10 USEFUL WORK APPS

Scanner Pro 7

(free with in-app purchases) There are scanner apps and there are photo-to-text-translator (also called Optical Character Recognition, or OCR) apps. But this one does both in one neat app. It turns your iPad’s camera into a scanner by capturing a highresolution image that can then be mailed, merged or tinkered with in a range of other ways as a PDF document. The OCR bit of it also translates any text in the camera’s photo into editable text: just take a snap of a page of text and Scanner Pro does a reasonable job of turning that into text you can work with.

Expensify

(free) Receipts and expenses are the bane of the business person. This is a very easy-to-use, well-laid-out app to log bills, credits, receipts, mileage and other common expenses. It gives you extra functionality, such as being able to import expenses from credit card or bank accounts.

Hotel Tonight

(free) Ever find yourself having to book somewhere on the road unexpectedly? This hotel-booking app is a specialist service made to offer discounted rates in a variety of hotel types on the day you need the hotel. However, it also lets you book in advance. It offers a few different options, from basic to luxury standards. It covers most cities and big towns in Ireland, as well as major cities abroad.

DocuSign

(free with paid upgrades) It is almost 20 years since ‘digital signatures’ were first flagged in Ireland. Even though many Irish institutions still look for faxed responses to signature-specific documents, a growing number now also accept digital signatures, such as those from DocuSign. It’s quite easy to use.

Slack

(free with upgrades) In some businesses, Slack has replaced email as a means of continuous work communication. The app, which can be used across any device and now includes Apple Watch support, basically speeds up messaging and file-sharing between co-workers. Other than its speed and simplicity, its strengths include being able to search for things quickly and integration with lots of other apps out there, including Dropbox, Zendesk and Google Drive. If you get used to this, it’s hard to return to email.

Liquidtext

(free) This work app performs especially well on tablets. It lets you import almost any kind of document or webpage and then clip text snippets or paragraphs to a clipboard on the other side of the screen. It’s fully editable later on. You just highlight the text and then drag it over with your finger. You can then attached the snippets together or simply keep collecting them. You can also ‘pinch’ the document to bring together the highlighted quotes or paragraphs. Finally, you can share (or export) the paragraphs to online services or email. An in-app €10 purchase lets you work off multiple documents or web pages at the same time.

Evernote

(free) There are lots of note-taking apps, but Evernote has an edge because it’s integrated into so many other services. The app works right across almost every type of device, meaning that you can access all of your notes, memos and documents (from years back too) on any gadget you like. It also allows voice notes and images. If you find you’re using Evernote a lot, it’s well worth downloading Evernote Scannable (a free, separate app), which scans documents and sends them right into Evernote.

Hangouts

(free) If you fancy holding impromptu video conferences but don’t want or need the fancy effects or resolution of the likes of Cisco’s Webex, Google’s Hangouts is an excellent option. You can include up to 10 people in a conferencing session (voice or video) and you can also dial in people on ordinary phones if you want (although you’ll pay a network charge for that). You also have a limited ability to attach or display files, such as jpegs. You can even kick users out of conversations if you want to control the flow better.

Google Drive

(free) Google Drive is something of a utility these days. When all else fails in storing or saving something, it’s a very handy resource. It supports word-processing documents, presentations and other formats. As a cloud app, it then allows you to access and edit documents almost anywhere, including offline.

Adobe Acrobat reader

(free) You can pretty much save any document into a PDF. Once you do, just open the document in Acrobat Reader and you can then highlight text, scribble notes or draw things on the documents. The reason this is so useful is that the Irish business landscape is littered with PDFs. From Revenue guides to tender documents, there’s no escaping them. To be sure, there are plenty of ‘pro’ PDF apps that give a little extra functionality, but I’d try this one before investing in any of the others.