Best digital workplace products: our top picks

There’s little doubt that digital workplace products are a must for today’s employers. Between accommodating remote and hybrid work schedules and breaking down information silos, online workplace apps can have a big impact. Yet, some solutions are better for closing specific gaps than others.

For instance, a digital workspace tool that improves communication may fail to make a dent in your company’s project management woes. Plus, the sheer number of options can muddle the waters once you start looking at all the features.

Below we’ll break down the best digital workplace products for communication, productivity, and meeting, document, project, and people management categories. After reading this article, you will have a better idea of what type of solutions may be perfect for your unique situation.

Communication

Working with others and moving milestones along requires good communication. On the other hand, poor communication can lead to unpredictability and missed deadlines. That said, when cooperation must happen between onsite and remote employees, communication may be a challenge. Even teams that work in the same office can become disjointed without the right tools for quick communication.

AgilityPortal – all-in-one remote collaboration tools

Features/services	Employee surveys, onboarding, internal communications, recognition, and social networking
Resources	Expense reports, recruitment tools, timesheet tracking, leave requests, alerts for employee milestones and requests, customized onboarding experiences
Free version	Free trial, then customized monthly pricing

Visit AgilityPortal

AgilityPortal is built for organizations with remote teams. Whether you need to onboard a group of new hires or recognize your top performers, AgilityPortal has it all. Streamline internal communications while building a remote-first culture and getting a pulse on employee sentiment.

There are a lot of features to like since this digital workspace emphasizes work, people, and information. You can also customize and scale plans as you grow. Options exist for small groups, medium-sized businesses, large organizations, and multinational enterprises.

AgilityPortal can schedule a free demo and offers a free trial so you can try it before you buy. Even the smallest plan comes with hefty resources like FAQs, news, and chat channels. Set up teams and discussion boards within minutes.

Tauria: next-gen video conferencing

Features/services	Encrypted video calls from any device
Resources	Virtual backgrounds, emoji reactions, recording, group playbacks, Google Calendar integration
Free version	Free starter plan, pro plan billed at $9.99 a month

Visit Tauria

There are times when your teams need to meet, but they’re not all in the same room or location. Sometimes emails and instant messages won’t cut it, and real-time collaboration is the way to go. Tauria provides cloud-based video conferencing software to help your employees work through new ideas and overcome obstacles to project completion.

But Tauria takes an extra step by encrypting those conversations so others can’t listen in or access your data. Go ahead and discuss trade secrets or other intellectual property. No one but you and your team will know.

The best part is you can get Tauria for free and upgrade to the pro plan whenever you want.

Mercury – a secured communications app for file sharing, calls, and messages

Features/services	Encrypted file sharing, video conferencing, and instant messages
Resources	Multifactor authentication, device restriction tools, cloud-based portal, rich-text editor
Free version	Free demo, then $20 a seat per month or $18 a month with annual billing

Visit Mercury

Mercury is an integrated communications workspace that combines secured file sharing, video conferencing, and instant messaging capabilities. Some unique features include the ability to restrict devices per group, messaging layer security, and asynchronous ratcheting tree encryption.

All your calls, messages, and files will stay air-tight as your team collaborates asynchronously or in real-time. Mercury is built for teams in industries where data encryption and information security are top of mind. Examples include healthcare, public safety, and financial services.

Mercury has three plans, such as Mercury Workspace for smaller organizations. The other two tiers are well-designed for larger public safety agencies and international enterprises.

Productivity

When it’s time to get things done, productive workplaces can keep employees on task. Digital productivity apps can track time spent on assignments and disable social media sites while the team should be working. But before you select a productivity workspace, you must know what features they have so you can align them with your goals and needs.

Scrintal – organize thoughts, writings, and ideas

Features/services	Create, organize, and connect ideas
Resources	Digital note-taking, tags for making connections between documents and outlines, visually arrange notes, make real-time or asynchronous suggestions for improvements
Free version	Free personal plan, paid plan available at $60 per year

Visit Scrintal

You can think of Scrintal as digital sticky notes on steroids. This web app lets you and your employees map out thoughts, ideas, and works in process. So, each team member can show where their individual research is going and what creative directions they’re thinking about.

But even more importantly, Scrintal has the features to help your team organize those separate ideas. See which pieces fit together, determine which directions need to change, and tweak the concepts that aren’t quite complete.

Scrintal is still assembling a waitlist for its free and paid plans. The company anticipates an official launch soon.

Mindmesh – streamline your outstanding to-do lists and meetings

Features/services	Centralize meeting requests, assignments, and notes for each workday
Resources	Integrations with other popular tools, such as Slack, Google Drive, and Asana
Free version	Free plan for individuals and small teams, $8 a month per user for larger groups

Visit Mindmesh

Mindmesh is the perfect digital workspace app for teams that need to stay organized. It can get confusing when you’re working on several projects, meetings, and assignments for various contacts. Mindmesh helps teams sync all requests so they don’t get lost or forgotten.

