Efficient Ways For Increasing Working From Home Productivity

Productivity App Features That Resonate With Remote Workers

Even as the pandemic fades into the past, remote and hybrid work have remained widely practiced. One of the main factors underpinning this trend is the emergence of remote working productivity apps that enable teams to perform highly, irrespective of individual members' locations. Many of these apps were already used in workplaces before the pandemic, but some gained more acceptance amongst remote workers. That said, let’s discuss the standout features of productivity apps for remote work: eLearning Capabilities One of the trickier aspects of remote work has been how to get recruits up to speed. Training can be hard to conduct when physical in-person meetings aren’t an option. You must figure out how to transition smoothly from face-to-face conversations to presentations and walkthroughs. Then, there’s the distribution of learning materials. As always, you eventually have to assess the trainee to determine their readiness for specific tasks. This is where virtual classroom software has won the hearts of many. In this case, the ideal tools should enable the trainer to create courses, stock libraries, and deliver exams. Top-notch learning management systems also provide ingenious features like surveys and quizzes that keep trainees more engaged during learning and assessment. To promote flexibility, such tools also facilitate self-paced learning while providing detailed reports and analyses for each trainee. Some popular solutions encapsulating eLearning capabilities include TalentLMS, AbsorbLMS, Trainual, ProProfs LMS, and more. Team Building When an entire team is in the same physical workspace, it's easier to organize and hold fun activities outside their work assignments to strengthen bonds and get everyone into a single mission. However, once everyone is scattered across different locations, all this becomes harder. In fact, productivity may decrease as some team members feel less heard and spend more time figuring out how to assert themselves. Others may get caught up in a vicious cycle of second-guessing their ideas and decisions as they feel they have limited guidance. On that note, team leaders need to dedicate time to team building, and they can do it using apps that provide features like scavenger hunts, puzzles, and other games that bring people closer. Common virtual team-building apps include Playmeo, Scavify, Kahoot!, Good & Co Teamwork, Heads Up! and RallyBright. Remember that not all these tools are about playing games. Some deliver quizzes you can use to profile each team member and see how best they can work together based on their individual strengths and weaknesses. Multimedia Communication While email has massively evolved over the years, it still feels like a formal letter. Moreover, the attachment feature doesn’t fully support the wide range of variations in how remote workers interact. For example, a team member overseas may want to share a video feed of their surroundings since they are near a revered landmark or monument. Another team member may receive a work-related message at a party where texting or calling may be inconvenient, but a quick voice note can work. In essence, remote teams need to communicate in a manner that prioritizes their work but also channels the vibe in their respective remote workspaces. This is best achieved with a strategic mix of video conferencing, file sharing, notifications and reminders, text messaging and group chat, postcards and more. To minimize the cold and ultra-serious atmosphere typically associated with work emails, you can try a solution like Today.ly. What’s unique about such a tool is that its interface emulates a real work environment and offers all the typical communication channels. You can see groups meeting in conference rooms and follow how individuals come and go in real time. The app lets you view availability and instantly start a conversation with a teammate by clicking on their avatar. Thus, instead of having back-and-forth emails for sending meeting links and updating the times on invitations, you can simply click on their avatar. Task and Process Automation For many remote workers, their schedules are constantly in flux. They aren't considerably detached from other aspects of their lives, like childcare and home management, in the same way that office workers are. Secondly, remote teams often include members in different time zones, so some work needs to be ready and submitted when the person working on it is sleeping. This can involve transferring figures from survey forms into a report, sending out newsletters, populating tables, sending reminders, and more. For the lucky ones, it’s one simple task. But in other cases, the work involves more elaborate processes demanding contributions and approvals from various personnel. Accordingly, task management and process automation tools are the best way to tackle this challenge. But before you start, you need to ascertain the different levels at which automation takes place. Firstly, there's the lower level, where you need automation tools for specific tasks. A good example is marketing automation tools like ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, HubSpot and Klaviyo for emailing customers. Above this level, you’re creating end-to-end workflows involving multiple tasks. Consequently, you’ll need tools like Integrify, ClickUp, Wrike, Kissflow, Smartsheet, Zapier and Adobe Workfront. With such tools, you should look out for those that come with pre-built templates and drag-and-drop builders or an equivalent that requires as little code as possible (preferably no code). This way, anyone in the organization can easily create and edit automation without involving IT. The bigger picture As you can see, the remote work toolset can quickly expand depending on an organization's size and diversity. From accounting to HR, legal, IT, and marketing, plenty of work could use a digital solution or two. Therefore, when shopping for Work From Home (WFH) tools for your teams, you should pay close attention to their integrations. You don’t want to end up with many tools that can't link to each other. This will leave you with more work, constantly transferring data between different software and increasing the likelihood of errors. Lastly, it helps to choose tools with reliable customer support. It's even better if the support agents are available 24/7 since problems could come in from team members in various time zones. Wrapping Up WFH productivity apps can benefit an organization on various fronts, like increasing efficiency, improving team morale, and reducing operational costs. That’s why you should think broadly when choosing them. For professional assistance in selecting and managing these tools, contact us for a free consultation.

