With awkward setups and slow connections a thing of the past, real-time collaboration tools have hit their stride as serious business tools. You don’t need an IT department to support them, or a dedicated T-1 line to handle the bandwidth–any user can benefit from the productivity and savings these tools offer. Below is a rundown of some of the free tools available, their functionality, and how you can make the most of their features.

Tools/Features

Before we delve in to the specific services, let’s examine some of the common features offered by current collaboration tools:

Audio/Video/Text Chat – Video and Audio chat is the foundation of most real-time collaboration, as well as a text chat/IM window.

Screen-sharing – It’s often quicker to show rather than tell. Screen-sharing is just what it sounds like, the ability to share your screen with other participants. In addition, some services offer the ability to take control of another user’s computer, making troubleshooting and testing even more efficient.

Whiteboard – A common sketchpad for the entire group to share. A whiteboard generally offers the ability to share on a blank canvas or on top of existing documents, files, or shared screens.

File Transfers – It’s nice to be able to send files as needed during a meeting, and most services offer no size restrictions – unlike your inbox, which limits files sizes and requires using a service like YouSendIt to accomplish the same task.

Recording – After a meeting is over, it can be great to have a recording of what was seen and discussed, in order to explicitly follow direction, write follow up emails detailing expectations, or simply to keep as a reference. Keep in mind, for obvious privacy reasons, it’s always best to disclose when you’re recording a meeting.

Services

There are lots of services that can accomplish all or some of these tasks, but we’re going to focus on free services with a fairly complete feature set.

Skype – The ubiquitous communication app can easily be extended with “Skype Extras”–if you’re on a PC– to include most of the functionality mentioned above. File transfers and Screen-sharing are included, although not keyboard and mouse control–yet.

Yugma – Yugma is a free “Skype Extra” that allows users to do all of the above, and while regular Skype users without Yugma will not be able to use the functions, they will still be able to see Yugma features in use by others and participate in the meeting.

DimDim – This browser-based tool not only includes all of the features above, but it does so in one easy, intuitive package. While DimDim does require a small plug-in to be downloaded, the experience is worth the effort, and does not require a browser or computer restart, so new users will be up and running quickly.

Mikogo – Mikogo is basically the “lite” version of the paid parent company, BeamYourScreen. Unlike it’s more expensive kin, Mikogo unfortunately requires a download for both the host and client.

Vyew – The only offering mentioned that operates entirely inside of your browser, Vyew is fully-featured (with the exception of recording) and does not require anything other than the Adobe Flash plug-in.

Honorable Mentions and Paid Services

Google Docs – The ability to share a document, spreadsheet or presentation and simultaneously work and annote it while chatting in the sidebar makes this a task specific tool that is powerful and simple. Unfortunately, Google Talk does not currently support conference calls.

GoToMeeting and WebEx – With such a huge user base, the Citrix and Cisco-based subscription solutions are worth investigating if your clients already use them. However, the guys over at techCrunch actually prefer Skype–as mentioned in this blog post–despite its lack of features, simply because it works.

Glance – A paid service targeted at sales professionals who need rock solid screen-sharing for software demos, Glance is easy. The download/install took under 30 seconds, and on the client side, entering in MyUserName.Glance.net and entering a 4 digit pin, required no downloads, and was very fast. Although limited as a collaboration tool–for sales–it’s simple and it works.

Hopefully you’ll spend more time using these tools to collaborate than in getting them to work. The technologies above are only useful if you and your team are on-task and prepared to collaborate. Bonus tip: send follow up emails to voice/video calls to solidify objectives and clarify expectations.

What collaboration tools are you using? Let us know in the comments!

Alex Hornbake is one of several freelance writers on the oDesk Blog team. He joined the oDesk marketplace in 2009, and brings more than a decade of technical expertise to his clients. Alex shares his point of view to help you make informed decisions for your personal and business technology choices.