Daily updates for remote teams, without the spying

Remote work runs on written updates. When they're good, nobody needs to ask. When they're thin, managers start wondering, and wondering is how monitoring software gets bought. Remote team daily updates don't need screenshots or activity scores. They need a clear note from the person who did the work. Astrolinks helps each person write that note in a minute, and send it on their terms.

What managers want, and what people fear

Managers want to know three things at the end of the day. What got done. What's stuck. What happens tomorrow.

People want to be trusted. They don't want every tab counted or a screenshot taken while they read a personal email at lunch.

Both are reasonable. The trouble is that most tools pick one side. Monitoring tools give managers data people resent. Plain Slack updates give people privacy but depend on memory at 18:00 on a tired Thursday.

How Astrolinks works for a remote team

Each person keeps a private log

Astrolinks runs on each person's computer. It notes which app and window are in front every 5 seconds, and the web address in supported browsers. It never records keystrokes, screenshots or the clipboard. That log stays on their computer. Nobody else receives it, including us.

They turn it into an update they're happy to send

At the end of the day, Summarize my day drafts a report from that log and their quick notes, with Done, Blockers and Tomorrow. They read it, fix it and send it. A note that starts with "blocked" goes straight under Blockers, which is the part a manager most needs to see.

The Team inbox gets only what they send

With the Team plan, a person presses Send to your team and first sees exactly what will go. The company gets the report's text, the client or project name, the blockers, and the person's hours only if they switch them on. Never the log, apps, websites or screenshots. The team inbox page explains it in full.

Managers start from an Overview of who has sent today and what's blocked. They can read and delete reports, and on Business export them as CSV. The inbox has two-step sign-in, Sign out everywhere and an activity log. They can also give tasks and goals. When someone marks a task done, the manager sees that and their note, not how long it took.

An example team

This is an illustrative example, not a real customer.

A support lead runs a team of six across Lisbon, Manila and Mexico City. Before, she asked for updates in a Slack thread. Half came in, and the other half came in as "all good".

Now each person runs Astrolinks. In Manila, Joy's shift ends at 18:00. She presses Summarize my day, reads the draft, adds "blocked: refund tool returns an error for EU cards", and sends it to the team. In Mexico City, Diego's report arrives in Spanish, because that's the report language he chose. The lead reads all six in the Team inbox the next morning, sorts the blockers, and assigns the refund bug before standup.

Nobody installed screen capture. Nobody had their tabs counted.

Time zones and languages

Distributed teams rarely share a clock. Each person can set a time zone for a client or project, so a report says "from 18:02 to 00:53 Pacific Time" instead of making the reader do maths. With Pro, reports can also be written in English, Filipino, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil) or Chinese (Simplified), per client, and the app itself speaks all five. And if someone's internet drops at the end of a shift, a report they pressed Send for waits on their computer and goes once they're back online.

Fair to people, useful to managers

A few things make this work in practice:

• Say what the company sees. Share the worker notice template before anyone joins.
• Ask for blockers, not hours. Hours are optional for a reason. Outcomes matter more.
• Read and reply. An update that never gets an answer stops being written well.
• Don't add a second tool to check the first. That undoes the trust.

Plans

Team gives each person Pro, a company inbox for the reports they choose to send, tasks and goals for the team, and reports kept up to 90 days. Business adds reports kept up to 2 years, CSV export of reports and the activity log, required two-step sign-in for every manager, and priority support. Both are per seat, from 2 seats. Astrolinks runs on Mac. See plans and pricing for the price in your country.

Keep reading

• Remote team updates without micromanaging
• Daily standup vs. EOD report
• How to write an end-of-day report, with templates
• Running a client-facing agency? See Astrolinks for agencies