Lauren Nelson

Mural is a great tool, depending on exactly what you're looking for. It is a great real-time collaboration tool. It is compatible with most devices (most Androids), solid integrations with other office tools, good security, and relatively easy to use. For me, personally, it's just too disorganized to really love it or feel comfortable using it regularly. While they offer a great variety of templates, since you can only add sticky notes, text, or draw it just lacks necessary ...

Mural is Privacy Shield Framework certified, SO2 compliant, and GDPR compliant among other certifications. You can view Mural's entire security white page, here. Mural protects your data with 256 AE encryption, and received an A+ score on the Qualys SSL server test. 

Mural's privacy policy is pretty standard, a little less user friendly than others that I have seen. You can read the full statement, here. Mural discloses the information that they collect, how they collect it, and how it's used. They are a little more vague with the third-parties that your data may be shared with, which is a slightly concerning, or I at least wish that they disclosed more detai...

Mural offers email, phone, and chat as options to contact their customer support. They offer priority support depending the subscription plan that you select. Obviously, no guarantee for how quickly you'll get an answer, but with an option like support chat, one would believe that it would be relatively quickly....

Mural offers a fair number of integrations. You can see the full list, here. They integrate with Jira and GitHub for simplicity for the dev team. They integrate with Slack, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, and Google Calendar. Unfortunately, doesn't appear that they offer full integration with GSuite, so depending on what you're looking for that is a bummer. They definitely integrate more so with Micro...

Mural offers comprehensive pricing plans, a starter, plus, and enterprise plan option. The plans are limited by the number of users. In the starter plan, a maximum of 50 people can be added. The plus plan must have at least 10 people on the platform for your team. Regardless, there's unlimited boards. The main added benefit in increasing your plan is 1. if you have a large team 2. if you're a team of 10+ and looking for priority support or would like to have outside guests access your...

Mural is compatible with all browser types, including Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, and IE. Mural is mobile and tablet friendly via the app for iOS devices. Currently, Mural is not available for Android devices, it would have to be operated through Chrome on your mobile device. For a full list of available requirements, you can

Mural is less geared towards agile functionality than some of similar tools, such as Miro. Mural offers a few templates that try to assist in the sprint process, such as a design sprint planning template. They do offer templates for retrospectives and team standup meetings, and you can view the full list of templates offered

Mural has solid real-time collaborating features. You can visibly see where someone's cursor is on your screen and what actions they're doing while you could be doing something completely different. You can whiteboard/draw on your templates. You can comment and tag coworkers in those comments. Personally, I just find Mural to be a bit messy than other visual collaboration tools. I know that may d...

Mural offers a variety of different template setups, including partner templates with companies such as LUMA Institution and ETCH Sprints as well as Mural's own templates. Mural offers white boarding and sticky notes to use in templates. They also offer templates for customer journey or road mapping. While there's a great availability of templates, I personally find them a little messy since all you can really do it draw, add a sticky, or plain text within Mural. For a full list of th...

Miro is fantastic, truly. The platform is easy to use, offers a TON of template options (especially for those who are married to agile processes in their office), and great real-time collaboration features. Their security and data policies are great and raise little concern. They also integrate with all major office essentials, Microsoft and Google, while being mobile and tablet friendly--huge bonuses for them! Only areas that I could really complain about with Miro are their...

Miro offers a wide variety of templates with additional features on most templates to organize it the way that you want. For example, their basic kanban board has "swimming lanes" to have two separated tracks under the same kanban column for say the UX team and the Dev team in a sprint. Great added feature! You can create a board with just a general text topic and let people fun free with sticky notes. You can create customer journey or user story boards through their ma...

Miro is a tool displayed completely for collaboration, brainstorming, and white boarding, so there's no shortage of great collaboration features. You can adjust the permission settings for different boards, you can make a board private so only you have the ability to access it, you can make a board view only as well so that edits cannot be made to it. All by simply right clicking or selecting the "..." on the board title. Real-time editing, comments, etc. is a piece of cake -- y...

