Create a digital office: solutions for each use VDI (virtual office infrastructure)

With the obligation of teleworking at the rate of 3 days a week, the beginning of 2022 confirmed the sustainable establishment of this mode of collaboration in the landscape of French companies.A major transition and new uses made possible by new technologies, which make it possible to develop a "digital workplace" (digital office) for any type of structure.Overview of digital solutions available to companies.

Opinion barometers testify to this: remote work is acclaimed by many employees: they would be 8 out of 10 to wish the card to the map (Opinionway survey, May 2021).New uses put in place on a large scale, first forced march and in a crisis situation, and which must therefore now be perpetuated.Easy by digital transition, teleworking requires specific technological tools to allow employees to remain connected and productive from their home.

Needs

Quickly communicate internally and outside.

Communication must remain fluid, practical and efficient: professional email, instant messaging and corporate telephony must be adapted to distant.

Meet

Even virtual, it is imperative to be able to meet and therefore see yourself, as a team or in one-to-one.The solution chosen must include an audio/video pole.

Exchange files

Employees must be able to share documents and intervene with several, which allows storage in the cloud.

Plan tasks

An appropriate project management tool is necessary for the proper conduct of activities.

Beyond the equipment (all-in-one computers, compact and fast portables, screens, webcams, headphones and microphones) It is a complete technology that must be deployed, equipment whose quality will determine the performance of theremote organization.

While some international metropolises have started to equip the public space with telework cabins, most companies deploy internal solutions.

The platforms

Collaborative work platforms are online project management tools of which there are now many versions, free or paid depending on the performance and capacities desired.Trello, Slack, Asana, Toggl Plan, Team Smart or G Suite: these applications are now part of the vocabulary of many employees.

Rapid to install on any personal IT equipment and even on smartphone, they offer a solution accessible to all teams collaborating in distancing.

Thanks to an intuitive ergonomics, they present themselves as collective virtual workspaces including all the basic features: Retroplanning, task list, file sharing with edition, organization of the stages of a project, audio and video.

Their use can be supplemented by other simple and effective tools, such as videoconference services such as Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams.The features include screen sharing, instant messaging (cat), recording and backing up for exchanges, sometimes webinary options, and allow the organization of large -scale virtual meetings.A file transfer tool such as Wetransfer, and a secure storage tool such as Google Drive or Dropbox can also be useful and offer free service to a certain amount of data transmitted or stored.

Interactive digital tables (TBI)

Many teachers have known and using a TBI for several years, but its use is largely democratized in meeting rooms due to its many advantages.As part of telework, this tool can be particularly efficient in the context of meetings and brainstormings in Visio.

An interactive digital table is a large touch screen that allows you to interact with the displayed content, using a stylus or by touch.The device is connected to a computer, wired or wifi.The TBI therefore allows you to display all kinds of documents, presentations or interfaces but is not limited to a simple projection.This type of interactive support makes it possible to energize exchanges, to clarify the discourse by illustrating it live and in a lively way (annotations, diagrams, drawings, zooms, displacements of elements and copy and paste ...) and therefore to capture and maintainthe attention of participants.

Writing is fluid and latency time, on HD screen, and exchanges can be directly saved on a server in order to keep all the information by sparing the taking of notes.Most models are equipped to send emails.The TBI is installed in professional premises from which it is animated, it allows several connected speakers (up to ten) to interact remotely with the table, and to even visualize what takes place at thescreen via a computer or tablet.

We can add a videoconferencing camera, a device that films Full HD with a wide angle of view allowing all participants in face -to -face in the frame, and equipped, for some models, with integrated microphones.

Some companies choose to set up a larger working environment specifically designed to perform a large number of tasks from a distance: we are talking about virtual office infrastructure.

Concretely, everything is based on a server, or datacenter, which will host virtual machines to create virtual workstations.Employees access these remote positions via their terminal, whatever it is and wherever it is.They access the virtual work environment by connecting to a router.A single computer system manages and thus processes all data, files and work software stored on the host server, within a secure infrastructure.

Ease of access, employee mobility, flexibility, so many size assets in the current uncertainty of working conditions due to the health context.Depending on the needs and activities concerned, it will be possible to choose a non -permanent VDI, less expensive and allowing work on generic virtual positions, or a permanent VDI where posts can be personalized and used exactly in the same way asPersonal physical terminal by each user.

(Photo credit: ISTOCK)

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