Tips for remote work: Have you got the "hardcore" functions of WeChat for Business?

At the beginning of 2020, an unexpected epidemic finally made people feel the confinement of the concubines in "The Legend of Zhen Huan". During the agonizing wait, the repeatedly delayed resumption of work dates also forced many companies to transition from offline office to online office, and then to remote office. First, working from home can protect employees and reduce the risk of cross-infection. Second, it allows employees scattered across the country due to the epidemic to break through the limitations of distance and location and quickly and easily enter the working state through remote connection.

However, the result is not as perfect as imagined. For many people, remote work is not fast. From clocking in and out, reporting health data, to discussing project plans, you will find that things that can be done in a few minutes in the office will take several times longer to complete online.

Are you complaining about why efficient communication is so difficult? On the one hand, there is epidemic prevention and control, and on the other hand, there is resumption of work and production. How to have both? Many companies have chosen the remote office collaboration mode, among which WeChat for Enterprise has also become one of the popular software.

Undoubtedly, the issues that everyone is most concerned about are how good the remote conferencing system of WeChat for Enterprise is, whether it can be used for daily attendance supervision, whether it can quickly start a project management, and whether it is simple and easy to use without any obstacles.

With these questions in mind, we used WeChat for Business for a week and focused as much as possible on its actual performance in remote office collaboration, hoping to provide reference value for companies that are looking for or want to change their remote office software.

• Advantages: The platform is wide and full-featured, and the communication experience is consistent with WeChat
• Disadvantages: Some functions and permission management are limited
• Comment: Finally separated work and life

The "hard core" functions of WeChat for Business

An important reason why enterprise WeChat is accepted by the public is that it inherits personal WeChat, but is above personal WeChat and achieves the perfect separation of work and life.

Like personal WeChat, enterprise WeChat covers multiple operating systems including Windows desktop, Mac desktop, iOS, Android, etc.

When you log in to WeChat Work for the first time, the login interface will ask you to enter your work/personal email address and add your corporate identity.

During the test, we have built the "ZhiDing" enterprise work group and the corresponding organizational structure to facilitate system management.

>>>Cheat 1: Read Receipts

First, let’s look at the chat interface. It is almost the same as personal WeChat, but if you look closely, you will find that in the communication process, corporate WeChat has a very good feedback: a receipt prompt is added to the sent messages, and the sent messages can check the read and unread status of the other party, which better improves the communication work efficiency.

Currently, corporate WeChat and personal WeChat are connected. Users can also view messages from corporate WeChat in real time on the personal WeChat interface, thus avoiding the possibility of not reading messages in time due to not opening corporate WeChat.

In addition, you can also chat on corporate WeChat on the personal WeChat interface, but you cannot read personal WeChat content on the corporate WeChat interface. It can be said that corporate WeChat is work, and personal WeChat can be life, or it can be a subset of work + life, effectively dividing work and life.

>>> Tip 2: Online meeting with 300 people

Enterprise WeChat also supports video/audio conferencing. When you select a meeting on the workbench page, a request to schedule a meeting/initiate a meeting will pop up.

It can be clearly seen that during the epidemic, Enterprise WeChat also increased the number of participants to 300 people at the same time and provided management functions for the host.

In actual tests, in a voice conference, the microphone only supports 9 people turning on at the same time. More than that number will not be able to use the microphone. This is not a big problem in small meetings, but if there is a medium or large meeting with more than 50 people, only 9 people will be limited to use the microphone, affecting the meeting experience.

The biggest difference from personal WeChat is that enterprise WeChat supports participants to present documents or computer screens (when logged in on PC) while speaking, and supports real-time annotation of presentation content.

The content of the document presentation can be the collection/micro-disk documents, where the micro-disk is a shared space for unified storage of the enterprise. File modifications are synchronized in real time, making it convenient for employees to access at any time.

>>> Tip 3: Efficient remote document collaboration

Although WeChat for Business is a social platform mainly for communication, its embedded document system supports online collaborative editing by multiple people, making it a lightweight and concise online collaborative document tool.

First, share the document with colleagues. You can then set permissions for editable members. If members open the document and make comments and edits, the document will be automatically saved. This mode is very suitable for collaborative office work, allowing you to easily complete collaborative writing, project discussions, meeting minutes, and data sharing with others.

However, in actual testing, the document content only shows the latest modification results. The specific content of the member's modification cannot be seen on the mobile phone. The process leaves no trace and cannot be traced.

>>>Cheat 4: Start a group live broadcast in a group chat

In addition, WeChat for Business also integrates the live video function. Unlike video conferencing, users can initiate a live broadcast in a group chat and conduct online live broadcasts. This method is suitable for cross-departmental collaboration, notification delivery, online training, etc., and can be watched online through live broadcasts to avoid offline gatherings.

>>>Tips 5: Punch Card & Attendance Record

I believe this is a feature that most companies are concerned about during the epidemic. The first time you use the clock-in function, you need to enable it in the background. Since our administrator did not enable this function in the background, the corporate WeChat clock-in function has not been tested yet.

However, according to the official introduction of WeChat for Enterprise, after the company has activated it, as long as they clock in on their mobile phones or bound smart attendance machines, the background will automatically generate attendance reports for managers to view. It can support fixed work and off-get off work times, flexible scheduling, free get off work and off-work, and clocking in and out, meeting the company's diverse attendance needs.

User experience: Similar to personal WeChat, many features to be discovered

Regarding social interaction, for most Chinese people who use smartphones, WeChat has almost become an unavoidable super app. However, the problem that comes with it is that the wider the social relationships, the more you cannot separate work and life. Therefore, WeChat for Business comes to solve this problem personally.

Just like the functions we experienced in this evaluation, Enterprise WeChat is more inclined to be an enterprise To B application, which optimizes certain work communication modes and facilitates enterprise management.

In addition to efficient communication, read receipts, video conferencing, and document collaboration, WeChat for Business also has many other functions applicable to enterprise management, such as approval. Customized approval templates can be added, and approval methods such as joint signature, joint signature, superior approval, and conditional approval can be supported, helping enterprises customize standardized and efficient approval processes. For example, employees report their work progress through daily, weekly, and monthly reports, and managers can conveniently view them on their mobile phones.

Even if the above basic functions cannot meet the needs of the enterprise, WeChat for Business can also meet more office needs by hosting third-party applications, such as WeChat for Business Cloud Office, Teambition, TAPD, etc. These third-party applications can help enterprises achieve OA office, team assistance, customer management, personnel management, etc.

Just as the product logic of Tencent WeChat is, use enterprise WeChat to manage work and leave WeChat for life.