5 Tips For Staying Motivated While Working From Home

From Raw Data to Perfect API Responses: Serialization in NestJS

Hello, My name is Dzung. I am a developer who has been in this game for approximately 6 years. I've just started exploring NestJS and am excited about this framework's capabilities. In this blog, I want to share the knowledge I’ve gathered and practiced in NestJS. Today's topic is serialization! As you know, APIs are like the messengers of your application, delivering data from the backend to the client side. Without proper control, they might spill too much information, such as passwords or internal settings. This is where serialization in NestJS steps in, turning messy, raw data into polished, purposeful API responses. With the power of serialization, you can control exactly what your users see, hide sensitive fields, format nested objects, and deliver secure, efficient, and downright beautiful responses. In this blog, we’ll explore how serialization in NestJS works, why it’s a must-have skill for any developer, and how to implement it step by step. Your APIs will go from raw and unrefined to clean and professional by the end. Let’s dive in! What Happens Without Serialization? Let’s look at what happens when you don’t use serialization in your NestJS application. Imagine you’re building a user management system, and you create an API endpoint to fetch user details. Here’s your User entity: Now, you write a simple endpoint to fetch a user: What happens when you call this endpoint? The API sends the entire user object straight to the client—every single field included: The consequences of lacking Serialization in the NestJS application Security Risks: Sensitive data, like passwords, should never be exposed in API responses.Data Overload: Users and clients don’t need internal flags or timestamps—they just add noise.Lack of Professionalism: Messy, unfiltered responses make your API look unpolished and unreliable. Next, we’ll see how to clean up this mess and craft polished API responses using NestJS serialization techniques. The Differences in Applying Serialization By implementing serialization in your NestJS application, you can take full control over what data is exposed in your API responses. Let’s revisit the previous example and clean it up. Step 1: Install class-transformer To get started with serialization, you need the class-transformer package. Install it with: Step 2: Update the User Entity with Exposed or Excluded Decorator Use class-transformer decorators to specify which fields should be exposed or excluded. Only the ID and email fields will be included in the response. Step 3: Apply the Serializer Interceptor NestJS provides a built-in ClassSerializerInterceptor to handle serialization. You can apply it at different levels: Per-Controller Globally To apply serialization to all controllers, add the interceptor to the application setup: When the Get User Endpoint is called, this is what your API will now return: Why Serialization Makes a Difference Security: Sensitive fields are automatically excluded, keeping your data safe.Clarity: Only the necessary fields are sent, reducing noise and improving usability.Professionalism: Clean and consistent responses give your API a polished look. Dynamic Serialization with Group What if you want to show different data to users, such as admins versus regular users? The class-transformer package supports groups, allowing you to expose fields based on context. Example: In the controller, specify the group for the transformation: When the Get User Endpoint is called, this is what your API will now return: By incorporating serialization into your NestJS application, you not only improve security but also enhance the user experience by providing streamlined, predictable, and professional API responses. Now that you know how serialization works in NestJS, you can apply these techniques to your projects, creating safer, cleaner, and more maintainable APIs. SupremeTech has lots of experience and produces web or app services. Let’s schedule a call now if you want to work with us. Also, now we are hiring! Please check open positions for career opportunities.

