Using communication tools side by side at work

After reading slides of second lecture i started to think about my communication needs, habits and tools used during typical work day.

I think email is without doubt the most important communication tool for me. That's first option communicating with clients. It is advantage that it can be accessible with mobile phone. i'm trying to limit checking the email to couple times a day, but tend to look it always when message arrives. I usually avoid telling negative things or something not negotiable with email. In These cases i prefer old fashioned phone conversation.

Instant messaging has quite much replaced email in communication between colleagues. However, everybody are not reachable with IM, and sometimes sessions tend to turn longer than excepted and switch to phone conversation is needed. For some reason i prefer email for file exchanges, even if it is highly inefficient way to share files and it's also possible with IM.

Our Team is placed at same location, except one person. The solution for Weekly meeting is cell phone placed on the table of the meeting room and set to speaker mode. Simple and efficient.

Occasional need is to arrange group calls with multiple participant in several location. It seems that for this purpose it is usually easiest to use the Skype than struggle with settings of varying phone systems. However struggling with call codes and password is sometimes unavoidable.

The situation gets more problematic when conference with multiple participant and shared screen is required. There is quite functional tools to share screen, but i don't know any which could support simultaneus audio reasonably well. Solution is to share screen and use Skype or other phone confrerencing side by side. Works, but it's bit hassle.

There is also bunch of highly useful tools i have used used in studies and free time like Google docs, Google Code and some interesting microblog based communication tools like flowdock and presently, However, for me these are not option at work. The reason is that it is not allowed to save confidential data or documents to public services. i think occasional Skype phoning is only exception, as also im is encrypted and works inside company network.

What else.. i remember that i have once sent a fax with dedicated fax machine...