Enterprise Apps to Test Apple Watch’s Value as a Business Tool

By Don Reisinger

Slack is an enterprise social network that allows employees to communicate with each other in a fashion similar to Twitter. For Apple Watch, the app offers notifications and allows users to read the direct messages they have received. There’s also a feature in this free app that lets users reply to messages from Apple Watch.

Things is a relatively costly smartwatch app at $9.99. On the iPhone, the app is a task manager and includes a calendar that lets users see what tasks are coming up. The features are similar on Apple Watch, allowing users to check out what needs to get done. Think of Things as a to-do list app designed to improve productivity.

Microsoft’s PowerPoint for Apple Watch is a free app that remotely controls presentations. Rather than requiring users to tap a mouse to go to the next slide during a presentation, Apple Watch users can tap a play button to start the presentation and go back and forth with arrow buttons. PowerPoint for Apple Watch essentially turns the smartwatch into a remote control for presentations.

Looking to improve your productivity and don’t mind spending a significant sum of cash? Check out OmniFocus 2, which is a widely used productivity app on the iPhone that features a calendar and task creation, and on Apple Watch it acts as a notification center. Users can see what tasks are due today as well as days in the future and mark tasks that are completed. But here’s the kicker: The OmniFocus 2 app costs $39.99.

Cisco’s WebEx links Apple Watch users to video conferencing calls. Like the PowerPoint Apple Watch app, WebEx acts as a remote control on Apple Watch. The app, which is free, lets users see which participants are in a meeting, mute their microphone, and both enter and leave meetings.

Microsoft’s OneDrive is the company’s cloud storage solution. While the iPhone app lets users automatically upload their photos to OneDrive, the app on Apple Watch is far less capable. However, users can use Apple Watch to view their OneDrive photos. There’s also an option to delete photos from OneDrive.

Looking to track the amount of time you worked on a project? You can do that with HoursTracker Pro, which costs $8.99. On Apple Watch, users can start a timer to track work time, with the ability to stop and restart tracking as needed. The app will automatically share data with the iPhone version, so managers can seamlessly keep track of how much time people have worked on a project. It seems like an obvious, useful app for Apple Watch.

MobileDay is another free app that enterprise users should check out. The app catalogs all of the meetings a person has in a day, including video calls and conference calls, and lets users tap a single button to dial a number and input the conference code. It’s another notification app at heart, but it’s also useful for people who hold many meetings.

Workflow goes for $2.99, making it one of the cheapest paid apps in this roundup. For that price on the iPhone, customers can tap just once to do everything from hail an Uber ride to calculate a tip. Users can do the same on Apple Watch. But what sets Workflow apart is the ability to create a workflow. So, with a single tap, users can snap a photo, make a PDF, send it via email and tweet it without ever having to open another app.

Blue Jeans is similar to MobileDay in that keeps track of all of a person’s meetings in a day. However, its core feature is managing video conference calls, ensuring that people can log into such calls on any platform, including those from Polycom, Cisco and others. On Apple Watch, Blue Jeans lets users know when their next meeting is and automatically gets them to video calls. However, the only way to actually connect to video calls is on the iPhone.