My team (I'm the project manager/tech lead) is roughly half remote, with the remotes including my product owner and lead test engineer (among others).
As noted elsewhere, thinking remote-first is required for non-co-located teams to be successful.
Technical items, in no particular order:
All meetings are conducted with full video teleconferencing.
Most meetings are configured to default participants as muted (help stop random noise on line).
When we white-board, we use a webcam (or lacking that, frequent cell-phone pics) to keep remotes in the loop.
Heavy use of IM tools, online wikis/notes, etc
Social Things:
Try to meet in person occasionally. Obviously doesn't work if people are truly global, but I usually see my team in person at conferences, client meetings, or we fly them in every so often (project kick-offs, major high-level design efforts, etc).
Find team building activities that can be conducted via video-conference. Commit to doing them regularly.
If you conduct 1-on-1s, make sure part of those meetings is social. Take the time to do some "water-cooler" chit-chat.
I work remote most of the time and so do almost all of my colleagues. But I think you've highlighted an important issue here. White-boarding!!!
No communication tool comes close to a human drawing pictures to explain complex concepts - a picture is worth a thousand words.
What I did is invest in a Wacom tablet (I do not work for Wacom) to be able to explain and draw to people I'm on calls with. It takes a bit getting used to but definitely makes my meetings much more productive.
From a technology standpoint I'm surprised there isn't a better integrated experience to mimic the actual whiteboard that can be shared across several people on a conference call with a digital pen.
Smartboards exist! Also, some competitors are creating comparable items as well. I am looking into this myself so that our engineering team can white board together.
As noted elsewhere, thinking remote-first is required for non-co-located teams to be successful.
Technical items, in no particular order: All meetings are conducted with full video teleconferencing.
Most meetings are configured to default participants as muted (help stop random noise on line).
When we white-board, we use a webcam (or lacking that, frequent cell-phone pics) to keep remotes in the loop.
Heavy use of IM tools, online wikis/notes, etc
Social Things: Try to meet in person occasionally. Obviously doesn't work if people are truly global, but I usually see my team in person at conferences, client meetings, or we fly them in every so often (project kick-offs, major high-level design efforts, etc).
Find team building activities that can be conducted via video-conference. Commit to doing them regularly.
If you conduct 1-on-1s, make sure part of those meetings is social. Take the time to do some "water-cooler" chit-chat.