Working from Home: Your Guide to Collaborating in Quip
Marissa Bowman is a Senior Manager in Quip's Customer Success Group.
As teams around the world are facing a sudden shift to a remote work culture, those moments of teamwork we take for granted, from manager 1-on-1s to quick team huddles, won’t come so easily anymore. That doesn’t mean that collaboration across teams needs to stop — but it does take a little more effort, some new processes, and a culture of trust and flexibility. We hope that some of the ways we use Quip will help other teams keep momentum and continue collaborating in new ways. This guide intends to inform and inspire you about Quip best practices in order to give you the confidence to work from home without skipping a beat.
Create a Quip doc for each major project
Rally your team members around one Quip document for each major initiative. Leverage this Project Tracker to get started. The Project Tracker Live App allows you to focus on the critical path and to define clear ownership across the team. @mention additional documents to extend out to more detailed Quip documents as you see fit.
Get your task list in order
We’ve all been there: You have four different task lists across various tools and devices. In order to be most effective at work, whether you are remote or not, tasks need to be organized and crisp. As you prepare your workload and your team, use Quip tasks to get your most important action items in one place. Keep the task list up to date so that you begin to trust it to lead you to productivity.
Turn on Focus Mode
Focus Mode will clear your Quip sidebars, notifications, and chats, allowing you to concentrate on the document you’re working in (either in Quip’s browser version or desktop app). Once you trust that your task list is comprehensive, close out as many browser tabs as possible to avoid distractions and jumping around.
When you’ve completed your task or are done collaborating on a document, close out Focus Mode with one click on the double arrows.
In lieu of a long email
To make a major update or to communicate a launch date delay, we tend to fall back on email as a primary communication channel. The problem is that email is not easily searchable and the back-and-forth and reply-alls slow down clear decision making and true collaboration. As you rethink how you approach work, consider creating a Quip document with the same content that you would convey in an email. As always, make sure the right people are included and your call to action is clear. Instead of “Send,” click “Share” and invite folks to chime in and make edits if appropriate. You’ll be amazed at how much more fluid yet efficient and effective this approach can be.
New hire starting? No sweat
If a new hire is joining your team this month, we suggest you clearly lay out onboarding in a standardized template that your Human Resources team and hiring managers are bought in on. Creating the onboarding document will help you clarify the most important topics for your new colleague to cover in the first 30 days. Most importantly, your new team member will enjoy having a central hub to collaborate on their progress. Check out this template to get started.
We hope these tips can give teams everywhere a jumpstart to collaborating in a new way, even if you’re not sitting side by side.
Learn how your team can collaborate from anywhere with Quip. Take an interactive guided tour.