Miro flawlessly support agile functionality. You can easily sprint plan, create user stories, collaborate over your sprint retrospective, and much more through the different board templates that Mir offers -- adhering to scrum or agile processes in a couple simple clicks. Miro's kanban board set up is my favorite, offering "swimming lanes" or separated lanes, say one for the UX team and one for the engineering team. You can see Miro's full list of board templates

Miro is supported on all devices, operating systems, and browsers. Miro is very mobile and tablet friendly, which is a major plus! Miro works on Apple or Android products, Mac or Windows, and Safari, Edge, Chrome, or Firefox.&n...

You can read Miro's full security brief, here. To summarize, Miro is part of the Cloud Security Alliance with SOC 2 Type II compliance. They encrypt your data via 256 AES encryption and they scored an "A" on the Qualys SSL server test. They regularly take backups (every 10 minutes) which is also encrypted. Finally, they remind you that you have the ultimate control over...

Miro offers integration with all major office essentials and many more. You can integrate with Slack, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Box, Jira, and so many more. For the full list of available integrations, you can check here or check your favorite tool's integrations. For example, I love Notion and that has integration ...

Since they do have an office in California, Miro's privacy policy offers additional information and context surrounding legislature passed in California to better adhere towards personal data privacy. In addition, Miro does good job of disclosing the information that they collect, how and why they collect it, and so on. The biggest turn-off for me is that they do allow sign-in through Facebook and Google (which granted is helpful and speedy) but just be aware that this can share more info...

Miro has four different pricing options, from free to enterprise, that limits the use of the platform in different ways. On the free plan, you can have unlimited users, but only 3 active, collaborative boards. If there's more than 3, they become view only. The first paid subscription option (Team) allows you to have unlimited collaborative boards. In this option you pay per user, so they kind of catc...

Miro only provides a request form as a means to get in touch with their customer support. With online platforms, I'm a big advocate for an online chat, even if it's only active a few hours a day, because everyone wants the fastest answer possible or at least to know that their inquiry is important. You know an email isn't going to get answered for at least 24 hours in most cases, which often ...

AnyDesk is easy to use, offers good administrative features, great device compatibility, and simple download installation. All great components when considering different remote computer access tools. However, AnyDesk really lacks in security measurements, privacy protocol, and available third party integrations. Also have heard feedback that AnyDesk has serious lagging problems. Definitely room to improve.

Given the fact that AnyDesk is a remote desktop tool, I personally don't feel super comfortable with their privacy policy. You can read the full policy, here. It seems as though they collect a lot of information through your "remote" session and in turn use that for advertising. On the upside, they do share pretty explicitly your rights to your data, which is a plus....

AnyDesk allows you to remote reboot a computer, and access detailed session reporting as an admin. It does not appear to offer live desktop monitoring though. 

AnyDesk appears to have pretty good security measurements in place. They have banking standard encryption technology and use RSA 2048 asymmetric key exchange encryption to verify every connection. You can whitelist specific desks in order to better control who does or does not have access to your remote desktop. Finally, you can upgrade to an enterprise model of the plan and set up your own network estab...

AnyDesk doesn't appear to integrate with any in-office work tools like similar tools, such as Zendesk or Salesforce. Wish that wasn't the case because it does have some other positives as a remote computer software.

AnyDesk is compatible across all major operating systems including Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, and a few others. AnyDesk does not depend on browser type as it depends on the operating system of the device. It is both mobile and tablet friendly. iPhone/iPad or Android. Unfortunately, AnyDesk doesn't provide full specs on how "up to date" your operating system needs to be to run thei...

AnyDesk is a 3MB download installation. It does not appear to provide a cloud-based solution at this point in time. Similar to other products, you do need to install the software on both the in-hand and remote device. 

AnyDesk appears to have more issues with lagging and latency than competitors. As always, this issue largely depends on your network connection, the better your internet connection the less of an issue this will be. However, AnyDesk does try to provide reasoning or basic solutions that might help with this, including the actions that you take within the software, display and local permission settings as ...

AnyDesk customer support is filtered by the primary subject of your issue and then to a submission form accordingly. There is no option to call or chat with their support team and because of that, I wouldn't expect to get your issue resolved in less than 24 hours. Less than ideal for a service that will inevitably have technical issues that quickly need resolved. 

TeamViewer is easy to use and setup, has great security and privacy, awesome administrative controls for business account users, and fantastic device compatibility (it's even mobile and tablet friendly)! All huge components to take into consideration whenever trying to select the good remote control software. The only area where TeamViewer is up in the air on is lagging or latency. It really does depend on your network connection, but some users have complained about this be...

