5 Must-Need Office Tools That Go Way Beyond Slack

A little inside baseball for you: InsideHook gave up our landline work phones last month.

Nobody noticed.

That’s because a lot of businesses today, like ours, really don’t need individual lines for each employee — most of our communication is conducted through an array of Slack, email and cell phone communications. (For the record, we do share a few dedicated lines between departments for the occasional call that can’t be completed via the above channels. #nowyouknow)

That said, everyone still needs tools to communicate and work efficiently in a 9-to-5 … er, 24-7 world. Below, five apps and systems that’ll help you navigate this brave new digital world.

Spoke Phone: Turns your employees’ cell phones into a system of business phones. Simplified to keep out extraneous features, the just-launched Spoke works on any network and won’t use up anyone’s personal data plans. The app also automatically builds a company directory and assigns extensions.

Slack Tools: Product Hunt’s most upvoted extensions for your office’s favorite messaging tool. Voice calls, Google Analytics, AI schedulers, to-do lists … all the hacks you need to make Slack even more useful.

Cassette: Your meetings just got easier. A recently updated and improved transcribing app with real-time speech-to-text transcription, one-tap bookmarks (differentiated by subject/color), multiple search options and annotated transcripts. Works well with pretty much any other service (Slack, Dropbox, etc.) that you already use. It’s free except for the $3/hour transcription service.

Bond: Send notes, cards and letters in your handwriting (via robotic tools) that’ll show off your personal touch (plus, a concierge service to help you add a gift to your note). You’ll want this around holiday time.

Leverage: Busy at the office? Instead of one virtual assistant, Leverage utilizes a team of Virtual Project Managers, each with their own unique skills, so you can unload projects faster and more efficiently. The platform was started by Ari Meisel, who’s a total guru on optimizing time management.