I have found an solution to a situation, maybe other’s as well have. There are many communication channels, and you feel annoyed to jump between different sites and machines to read them all.

The problem

So on the private side of life you use maybe WhatsApp to communicate with friends and family. Many still use the traditional SMS messages. Then there’s of course Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the list could go on.

And on the business side of life, there is Microsoft Skype or maybe Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams or Google Chat. Then there’s Slack, GitHub and LinkedIn, Microsoft Outlook and again the list could go on and on.

But as you sit at work, and you slowly get annoyed by having to have many windows, tabs or even between computer and phone in you pocket. All the tabs take resources of the computers performance. And the constant jumping between windows and machines slowly goes on your nerves.

The solution

Well the thing I now have found for myself, and as a hint for others, is not any revolutionary and ground breaking, but maybe a useful hint for others. The app is named Franz. So what does it do and why am I exited enough to write about it?

What Franz does is bring everything into one window on your computer, and if you like in different work-space´s or all just into a list, and makes communication easy.
I have now used Franz for some time, meaning a year or so and it truly has made communication more effective during time I sit by the computer.

Not everything can be brought into Franz, like Facebook, but if you work with Facebook Pages, you can bring it, but otherwise I’ve found everything I need. At the moment my services tab looks like the picture on the right. All the available services can be found on their homepage.

It really does sort out communication, when everything is in one app, and the notifications can be set to silent if so wanted. That meaning there wont be popups, but the icon does get the know red ball with numbers, so it’s easy to see where something had been added. And for the persons with coding skills, you thru Franz GitHub pages can make your own services as well.

And as it does not to force some producer forced view, but uses the original source app layout it is familiar to use, just like in the app or program itself.

At the moment I have not found a reason to use different work-spaces, which you can set up for business time and private time. I have all the services up front for easy use. There is a client for Windows, Mac’s and Linux, so it should cover the need for the most of us.

I like very much that there is traditional SMS service as well, although you need to have the Google Messages on your phone, you can’t use the native Samsung messages in use, but that’s a small and easy thing to set up, and if you for instance have a Pixel phone, you already use it by default.

I am well aware that there’s several software like this out there but I have found Franz, and it helped me, and made my life easier. I find it easy to use, and set up, and therefore recommend it to everybody.