Atomic Design In Software Development

Hello everyone! I'm Linh, a front-end developer passionate about discovering effective methods for system development. When I first entered the tech industry, I faced challenges organizing UI components logically and reusable. This experience motivated me to seek strategies to optimize my workflow while ensuring that the products I developed were easy to scale and maintain. Recently, I explored the concept of Atomic Design, which has become a guiding principle for me in tackling these challenges more systematically and scientifically. This approach has significantly influenced my design thinking. Through this article, I aim to inspire you and offer a fresh perspective if you're also looking for solutions for your systems. Taking Cues From Chemistry Looking for a way to build and create a design system reminds me of developments in other fields and industries. Many areas, such as design and architecture, have developed smart modular systems to produce incredibly complex things like airplanes, ships, and skyscrapers. These thoughts take me back to my school days in chemistry labs. The idea is that all matter—whether solid, liquid, gas, simple, or complex—is made up of atoms. These atoms bond to form molecules, which combine into more complex organisms, eventually creating everything in our universe. Similarly, systems built up from smaller components are more logical and connected. We can break the entire system into basic building blocks and work from there. That’s the core idea of atomic design. What Is Atomic Design? Atomic Design is an interface design methodology that focuses on creating a system of components rather than entire pages. Introduced by Brad Frost in 2013, this approach emphasizes using small, independent elements that can be reused and combined to form a cohesive whole. This strategy facilitates quicker product development, promotes a unified interface, and simplifies maintenance. “Atomic Design is a methodology where designers prioritize creating individual components and then combine them, rather than designing entire pages.” Atomic Design can enhance the design development process, promoting consistency, adaptability, and efficiency across projects. By applying the principles of Atomic Design, developers and designers can collaborate within a cohesive design system, ultimately delivering a scalable and high-quality user experience. Atomic Design organizes components into five levels, progressing from simple to complex, as illustrated above: Atoms: These are the most basic components, such as HTML tags like buttons, inputs, labels, and icons.Molecules are combinations of two or more atoms that create more complex components. For example, a form group consists of an input and a label.Organisms are more complex UI components of multiple molecules and/or atoms. For instance, a form can comprise several form groups and buttons.Templates are layout frameworks created from organisms and molecules. They define how these components are arranged on a page but do not contain actual data or content; they represent an abstract structure.Pages: These are specific instances of templates where real content is added to create complete web pages or applications. Pages include all necessary components—atoms, molecules, organisms, and templates—along with specific content for end users to interact with. In the following sections, we will explore each level of Atomic Design in detail. Atoms Similar to atoms in nature, these elements may seem abstract, but they are the foundational building blocks of all our user interfaces. In web interfaces, atoms are the fundamental HTML elements, such as labels, inputs, and buttons. As the smallest components, they cannot be broken down any further. Atoms can also be abstract concepts, including colors, fonts, and even more intangible UI aspects, like animations. Molecules When we combine atoms, things become more interesting and tangible. Molecules are groups of atoms that bond together and serve as the minor basic units of a compound. They possess unique properties and act as core elements within our design system. For example, when atoms like labels, inputs, or buttons stand alone, they are useless. However, when combined into a form, they can work effectively together. Molecules can be simple or complex and designed for reuse or one-time use. A molecule can have multiple variants (similar to components in a Variant in Figma) intended for different contexts or interactions (such as hover, pressing, or after a delay). Organisms Molecules provide us with building blocks to combine to create organisms. Organisms are groups of molecules that come together to form a more complex and complete structure. Organisms can consist of similar or different elements. For instance, a website header might include a logo, menu, and search box. When you visit the category page of most e-commerce websites, you'll see product listings displayed in a grid format, composed of smaller components like images, titles, captions, etc. Templates Templates are combinations of organisms that create complete pages. They focus on the basic content structure rather than the final content. Templates help clearly define important properties such as image sizes and text lengths, thereby establishing an effective system for managing dynamic content and ensuring alignment with the design. “You can create good experiences without knowing the content. What you can’t do is create good experiences without knowing your content structure. What is your content made from, not what your content is?” Pages Pages are specific instances of templates. Placeholder content is replaced with representative content to depict what end users will see accurately. In simpler terms, pages are templates filled with real data for presentation purposes, offering the most realistic view of the design. Developers and designers will test how templates work with actual content, allowing designers to return and adjust to molecules, organisms, and templates as needed. Benefits Of Applying Atomic Design In User Interface (UI) Design Consistency Atomic Design utilizes