TeamViewer has fantastic administrative controls for the device. You can wake up any device from sleep mode using WoL technology. You can monitor desktop if needed, and receive usage alerts for specific devices all with relativ...

TeamViewer must be installed via a download for use, on both the remote and in-hand device to establish that partner ID. There does not currently appear to be a cloud-based solution for the platform. You can view at least the free installation information here. 

The lag or latency that you may or may not experience Using TeamViewer is largely dependent upon connection speed, visual effects, routine maintenance of your devices, and resolution. Some users to complain of excessive lagging, taking 5-10 minutes just to open a folder. Others claim that TeamViewer is one of the few remote access softwares that doesn't lag. Routine maintenance of your devices will ...

TeamViewer's customer support can be contacted via email, by submitting a request form, or by phone. Many have mentioned that TeamViewer's customer service is not the best, in regards to being understanding and handling your issue especially when it comes to payment and subscription plans. TeamViewer does try to aid their users through guided

TeamViewer's privacy policy is very transparent, kudos to them! You can view the full document, here. For a quick summary, they disclose the data that they collect per establishing your remote connection with TeamViewer, the individual within the organization who is in charge of Data Protection, and your rights such as requesting a copy, deleting, or refusing processing of your data. 

You can integrate TeamViewer with Zoho, Amazon Workspaces, IBM, and some Microsoft products. All useful integrations, but maybe not ideal for every office depending on your office essentials. You can view the full list of available integrations, here. 

One could say that TeamViewer's security protocol is a little excessive, but it's just very thorough especially in comparison to similar products on the market. For a full understanding of TeamViewer's security backbone, you can check here. Essentially, you'll want to refer to the image that displays the connection between remote device, through TeamViewer servers, and to your device. Thi...

TeamViewer is supported on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome devices. Dating back to operating software for some to the early 2000s. You can get a full understanding of the available compatibilies, here.TeamViewer is also supported on mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, tablets, and Androids.

Box makes file sharing simple and has fantastic version tracking and granular permission settings to really control who has access to what file or folder. However, for me, Box lacks some major functionality to be anything above average. Box Sync must be downloaded and installed to ensure that your files sync across different devices. Box also doesn't allow for "guests" to access a file that you shared with them, they must have an account with Box. I also think their pricing ...

In order to sync across devices, even of the same operating system, you must utilize Box Sync. This allows then for your files to sync across devices and be available when "offline" or not actually on your Box account. In 2020 it seems silly that you have to install another application in order for your fi...

All in all, sharing files on Box is really simple. You can either share someone on a file or an entire folder via email or by sending them a link (if you enable link sharing). From the invite pop up, you can select the individual's permission setting for the file or folder. When sharing via link, you have the option to share with your company/office (everyone who shares the same domain email/has acce...

Box has a full breakdown of the various permission statuses that a user can have on a file or folder, it can be viewed here. It even breaks down the specific features (i.e. add tags, view offline, etc.) that the specific permission status allows someone to conduct on the file or not. It's almost a little bit of overkill for me personally and the different permission statuses all sound the same (co-ow...

Backup and restoration of files on Box is largely dependent upon the plan that you have as a customer of Box. A workaround to this is if you ensure that your trash settings are set to never delete. If you do this, you will be able to recovery any file per your trash bin, unless you empty your trash. As for backup, most plans don't explicitly allow for this. You can purchase a "govern...

Box has great file activity or version history tracking. Next to files in Box there's a button with "..." on it, select that and you will see two features that track file history, "Access Stats" and "Version History." Access Stats will report on actions taken on that file, such as how many times it has been shared, downloaded, etc. Version History will report on edits th...

Box has straightforward, easy to use search functionality. There's a search bar at the top of the platform. Begin your search there by typing a keyword within the document or folder that you're looking for (typically by title is best). From there, results will begin to appear based on most recently viewed/most popular in your account. If you don't find it within those top 3-4 imme...

Box's customer support can be contacted via phone or a submission form. Box has some pretty handy learning guides and troubleshooting support, both of which are pretty user-friendly. Box has additional support resources such as a