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    • The ultimate guide to administrative tasks and duties

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    The 20 best personal assistant apps to increase productivity

    The 20 best personal assistant apps to increase productivity

    Scheduling meetings, arranging appointments, organising trips, and everything else in between that personal assistants take care of is no easy job. There are many moving parts–so, to stay on top of it all, sometimes an extra pair of hands–or tools–save the day.
    If you’re ready to let technology help you improve your productivity and save you a headache–or two–check this list of the 20 best apps for personal assistants. From scheduling a call, to organising international travel and everything in between, let these apps lend you a hand.

    6 Apps to help you schedule your time

    1. Calendly

    Want to arrange a meeting or call but don’t want to go through the back and forth of asking when someone’s free and confirming if you are or not? Use Calendly to make everyone’s life easier.
    All you need to do is establish the days and hours you’re available in the app, send the link to the other person and they’ll be able to choose a slot in your available times. Easy, simple, and time-saving.

    Pricing

    Calendly offers a basic plan for free, an Essentials one for £6.30/seat/month, a Professional plan for £9.60/seat/month. It offers a plan for Teams for £12.80/seat/month and they also offer an Enterprise plan that you’ll need to contact them to find the price for what you need.

    2. Clockwise

    Clockwise is like having a personal assistant in your calendar. It understands how you work and blocks time in your calendar for focused time. It also coordinates your team's calendars so that you’re all working in perfect sync.
    This app can also automatically update meeting times in case one of the attendees has a new commitment. The perfect app to keep your calendar as productive as possible.

    Pricing

    Clockwise offers a free version, a Pro plan for £5.40/user/month, a Business plan for £9.20/user/plan, and an Enterprise option too.

    3. Doodle

    We all like to feel included and listened to–in fact, employees perform 4.6x better if they feel heard. Polls are a great way to do this. Especially, when you’re trying to come up with the perfect time to meet with your team. However, sometimes it can be tiring and time consuming to find the perfect match in all the available times. Doodle comes to the rescue here as a free, online, professional scheduling tool.
    Its free version offers a polling feature where you can ask your team when they are available to meet and Doodle will automatically process the answers and give you your best meeting time. Easy, and perfect for teams of all sizes.

    Pricing

    Doddle offers a 14-day free trial and a Pro version for £5.50/user/month, a Team plan £7.15/user/month as well as an Enterprise version.

    4. Google Calendar

    You probably already know of Google Calendar, or maybe even use it already. However, it is such a great tool—especially when combined with all the other features and apps that Google Workplace offers—it would be impossible not to add it to the list.
    Like any calendar it lets you schedule meetings and calls, but unlike others, its Google Workplace features make it one of the best calendars for teams. In it, you can create different calendars to share with different people, you can automatically create a Google Meet call, and have it on any device you use–iOS, Android, desktop, and more.

    Pricing

    It’s completely free!

    5. 24me

    24me is a calendar, to-do list, and note taking app–all in one place. It reminds you of the things you need to do, allows you to have all your important dates and notes in one place, and it even lets you know how traffic is before you leave for your meeting.
    24me will automatically check things off your to-do list when you’ve done them. It can be customised, and the different views it has will allow you to have the control of your day that you need. Last, but not least, you can make phone calls, book flights, and even send emails without having to leave the app.

    Pricing

    24me it’s free, but if you want to upgrade your experience you can do so for £4.80 per month.

    6. Cortana

    Cortana is a personal virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that helps you:
    • Manage your calendar and keep your schedule up to date
    • Join a meeting in Microsoft Teams
    • Create and manage to-do lists
    • Set reminders and alarms
    • Research information
    • Open apps on your phone and computer
    • and more!
    Best of all, Cortana allows you to have a hands-free experience with its voice assistant functionality; similar to Siri on iPhone, or the Amazon Alexa.

    Pricing

    To get access to Cortana you’ll have to get Microsoft 365, which for businesses has a price ranging from its Basic plan at £4.80/user/month to its Premium version at £17.55/user/month.

    4 Apps that help you manage your communications

    1. OnMail

    Email is necessary in today's life–however, that doesn’t mean it’s always easy to manage. If you can’t deal with junk mail, and are often quick to delete messages you should have saved, OnMail by Edison Software is the perfect help you need.
    It allows you to personalise email notifications, organise your contacts, and unsubscribe from those fishy newsletters that don’t even have an unsubscribe button. As its slogan states “change your email, change your life.”

    Pricing

    OnMail offers 10GB for free, or 100GB for £39.90/year, and 500GB for £79.80/user/year.

    2. Spark Mail

    On average, 28% of our working time is spent on email. Anything that can help us reduce the amount of time we’re looking at our inbox will definitely improve our productivity–and probably, our mental health.
    Spark Mail helps you love your email again. It offers intelligent email prioritisation, noise reduction, and other advanced email tools to help you achieve that perfect ‘Inbox Zero’ for the first time–and on a daily basis.

    Pricing

    Spark Mail offers 5GB for free, 10Gb for £5.60/user/month, or an Enterprise plan for larger teams.

    3. Slack

    Slack is a great tool for teams and to help you improve your productivity. With Slack you can share files, have huddle meetings, add reminders to messages, schedule notifications, have different channels for different projects, and tag users so they get a notification.
    Allow all team members to work in sync and know each other's time zones so that you can work remotely without hassle. Nowadays, it would be hard to do any planning, organising, or teamwork without Slack–it’s just that good.

    Pricing

    Slack’s free version is more than enough for most teams, but if you’re looking for some more features there’s the Pro version for £5.30/month, a Business+ plan for £10/month, or an Enterprise plan.

