5 Tips for Remote Collaboration Using Trimble Connect

Even before the recent work disruptions related to Coronavirus, the number of employees working remotely has been on the rise. Furthermore, the need to quickly access data for fast, efficient team collaboration has become increasingly important.

In the construction industry, this is especially true. Stakeholders across all phases of construction have deadlines and budget requirements that must be kept into consideration for successful project delivery. From the office to the factory to the field and back again - project data must flow from one point to another, wherever and whenever it's needed. So how do you ensure that you are leveraging the most efficient workflows to optimize your output, regardless of your physical location? Using a collaboration tool, like Trimble Connect, you can vastly improve your project outcomes and allow everyone on the project to see the bigger picture, right down to the tiniest detail.

Here are five tips for collaborating remotely using Trimble Connect:

1. Leverage Views and ToDos to assign and track tasks.

2. Ever wish you could show someone exactly what you mean? Normally you’d ask your colleague to come over to your desk to take a look at your screen, but now you need an alternative. That's why we made Views. Easily share a specific View with stakeholders to visually communicate a detail or change. Keep the project moving forward by assigning ToDo's within a given View.

2. Utilize the Activity Feed to proactively monitor your project.

   • Need a way to effectively communicate the progress of your project without the ability to meet with colleagues in person? The Activity Feed serves as the digital pulse of your project. You can easily sort by a specific user, user group, date range, file type, and more so that you and your team can follow along every step of the way.

3. Configure Notifications and stay up-to-date on the latest developments.

   • Perhaps you’re interested in staying up-to-date on the activity of a particular person or project phase. With Trimble Connect you can easily configure notifications that will instantly update you based on a selected activity type. For less frequent notifications, you could even opt for a digest, which provides an overview of recent activities on a daily basis. 

4. Take advantage of Versioning and Security Settings

5. When working in a collaborative design environment, you’re likely to have multiple disciplines and team members working on a variety of files at the same time. With versioning, you can easily identify which file versions are being used. For additional project controls, you can even implement Security Settings and manage permissions of specific users or user groups, so that the right people have access to the right data. Using Trimble Connect is secure without the use of a VPN, unlike many office applications - so your team can collaborate with confidence, knowing that your data is secure.

5. Keep your project files synchronized by installing the Sync Tool.

6. At any given time, you may be working on multiple projects containing a variety of files. With the Sync Tool, you can easily configure your project files to synchronize to and from Trimble Connect. The Sync Tool is an application that installs onto your computer and allows bidirectional synchronization between your local repository and our server repository. No need to manually upload and download files, the Sync Tool will do it for you!