Communication tools in international/distributed software development projects with Microsoft technology

I'm using Visual Studio and .NET as my main development tools and platform, and quite often, I end up working with client projects that are either distributed or international. In this case, team communication is often a question, and I wanted to share my solution's.

Most often, I'm using Microsoft's Skype for Business for team calls and chat. I find the Business version of Skype better than the regular consumer Skype, because chat history is collected in Outlook's conversation history. Furthermore, meetings from your calendar show up in the Skype for Business client, and you have the ability to record sessions.

Chat is a very effective way for communication, especially when it is combined with presence information. Different time zones (especially between U.S. and Europe) can be a challenge, but the team needs to be flexible.

Web-based solutions such as Microsoft's own Yammer and Slack can also be effective. File sharing can be easily done using OneDrive, which also allows collaborative document editing.

To summarize, combining Office tools (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) with Skype for Business and OneDrive is an effective set of tools for digital communications in software development projects. Perhaps, these are best acquired using an Office 365 subscription.