While I was still based in Bethesda I suggested to my team members that we start using an IM program to communicate. I made this suggestion after looking through my deleted mail folder in Outlook and noticing that many of the emails were one line responses to one line questions. How much time could we save if we didn’t have to open Outlook, open a new message, type in the name, type in a subject, ask the question, and wait for a response? Three of our team members installed AOL IM and have been using it for a few months now. We chose AOL because it was supported by our IT department and most of us already had screennames.
Long story short, it has been pretty helpful. My only complaint is that AOL does not log chats by default, so if you close the chat window, the chat is lost. Other than that, I think it’s been a great tool that we generally use for work related stuff only.
Since we installed the software one other department has started using AIM and it seems to be very useful. Now that I am a home-based employee, the chat is even more important.
I noticed two articles today related to using IM at work. The first, from MakeUseOf.com, focuses on a service called imified and it’s applications in the workplace. The second, from LifeHacker is a more general approach to being productive while using IM.
