CLOUDPILOTS Keeps Their Distributed Team Organized with MindMeister, MeisterTask and Google Workspace

“With team members sitting in three different countries, the cloud-based tools from Meister and Google are essential for keeping us aligned and productive,” says CLOUDPILOTS CEO Bernhard Fieglmüller. Find out how and why the Cloudpilots use cloud-based productivity tools in this customer success story.

The CLOUDPILOTS Software & Consulting GmbH is a subsidiary of the TIMETOACT GROUP and offers professional consulting services for cloud computing solutions in the German market. With 30 employees spread out over offices in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, CLOUDPILOTS has successfully facilitated over 500 cloud migrations for their customers since their founding in 2011. 

The company’s software portfolio includes a variety of notable solutions, from Microsoft 365 to Freshworks and Txture, but focuses primarily on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google Workspace, and Chrome Hardware, to equip their customers with a complete and well-rounded digital workspace.   

Drinking Their Own Champagne

Naturally, Cloudpilots (as the company’s team members call themselves) also use the tools they recommend to their customers internally. “We don’t sell or recommend solutions we haven’t thoroughly vetted and don’t enjoy using ourselves,” explains Bernhard Fieglmüller.

“Google Workspace forms the basis for our digital collaboration. We use literally all tools included in the suite,” he says. And although Workspace offers the Cloudpilots plenty of ways to communicate — whether it be through informal chats in Google Hangouts or via comment threads on shared Google Docs and Slides — the company uses MindMeister and MeisterTask to brainstorm and organize their work. “Our main concern when considering a new tool is whether the solution integrates well with our existing infrastructure,” explains Bernhard Fieglmüller. “Meister’s solutions fit this criterion perfectly, as they are both deeply integrated with Google Workspace, offering not only user authentication through Google but also a number of seamless workflows between MindMeister, MeisterTask, and individual Google apps, such as Drive and Calendar.”

Remote Teamwork with MeisterTask

MeisterTask is where all of the team’s tasks and projects live. “Our developers still use JIRA to manage their software sprints, but aside from that, all our team members use MeisterTask to manage their day-to-day business,” says Bernhard Fieglmüller. 

As a cloud-based tool, MeisterTask helps our distributed team to stay aligned and ensure that everybody is always on the same page.

With the exception of a few projects filled with sensitive data, such as the ones used by the CLOUDPILOTS’ finance and HR departments, boards are generally accessible for all team members to ensure transparency and accountability. Even members who aren’t directly involved in a specific project are given the opportunity to view such projects, as the company uses MeisterTask’s “Team Project” functionality for all projects by default.

Onboarding new team members is an important topic for the growing company. As a Google Premier Partner whose success is largely based on the skills and experience of their individual cloud consultants, each new employee needs to receive access to a wide range of training opportunities as well as a detailed introduction to the company’s existing customers and their needs. To ensure that all important steps are included in their onboarding process, the Cloudpilots have created a template project to duplicate for each new employee.

Aside from MeisterTask’s intuitive projects and its visually appealing interface, what Bernhard Fieglmüller appreciates the most are MeisterTask’s Agenda and Reports features. 

Agenda is a great feature to organize tasks across multiple projects. It also helps me keep track of important tasks from my team members.

Reports, on the other hand, enable the CEO to get a holistic view of his team’s productivity and see at a glance who’s potentially running behind and needs a little nudge. “Since we started using MeisterTask in 2019, we’ve created 1,470 tasks in the tool and completed 918 of them,” the CEO reads from his latest report and laughs. “Looks like I’ll have to nudge a few people.”

Collaborative Planning with MindMeister

While the team initially didn’t see a big need to use Meister’s cloud-based mind mapping solution MindMeister, they now find that they use it more and more. “In contrast to MeisterTask, our developers are probably the ones who use MindMeister the most,” says Bernhard Fieglmüller. “They recently used a mind map to outline the entire roadmap for Advanced Admin, our internally developed flagship product. Each feature visualized in the map includes the code number for the respective task in JIRA, and this map is used as a guide which the developers refer to on a daily basis.”

The Cloudpilots also use MindMeister extensively for strategy and project planning. “Creating a mind map really doesn’t feel like work,” Bernhard Fieglmüller says. “It’s incredibly easy to get multiple participants into a map and collect everyone’s input. We particularly like the fact that we can link to related Google Docs and other files from topics within the mind map.”

Despite their love for MeisterTask, the Cloudpilots have also utilized MindMeister to outline urgent to-dos. “There are times when you don’t need a fully-featured project board. When Google announced the name change from ‘G Suite’ to ‘Google Workspace’, for example, we found that a mind map was all we needed to make a collection of all the places on our website and in our marketing materials where we would need to change the name. This way, we managed to keep track of all the necessary updates in one place. It was both simple and efficient.”

Aside from being a successful customer, CLOUDPILOTS is also a certified Reseller and Expert Partner of Meister. Teams looking for consultation or help with implementing Meister’s tools in their own organization can get in touch with CLOUDPILOTS via their website.