The UC Recruit, and the Chancellor and Provost IT teams use various technologies and methods to facilitate communication, collaboration and team interactions between team members who are in different locations.
UC Recruit has daily team meetings in a physical team space they have created that leverages various technologies that allow them to review the status of their projects, and to include 1 team member who works remotely off campus.
- They have a team meeting room in MSTB with an oval table chairs and a couch where most of the team comes together for their daily meetings.
- Pics of UC Recruit Team Space
- They have a dedicated shared team computer connected to a large display with a wide-angle webcam (that has a full view of the meeting area) and quality external microphones on the meeting table.
- They use Zoom to share screen content and video/audio with their remote team member.
- All team members in the building are expected to participate in the meeting in-person to facilitate interpersonal team relationships and interactions.
- They use Trello to track and review the status of their project milestones and tasks.
- They use Slack extensively to facilitate team communication, collaboration, teamwork and to maintain open and constant communication between team members. They have different Slack channels for different audiences. Some for the whole team and some for specific team members who need to collaborate. They also use the IM feature in Slack for 1:1 chats. Slack has helped the team to address some of the challenges with communication breakdowns and team member isolation/exclusion that can inadvertently happen because team members are in private offices down the hall, in other buildings or off campus. Slack is their main communication and collaboration tool. They rarely use email for team communication and collaboration and information sharing. I'm not a Slack user so I can not elaborate on how it specifically works.
The Chancellor and Provost IT team has a similar team meeting space set up in a hallway in Science Library. Albert Chi is the manager of the team and he reports to Max Garrick. Max is able to participate in the daily team meetings remotely from his MSTB office using Zoom, Slack and Trello.
Albert shared his experience with telecommuting 1 day a week in a previous job. He believed it could work well, but ultimately his team was unsupportive. He thinks that a big part of their lack of support was that they thought it was unfair that Albert was able to telecommute but they were expected to be in the office. Albert had experimented with setting up webcams, microphones and Skype for an always-on remote presence where his team members could virtually drop into his office anytime. Albert thinks this type of setup could be effective for remote workers if team members were encouraged/expected by management to be supportive.
Being able to participate in a whiteboarding session with remote team members is a need. These teams have tried a couple of whiteboarding approaches that have not worked very well. They tried setting up a dedicated webcam that has a view of the whiteboard in the team room. It was cumbersome and the team did not use it much. It also only allowed people in the team room to write on the whiteboard and the remote team member could only view it. They also tried the Zoom whiteboarding function and it worked okay but not great because it is difficult to draw on the virtual whiteboard using a mouse. A tablet with an electronic pen might work better. I suggested trying the Zoom whiteboarding functionality that allows for the use of touchscreen computers to draw on the whiteboard.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205677665-How-Do-I-Use-Whiteboard-

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004797286-Using-the-Whiteboard-with-Zoom-Rooms-for-Touch

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004773103-Getting-Started-with-Zoom-Rooms-for-Touch

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