How to combine async and video standups with Range

Run more effective and efficient standups with Check-ins

Standups: they’re short, highly effective meetings meant to unblock your team and tackle issues. They’re a moment to connect, face-to-face, and collaborate on moving work forward.

Or at least that’s the intention...

Too often, daily standup meetings morph into something long, unwieldy, and ineffective. As your group grows, the meeting meant to unblock the team can actually leave folks with more questions. People have less time to give meaningful updates, folks check-out because updates aren’t relevant to them, and the most high-value tasks — like tackling blockers — end up getting pushed to follow-up meetings because status updates take up too much time.

And that’s just for in-person teams. If your team is remote or hybrid, there’s an added level of complexity as you work to schedule standups at a time that’s inclusive to all time zones and WFH situations.

If you’re feeling the struggle with your team’s daily standup, Range can help.

Enter: the asynchronous Check-in. By using Check-ins to keep a pulse on in-flight work, teams can move status updates out of standups to free up more time to work through what actually matters together. Teams can prep for standup by sharing and reading each other’s Check-in, and then use facetime to connect and work through blockers together.

In this article, we’ll cover how to:

  1. Keep a pulse on in-flight work with daily Check-ins
  2. Get everyone on the same page with prompts
  3. Connect the Range app to Zoom
  4. Enhance your Zoom standup with updates and team-building from Range

1.  Keep a pulse on in-flight work with daily Check-ins

The first step to more effective standups is to move the status update component of your meeting to asynchronous Check-ins.

Check-ins make it easy to share structured, consistent updates that keep everyone in the loop on in-flight work. They help teams align before the standup meeting so that facetime can be used to discuss the most high-priority areas. (Think: blockers, flags, etc.) They also give folks the opportunity to share more valuable context than they wouldn’t normally have time for in an in-person standup — with deep links back to project specs, links out to Asana tasks, and more.

Tip: You can set a custom Check-in schedule in Range to keep sharing updates top of mind. For instance, if your video standup meeting is at 11 am each morning, you can set it up so the team will be reminded to do their async Check-in at 9:30am. When you set a schedule, Range will send out reminders to the team and a summary of everyone’s Check-in too, which can be used as a pre-read before the Zoom standup.

Get started with Check-ins on your team

2. Connect the Range app to Zoom

Range helps you pull status updates out of your standup meetings by sharing asynchronous Check-ins beforehand. Then, you can bring all that useful information into your Zoom standup connecting Zoom to the Range app.

To connect Range to Zoom, go to Settings > Integrations. Find the Zoom integration from the list and click ‘Install’.

Team reviewing Check-ins in Zoom

3. Enhance your Zoom standup with updates and team-building from Range

Once you’ve connected the Range app to Zoom, you and your team can start using some of Range’s most valuable features before and during the meeting to get the most out of your daily standup.

  • Share and engage with Check-ins: When you join your standup in Zoom, you’ll be prompted to share your daily Check-in if you haven’t already. Under ‘Teammate Check-ins’, you can view Check-ins from your teammates and pin (📌) to items you want to discuss live with the team.
  • Build empathy with moods: You can share how you’re doing and see how your teammates are doing too with moods. Sharing daily moods helps builds psychological safety and a sense of belonging on teams over time.
  • Connect and get conversation flowing with icebreakers: When your Zoom standup starts, the ‘Icebreakers’ view will reveal a random team-building question to kick things off. Research shows that if someone speaks during the first few minutes of a meeting they’re more likely to remain engaged throughout.
  • Encourage participation with the spinner: We built a spinner tool to give everyone an equal chance to speak during meetings (especially on Zoom, where it can be awkward to determine who speaks next). When you click on the spinner, it will randomly select a meeting participant to speak next.
  • Talk through highlights, flags, and blockers: During the meeting, you’ll navigate to the ‘Highlights’ view talk through pins (📌), flags (like blockers), and celebrations (👏) as a group.

Tip: You can use Check-in prompts to collect all the right info before your stand-up and then add items to the agenda for discussion over Zoom. There are two types of prompts: #Tags (used to group items by topic or project) and [Flags] (used to notify teammates about something that requires attention).

For a Zoom standup, you might use #tags to group related work items for an upcoming launch (#ProjectMercury) and [flags] to highlight blockers you want to address or wins you want to celebrate during the meeting.

Learn more about the Range app for Zoom

Try it out

Daily standups shouldn’t be a struggle. If the meeting meant to unblock and tackle has morphed into 30 minutes of  “who’s working on what” — you’ve got an opportunity to make it more engaging and effective.

Combining Range Check-ins with Zoom meetings can help teams run more effective daily standups. With Check-ins to cover the basics, Zoom meetings can focus on tackling blockers, moving work forward, and actually bonding as a team. Teammates will leave feeling energized, empowered, and connected.

To try it out for your next standup, head to Range and install the Range app for Zoom.

To bring your team on board, the following article offers guidance and tips to help everyone find their Check-in groove.

How to write your first Check-in

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