a modular approach, ensuring each interface element adheres to a consistent design language. When a component, such as a button or color, is modified or updated, these changes are automatically reflected across all pages, maintaining uniformity throughout the product. This consistency is crucial for large and complex design teams, where smooth and synchronized updates are essential. Reusability Reusability is one of the most significant advantages of Atomic Design. By defining basic components in a standardized way, you can reuse them throughout different contexts and parts of the product. Due to this reusability, designers and developers can quickly integrate complex interfaces from standardized small components. For example, a button designed according to the standards can be used on various pages, from the homepage to product pages and forms, without needing to be recreated. This not only minimizes repetitive work but also ensures consistency across the entire design system. Atomic Design's reusability also promotes flexibility. It allows for easy updates or replacements of a component across the system without changing every detail on each page. Maintainability Atomic Design enables designers and developers to efficiently monitor and modify specific interface parts without impacting the entire system. The team can directly adjust the associated atoms or molecules when updates are required for a component, such as a button or color. These changes will automatically be reflected across all instances of that component. This approach reduces errors, minimizes repetitive tasks, and ensures that updates are consistently applied throughout the system. Scalability Like maintainability, Atomic Design allows designers and developers to expand the system by adding new components at the appropriate levels without disrupting the overall structure. For instance, if a new type of button or content combination is needed, the team can create new atoms or molecules and seamlessly integrate them into existing organisms and templates. This method enables a system to quickly scale from a small application to larger, more complex products with many new pages and features while maintaining structural integrity. Atomic Design's scalability ensures that products can evolve continuously and improve while minimizing the effort required for updates or adjustments to meet new demands. This helps products quickly adapt to changing user needs and market conditions. A prime example of successfully implementing Atomic Design principles in UI design is the Shopee UI Design System. Shopee is building its interface systems based on Atomic Design principles to maintain consistency across its entire product range. By applying Atomic Design to fundamental components such as buttons, colors, and font families (Atoms), as well as groups of components like product lists (Molecules) and elements like navigation bars or product carousels (Organisms), Shopee enhances development speed through the reuse of standardized components, ensuring a consistent interface across multiple platforms. Reality Use-Cases Atomic Design is a robust methodology for creating user interfaces (UI) that has been extensively utilized in various open-source projects. Below are some notable systems that SupremeTech has adopted and incorporated into its client solutions: Shopify Polaris Design System Shopify uses Polaris to create a consistent interface for all applications related to Shopify. Similar to Shopee UI, Shopify Polaris applies the levels of Atoms, Molecules, and Organisms from Atomic Design into its design system. This helps Shopify enhance development efficiency and maintain long-term product quality. MedusaJS As an open-source e-commerce platform, MedusaJS implements atomic design to organize the UI components for its Storefront and Admin Dashboard. Storefront UI: When building the Shopify Storefront interface for Medusa.js projects, Atomic Design helps organize UI components hierarchically. 1. Atoms: Button:  Add to Cart button, View Product button.Text: Product title, price.Icon: Shopping cart icon, search icon. 2. Molecules: Product Card: Includes an image, title, price, and Add to Cart button.Navbar: Contains the logo, menu links, and search bar. 3. Organisms: Product Grid: A grid of product cards.Header: Combines the logo, navigation bar, and mini cart. 4. Templates: Product detail pages or product category pages. 5. Pages: Homepage, checkout page. Admin Dashboard: Medusa.js also requires an admin UI to manage products, orders, and customers. Atomic Design helps organize the admin interface. 1. Atoms: Input: Input fields (product name, price).Button: Save, Delete, or Add product buttons.Badge: Displays order status (completed, processing). 2. Molecules: Search Bar: Search input field with a button and icon.Table Row: A row in a data table (product, order). 3. Organisms: Data Table: Displays a list of products or orders.Sidebar: Navigation menu for sections like Products and Orders. 4. Templates: Product list page with sidebar and data table. 5. Pages: Product management page, order management page. By applying Atomic Design, MedusaJS achieves: Component reusability: UI components like buttons, forms, or cards can be reused in both the storefront and admin dashboard.Easy expansion: When adding new features (e.g., wishlist or promotional modules), you can combine existing Atoms, Molecules, and Organisms.Consistency assurance: Atomic Design ensures that components are uniformly designed from the admin interface to the storefront.Facilitated collaboration: Design and development teams can collaborate on a transparent hierarchical system. Wrapping Up Atomic Design is a valuable method in design and development; fundamentally, it serves as a framework for building user interfaces. The immediate benefits include time and cost savings, improved product consistency, enhanced team collaboration, support for accessibility efforts, and strategic long-term initiatives. These reasons drive organizations to adopt design systems. Mastering the core principles of modern design systems will help you grow as a designer or developer.