    4. Superhuman

    Superhuman is an AI-powered email prioritisation tool. It automatically categorises and flags important emails for you to spend your time wisely. It also lets you snooze email threads in case you’re waiting on more information before getting back to them, and it reminds you to follow up on other emails you’ve sent.
    With Superhuman you’ll be spending your time on your inbox in the most efficient way possible, turning you from a human to superhuman, minus the kryptonite. It also integrates with all email providers like Outlook, Gmail, and many more.

    Pricing

    These super powers will cost you £30 per month.

    3 Apps that help you plan your trips

    1. TravelPerk

    Corporate travel is not easy to organise. There are many moving pieces like budgets, airlines, approval processes, reporting, the list is long. However, thanks to TravelPerk you can make business travel easy and hassle-free. Its booking, management, and reporting features have everything you could possibly need.
    With TravelPerk, you have a broad range of booking options. Plus, you have all the tools for reporting and keeping expenses under control, as well as following the company's policies and procedures. Additionally, those travelling and their managers will be able to access all the necessary information from the desktop version as well as from the free mobile app available.
    With all the integrations it offers, and its project management tools, you’ll be able to give your travellers the freedom they want, your company the control they need, and make corporate travel a breeze, once and for all.

    Pricing

    TravelPerk has a Starter plan, where 5 bookings each month are free, with a 5% booking fee thereafter. If you’re looking for more you have the Premium plan for £12 per trip, or a Pro plan for £20 per trip.

    2. Expensify

    Do you need to track, report, and manage your travel expenses, or someone else’s? Expensify allows you to do this in a heartbeat. You can set it to approve some expenses automatically, or to wait for the necessary approvals.
    The Expensify’s app lets you take pictures with your phone of the receipt and upload them to better manage expenses and report with proof.

    Pricing

    Expensify has three free plans, or a Collect plan for £4/user/month, and a Control plan for only £7.20/user/month.

    3. MyTSA

    With MyTSA you’ll be able to know how long airport security checkpoint lines will be. It does this by offering historical times as well as crowd-sourced real-time reports. This will help you better plan your ride to the airport so you’re as productive as possible with your time.

    Pricing

    MyTSA is a free app.

    4 Apps that help you research and make notes:

    1. Evernote

    Evernote is an app for taking notes and mapping out ideas and events. It allows complex and extensive organisation to be simple and in one place.
    The app has plenty of functions all made to improve note-taking and organising key information. With Evernote, you can upload photos with hand-written notes as well as adding photos, PDFs, and digital files to your notes. It’s compatible with all Apple, Microsoft, and Google devices.

    Pricing

    Evernote offers a Basic plan for free or a Premium plan for £6.40 per month.

    2. Notion

    Notion is a project management app that also takes care of any note-taking that you need. Its software is designed to help team members coordinate due dates, objectives, and assignments with as much efficiency and productivity as possible.
    With Notion, you’ll be able to organise your different workplaces to keep all your work in one place–without it turning into chaos!

    Pricing

    Notion is available for free, or you can get the Personal Pro plan for $4 per month, or the Team plan for $8 per user per month.

    3. Hound

    Hound is the perfect voice assistant researching tool you need. It doesn’t just allow you to search for the nearest restaurant, or what the weather will be like, with a further question or two you can get more in-depth results.
    For example, you can find all the italian restaurants near you, and ask Hound to search through the results for those that also offer free parking and have Tiramisu on their menu. It also offers integrations with major apps like Yelp, Uber, and Expedia. Imagine how much easier you can make your life with Hound.

    Pricing

    Hound is a free app, but for £5.60 you can eliminate in-app ads and use some extra features.

    4. Otter.AI

    If you’ve been looking for a better companion to help you with taking notes during meetings, Otter.AI is the intelligent-dictation app you’ve been looking for.
    It not only takes meeting notes and records the audio, it also transcribes the text and has a highlight summary.

    Pricing

    The app offers up to 600 minutes for free and has an Otter Pro subscription for £6.70 /month and a Business plan for £16/user/month.

    3 Apps that help you stay focused:

    1. RescueTime

    Before you can improve your productivity habits, you need to know where you’re spending your time. RescueTime does exactly that. It records how much time you’re spending on the different apps and websites you have on your computer.
    Once it has a full report it will show you your stats and tell you when you’ve been productive and when you haven’t—these definitions can be customised on the settings so that the report is as accurate as possible.
    Once you’ve gone through the report you can set daily ‘Focus Work’ goals and it will keep track of it during the day to make sure you’re doing the work you want to do. There are free and paid subscriptions available.

    Pricing

    RescueTime gives you 30-days for free and will give you a special price depending on your team’s unique needs.

    2. Stayfocusd

    Stayfocusd is a free browser extension that improves your productivity by blocking those distracting websites you know stop you from working. It gives you total control with the ability to block websites either by time and date, or by time limit.

    Pricing

    Stayfocused is a free Chrome extension.

    3. Strict Workflow

    If you like productivity you’re probably already aware of the famous Pomodoro Technique where you work for 25-minutes, measured by a shiny red timer in the shape of a tomato, hence the name–and then take a well-deserved 5-minute break.
    With Strict Workflow you’ll get the benefits of the pomodoro technique straight on your browser with this free plug-in software that even lets you block certain websites during your working window.

    Pricing

    Strict Workflow is also a free Chrome extension.

    Become the best personal assistant you can be with these time-saving apps!

    Time and organisation are valuable tools for any personal assistant, with these apps you’ll get to manage both better to get the things you need to be done when you want—no hassle, no stress.
    Use any of these apps to help you improve your efficiency and productivity with a single click and make your personal assistant job as easy as possible for you.
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