affordance that it can upload your attach your file, okay, so if I click over here, then I can see that you can add comments and you can Attach your file.

And there are other things like add members labels, checklists, due date attachment, start timer okay? So all these things are you know hidden from me but you can see over here things are not hidden from me if I click any task you can see attachment and everything is clearly seen even the due date. Okay, so this is also one of the options if you want to go with it, you can go with it. You can see over here I've used it with one of my projects WordPress projects. And you can see my client she used to see the designs over here and she always she never commented on any of these. Okay, so she always sent me commands via email.

So I think she didn't figure out how to use this okay. So I will give it like 18% 80% marks it is not 100% good but not good enough. Okay. So it is not easier maybe for my clients to use it for One more new app that is coming is Dropbox paper. It is also a collaboration tool. I have not used it it is in beta right now.

And you can see they can post videos to tools, even coding code star skates you can see you can embed and a lot of new features but I haven't checked it out you can check it out if you want. But right now I don't think it is better than these Asana and this Basecamp or this one real time board. Okay one other which I have seen online a lot of time proof hub.com and for me, I have used it I have created my dummy account and you can see over here for me, there is no visual cue or heading that this thing, whatever this thing is doing or what are these zeros 01 I don't understand most of the things although it is seemingly Looking like this base camp, but for me, I think it's a bit difficult maybe for a very large teams, this is a good like it, can it have Gantt charts, calendars, notes, files, time discussions, overview, so a lot of options over here.

So it might be good for very large team but not for freelancers or small teams. Okay. Now the best tool I use a lot, even I use it daily in my work is this Ching, a lot of people don't know about it. So what I do first in first steps in my project that I let my client installing on their PC or Mac, and it's free, it is going to be like this and you can capture anything like that. Okay, so if I take a screenshot over here, and I can add arrows like change this heading or maybe some more is around few things like that. Something like this.

I can also change few colors. Okay, so this is really great you can pinpoint a lot of areas. So it is one of the best tool I use for my design reviews and when my clients have to change something or change the position of something, they will you know, just keep on adding or dragging things and this is you can see it also has highlighter. So this is one of the best tools, tell your client to install it. It can also capture video you can see over here if I want to take the video of this area, you can see it can capture video for five minutes. And you can see over here that the microphone is also coming iRig Mic HD.

So it is really nice. It can create five minutes short videos. If you want to send a video to your client, you can send video with it. And that's it and I think Let me just turn it off. Okay, so Okay, now moving on. Okay, so the other tool I use on daily basis is Dropbox, I think you might you people might be using it.

So what I do is I share larger files with clients on Dropbox and I named the files with the date at the end append the date and also I have created different let me show you I have created different folders of my clients. Let me show you. Okay, so public and you can see over here clients, different client names and then there are different videos or sometimes they are different zip files containing all the HTML or WordPress themes. This is how I normally work. Okay, now the other thing you can use in similar way is Google Drive. It has more space 15 GB free.

And over here I think I had like three GB maybe Max. So this is one other, it can have a lot of other things like Google Docs, Sheets, slides, a lot of other things. Okay. Now the new tool that is coming in market and very popular is this slack. It is also a collaboration tool or you can say, team management tool and a lot of people are using it, I still don't use it. I don't know maybe, but it's very popular.

You can check this out also. Okay. Now for designers. There is one more tool, which is good for prototyping, basic prototyping. You can see over here, this is my prototype. And if I click over here, let me show you full view.

If I click over here, you can see it changes. Then if I need to open my navigation, it shows me the navigation. Okay, so if I click OK, and then it is, it works like that. Okay. So in this view, my client can You know, give me commands over here like this section in this section is going to be like that. Okay, so this is basically command mode.

So I can comment over here on this area that this is remove this or add this and something like that. Okay, so this is one other you can live share it, it is basically envision app. I think I forgot to tell you it's envision app. And I am going to get out of this full view, envision app.com and it is very popular, very basic, very nice. Okay. And it's free account, I'm using it free account.

And then this one, I used it for some time, it is also very good, just like this one, but it is more towards the just static images. And they are you can say their collaboration and commenting and feedback. Okay, so I tried it for some time, but now it's not free, maybe just for trial days. And it doesn't have any free account. It is basically called Red pen.io. Okay, so envision app red pen, Slack, Google Drive, or Dropbox.

You can use any of these for larger file sharing. Okay. This is great. I think it is TechSmith Jing is better than this red pen. So I think ditch this red pen and use instead this Jing and also this proof proof of if you have a very large team or very large organization, you can use this one otherwise, I think I don't recommend using this one. Trello is good, but not the best Basecamp and real time board Asana, these are the top awesome apps I have seen.

Okay, so this is all about this lecture. I don't want it to be lengthier than 20 minutes. I think I have already explored a lot of apps for you guys. And if you have any app in your mind or You need help with any of this, let me know. Okay, so the must have apps should be this Jing, Dropbox and Asana maybe I think these are best apps among all these and this one too, okay. Basecamp.

So let's meet in another lecture of mine and let's move on to the next lesson.