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Take control: must-have productivity apps from ConExpo

Oct. 24, 2018 – In the face of progressing technology, a phone full of confusing or only partially understood apps can seriously slow down productivity and overall workflow.

Tess Vismale of DAHLIA+ agency outlined several productivity apps recently through the CONEXPO-CON/AGG 365 initiative to help industry professionals keep their workdays on schedule.

Here are six mobile apps for taking control of workflow:

• Productive tops Vismale’s list as a brilliant tool for forming good habits and prompting the completion of tasks. By inputting desired tasks and goals, Productive reminds the user at convenient times of their habits, whether they be professional, personal or even medical.
• Slack combines the convenience of email with the flexibility of social media to create a powerful, all-in-one messaging service. Users can organize their conversations by project, department, or simply by individual, allowing for individuals to be easily added and dropped from different threads. Slack additionally provides a subscription service, in which one user can allow other users to ask common questions.
• MobileDay is a conference call app that combines a user’s schedule with call functionality, allowing them to connect to everyone in the call with one button. Additionally, MobileDay can send alerts for upcoming conference calls and allows users to notify other members of the call if they are running late.
• Outlook is an email app designed for efficiency on mobile phones; for example, a user can schedule the appearance and disappearance of emails in their inbox to allow them to focus on the most important ones when necessary. It also includes features that used to be limited to desktop computers, like integrating with Dropbox and Google Drive. 
• Unroll.me can organize an email inbox based upon a user’s subscriptions, sending updates on received emails either daily or weekly to cut down on distraction and wasted time. For example, a user could opt not to read their Instagram email until Friday at noon every week, to condense the amount of time spent.
• Evernote creates notes with a myriad of extra features, such as stylus compatibility, document scanning and an image search engine. This means that any scanned or photographed document can be searched by the text printed on it, effectively digitizing printed business cards and spreadsheets.

The sheer volume of available apps and their many functions can seem overwhelming, but tools such as these can help provide the edge and make the difference between a productive workweek and an exhausting one.