This app integrates with other programs like Google Drive and Gmail. Your employees can also keep track of notes, updates, and to-do lists within Mindmesh. They’ll know what they need to prioritize each day and when it might be best to skip specific meetings.

Mindmesh has a forever free plan for individuals and small teams. You can always upgrade to the paid plan if your group is larger or if you’ve recently added more team members.

GRID – organize, explain, and present spreadsheet data

Features/services	Share and present spreadsheet data from multiple sources or files
Resources	Slack integrations, unlimited documents, unlimited sharing, group conversations
Free version	Free essentials plan, $29 a month for the professional plan with annual billing

Visit GRID

GRID is the next generation data tool for modern teams who need a faster, friendlier way to collaborate on numbers & data. With best-in-class hybrid documents combining numbers and calculations, text-based narrative, collaboration features and presentation capabilities, GRID empowers teams to explore and leverage the most important insights, fast.

Build visualizations with dynamic interactivity and narrative using any spreadsheet data or a database from Notion or Airtable, while keeping underlying data private. Interactive elements like sliders, input fields, and buttons let viewers actively explore any range of outcomes and gain a deeper understanding of the data, without risking accidental edits to original calculations. Collaboration with GRID is easy and 100% mobile optimized.

GRID’s flexibility makes it easy to build anything from interactive business models and revenue forecasts to beautiful marketing reports and projections, and even sales tools like price quotes and commission calculators.

Magical – automates repetitive tasks and workflows

Features/services	Complete tasks that work with repetitive text and data entry, including messages and spreadsheets
Resources	One-click automation for data entry and data expansion
Free version	Free web browser extension

Visit Magical

Magical is a free browser extension you can add to Chrome or Edge. It helps speed up tasks you do over and over again, such as writing messages to job seekers or emails to coworkers.

Say you send out recruiting emails to potentially promising candidates each week. Magical can take basic info from their LinkedIn profiles and expand that text into engaging emails encouraging them to apply. This productivity tool also works with applicant tracking systems and other programs that sales, recruiting, and customer service staff work with daily.

Since the browser extension is free, there isn’t a plan to buy. You can download and add the extension to get started.

Meeting management

Who hasn’t been in an unproductive meeting? Maybe the discussion veered way off track. Or, you didn’t really need to be there and didn’t have much to contribute. Meeting management workspaces make meetings more productive through organization, agendas, and action item assignments. No one should schedule meetings without these tools!

WorkstyleOS – workplace management for hybrid teams

Features/services	Manage office and meeting space allocation from one centralized platform
Resources	Visitor management, meeting room management, remote work check-ins, and hot-desking
Free version	Free one-month trial, then customized pricing

Visit WorkstyleOS

As more teams become hybrid, there’s a greater need to manage office and meeting space. Where you had desks for each team before, now you have fewer spots to save costs and make more efficient use of the space. However, hybrid teams need to reserve meeting rooms and desks when they’re in the office.

That’s where WorkstyleOS comes in, letting employees reserve conference rooms for meetings and desks when they’ll be onsite. Plus, WorkstyleOS handles visitor and remote worker check-ins, so you know who’s coming in and who’s not.

You can try WorkstyleOS for one month at no cost. After that, pricing varies based on the features you want and choose.

Adam.ai – an all-in-one meeting platform

Features/services	Integrated tools to schedule, manage, and record in-person, virtual, and hybrid meetings
Resources	Create and distribute agendas, record attendee names, make collaborative decisions, share files, record meetings, track action items, create and share minutes and notes
Free version	Free plan for individuals, then teams pay $4.99+ per user each month

Visit Adam

Adam.ai is a comprehensive solution for managing meetings and the content that shapes them. Organizers can create and share agendas to keep all attendees on track and steer discussions in the right direction. Besides sharing agendas, you can make decisions together and share files with remote attendees.

Additional features include setting up action items and tracking them through completion. For those who need reminders or can’t attend, there are minutes and notes that adam.ai lets you share.

Individuals can use this digital workspace for free for an unlimited time. You can use the free plan to check out the app’s features or schedule a demo with your team. Group plans start at $4.99 a month per user and go up from there.

Document management

Tracking down a bunch of files through email can be more than a pain. It’s a waste of time and can put a damper on your team’s productivity. Try a document management solution instead!

