What technologies and tools do you use to telecommute?

Question

For personal reasons I may need to relocate in the near future and I am considering telecommuting for my current employer. This would be telecommuting in its truest sense as I would be over 1000 miles (over 1600 km) away from my current desk. I have read through a few other questions on the topic of telecommuting on StackOverflow but none of them really addresses the tools one might use to stay in contact with one's team, or tools to stay productive from home. A few ideas that have crossed my mind are:

• Video conferencing?
• VOIP?
• Virtual white board?
• Instant messaging - we all use different brands at work
• Shared desktop
• Other "virtual meeting" solutions

If I do need to relocate I would like to bring a solution to my employer that imposes as few restrictions as possible on our current development work flow. I envision saying something like, "I can work remotely using X tools to stay in contact." So my question is, what technologies and tools do you use to telecommute? I would appreciate any specific examples of software packages, hardware, and stories of how you use them.

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Edit: A couple of more points for my specific situation:

• .Net shop (Vista, XP, Win2k3 and Win2k8 Server)
• We have OpenVPN - I use it all the time at night and the occasional day that I work from home.
• RDP installed on my work desktop.
• I currently use Pidgin to communicate with coworkers on different messenger networks.

Answer 1

Instant Messenger (Trillian typically so that I can use all clients at once) GoToMeeting for conferencing (happens to be what the company use) VPN Client to connect to office network

Answer 2

Bare minimals I have are:

• Company Cell Phone: This is used when off-hours or attending a conference call when I am home.
• VPN: For being able to connect to work
• RDP: If you have a company laptop, you should be fine. But sometimes you may need your own computer to RDP into work.
• GoTo Meeting or Live Meeting: Used to share your desktop with other people remotely. Or for you to view theirs.
• Instant Messaging: We use Skype so we can chat AND call each other for free

Answer 3

I use pidgin for im - I work with plenty of people external to the team, which at the beginning all have disparate im, with pidgin I get to be in contact any of them.

Skype for voice.

I use a private one for shared desktop, but you can use something like www.mikogo.com.

If you need to share a quick screen-shot or small video of steps, you can use Jing. Being recorded, anyone can re-run steps :)

Ps. I always work remotely

Answer 4

I work as a consultant for a small software company, and my employer encourages telecommuting. We also have regular normal meetings however. My country is small, so nobody lives over about 150 miles from the office.

Depending on the client I do work for, I use OpenSSH and some SSH tunnels to connect their systems to my home server, so I can work on theirs via the SSH tunnel. I do development work, mainly on unix, so an SSH tunnel is all I need. To connect to the office I use a VPN connection.

The technical part is not so much a challenge. It's staying in touch and attending (virtual) meetings that's difficult. Being able to skype with colleagues may be a good first step...

Answer 5

VOIP/VIDEO/: I pretty much use Skype for everything phone/ video conferencing related because its the most practical solution for me, especially when I work with international clients. It is by far the most well known. Its free. And if you have to dial landlines, its very minimally priced.

Desktop sharing/Whiteboard :If you want to you use Skype as a one stop solution (which I prefer to do) Oneeko is a great solution for desktop sharing. Another plugin,TalkAndWrite covers the whiteboard part very well. I use these plugins with clients I work with more regularly.

VPN: A must as far as I am concerned

Whiteboard standalone: For a standalone, simple solution, I really like Skrbl.

Answer 6

I've been using Skype. It has video conferencing, voice conferencing, text conferencing. It even has whiteboard in extras.

VPN -- that depends if you have some important servers behind NAT. If not, and you've got fixed IP, firewall rules might be enough.

Answer 7

We use MSN messenger for chat, good ole POTS for chatting and conf calls, VPN + RDP for remote access to boxes, and we use Exchange webmail to check our mail externally (if we havn't vpn/rdp'ed into our boxes)

Answer 8

• Oovoo for Video conf's as this will do point to multipoint video confs unlike skype and msn
• When communicating with individual people skype as this is better quality than oovoo
• Microsoft SharedView for sharing desktop/application views with the other users
• Company Mobile Phone for worst case (i.e. no web connectivity)
• VPN
• RDP

Answer 9

Skype for voice talk and Adobe Brio for desk sharing. Mostly, though, it's just email conversation; we only refer to Skype/Brio when we have some problems that require low latency in talk.