My previous team was distributed (SF, TX, NY) used Geekbot in slack for standups, 9:30am local time it would prompt you to enter what you did yesterday, what you'll be working today and any blockers.
Geekbot worked good when people put thought into their reports, which was far from always - a lot of the time it'd be "yesterday: wrote code. today: will write code. blockers: everything is awful" which isn't hugely helpful for team synchronisation. That said, it was a lot better than when we tried using hangouts. With Hangouts we kept running into issues like: not socially acceptable for video conferences at desks in the SF office, and the SF people being in a conference room felt a lot more distant than the remotes on their PCs.
Current team is also distributed (same timezones as previous), but we do a highly structured standup in video conference where everyone is on equal footing signed on a workstation (instead of half being in a conf room).
Geekbot worked good when people put thought into their reports, which was far from always - a lot of the time it'd be "yesterday: wrote code. today: will write code. blockers: everything is awful" which isn't hugely helpful for team synchronisation. That said, it was a lot better than when we tried using hangouts. With Hangouts we kept running into issues like: not socially acceptable for video conferences at desks in the SF office, and the SF people being in a conference room felt a lot more distant than the remotes on their PCs.
Current team is also distributed (same timezones as previous), but we do a highly structured standup in video conference where everyone is on equal footing signed on a workstation (instead of half being in a conf room).