Kaagaz – scan, edit, manage, and store documents in one simple platform

Features/services	Scan, edit, organize, and store documents in the cloud from mobile devices or a PC
Resources	Auto edge detection, PDF editing tools, image enhancement, PDF readers, cloud storage and file management
Free version	Free for all users and platforms

Visit Kaagaz

Kaagaz’s value doesn’t get better than free. You can install this digital workspace on mobile devices or a traditional PC. It helps teams scan documents and make corrections to them. In addition, employees can create file structures for better organization, and documents don’t have to take up internal memory or hard drive space.

Besides standard PDF readers and editors, Kaagaz brings image enhancement and auto edge detection features to the table. This program is an all-in-one solution for digitizing paper documents at risk of getting lost or misplaced.

Kaagaz is free whether you install it on one smartphone or multiple mobile devices and PCs.

Project management

Projects often fail when there’s a lack of planning or coordination. But these strategic moves can be challenging to pull off with hybrid and remote teams. As a result, project management tools and solutions aren’t an option. They’re something every group needs to meet objectives and milestones.

Blue – making teamwork simple

Features/services	Manage projects and to-do lists in one simple app
Resources	Project and board views, calendars, notifications, activity feeds, lists, custom fields, file export and import features, forms, mentions for streamlined communications
Free version	Free trial, then $50 a month or $500 a year

Visit Blue

Blue is an intuitive project management solution that organizes each task associated with a project. You can create and assign tasks under various projects to different team members while getting an overview of who has what on their plate.

Additional features like maps help integrate geo-location data and give visual context to moving pieces like video and location shoots. Employees can also ping each other with mentions if they have questions, need to hand off assignments, or want to engage in further discussion.

Teams can try out Blue for free to see if it meets their needs. Then, you can choose monthly or annual billing.

People management

It’s not a secret that managing people is tough. That’s why there are tools and platforms to help organize the details so leaders can focus on the human elements of the job. People management solutions help improve time management, workloads, and talent development.

Soon – time and assignment management for teams

Features/services	Collaborative scheduling for work teams
Resources	Daily action plans, time off or vacation tracking, due dates for assignments, timeline views
Free version	Free for 30 days, then custom monthly or annual pricing staring at 8 Euros per user per month

Visit Soon

Soon is best for streamlining time management across teams. You can put in approved time off requests so employees know when a backup’s going to be out of the office or limits are at capacity. Say a department or manager caps the number of employees that can be out of the office at two per day. If there are already two team members out that day, others will know not to put in requests.

As a digital workspace, Soon is also good for managing daily tasks and priorities. Each person will know when something’s due and better anticipate how long they have for assignments.

You can try Soon free for a month and then move to a monthly or annual plan.

uKnowva - for talent acquisition, engagement, and retention

Features/services	Manage employee HR documentation and talent development goals and progress internally or via an on-the-go platform
Resources	HR and payroll management tools, employee communication features, talent development and management
Free version	Free trial, then subscription, one-time, and on-premise plans with customized pricing

Visit uKnowa

The uKnowva HRMS provides a holistic HRMS to systematically hire, manage, develop, and engage employees. It has every advanced feature like E-recruitment, employee management & collaborations, dashboard and analytics, automated payroll & appraisal management, and more which can be fully customized according to the business needs. The performance management module of uKnowva automates processes and enables teams to collect data easily on employee performance.

Moreover, uKnowva HRMS takes the approach of continual education to improve retention. Employees can always benefit from better training and development, and they see it as a catalyst for growth. Another significant aspect of uKnowva HRMS software is that it comes with an all-inclusive feedback system that assists HRs to realize the factors causing and resulting in employee disappointment and discontentment. The system also helps organizations in determining the employees planning to quit soon.

You can take advantage of uKowva’s free trial to see how it can improve employee engagement and retention. From there, you’ll speak with a rep to customize your plan and pricing.

Best digital workplace products: final recommendations

Selecting the best digital workplace tool for your team depends on what the group needs to work on the most. It could be communication, productivity, or document management. No matter what you want to improve, there’s probably a digital workplace app for it.

Here’s a recap of the solutions we discussed above.

1. AgilityPortal – complete collaboration tools for remote teams.
2. Tauria – secure video conferencing.
3. Mercury - advanced encryption for remote and virtual communication.
4. Scrintal – visual organization for research and brainstorming ideas.
5. Mindmesh – centralization for to-do lists and meetings.
6. Grid – spreadsheet organization and collaboration.
7. Magical – automate repetitive communication tasks and workflows.
8. WorkstyleOS – manage meeting and work spaces in hybrid teams.
9. Adam.ai – all-in-one virtual and hybrid meeting management.
10. Kaagaz – manage and organize documents from anywhere.
11. Blue – simple and intuitive project management.
12. Soon – time management for teams.
13. uKnowva – enables talent acquisition and retention strategies.