First of all, here is a shortcut to figure out the biggest gaps. Try taking your laptop to an unfamiliar café with Wi-Fi connection and working at least a full day from there. This is an easy stress test to check your mobile setup, letting you discover issues before you go on the road. It will not reveal everything, but it is a good start.

The biggest problem out there is power, so be sure to pack all the USB cables, chargers, and special adapters that your devices need. The more your work environment is mixed with different brands, the more you will need, so when buying new equipment remember to consider this factor. Extra batteries and portable power banks are always worth having, but don't get to heavy on it. You need power only for those 12-14 hours you will be outside of your hotel room, then both you and your devices can recharge. 

If you are traveling to a different country, you will face another problem. There are  more than 12 shapes for wall plugs. If you are unsure of what to carry, worldstandards.edu has a great summary that covers all of them. If you are North American, consider that most of the electric lines in the world deliver 220 Volts rather than 120. Luckily, all you need is an adapter which can both change the plug shape and work as voltage convertor.  Usually the cost is under $30.

The second big problem is internet access.  Wi-Fi is widely available, but there are many ways it can go wrong. It might be slow, or flaky, or expensive, or have limited access. And I know this from personal experience. While I was writing this very script, I had to use my phone's data plan because the hotel room I was in required that I like them on Facebook before I could get Wi-Fi access, and I said no way. So, before getting comfortable in a place, actually connect to the Wi-Fi and bring up a webpage first. It is also a good idea to have your data plan through your phone as a backup.

If you rely heavily on your smartphone or tablet, you might as well appreciate some travel-specific apps, which can be divided in two groups, during travel and after travel.

During-travel apps aim to make your moment to moment life easier on the road. For me, the biggest category is communication apps, such as Telegram, Whatsapp, and Teams. They are indispensable when phones fail. Google Maps and Google Lens are universally useful for providing local info. But there are also specialized city-specific and event-specific guides that are sometimes worth checking out. Finally, there is a huge and diverse field of travel-specific apps for such things as ticketing and concierge services. Rather than trying to cover the field here, simply do a search for travel apps. I found a good roundup on travelandleisure.com.

Moving to the after-travel apps, these are the tools that help you report on your activities. One example is a business card scanner like CamCard, which converts cellphone pictures into contact book entries. Another is the mileage tracker TripLog, which can make a GPS track of your movements. Then there are the expense-report tools, such as Expensify and Shoeboxed. But before you sign up for one, talk to your manager. Your company might want you to use a specific program.

Finally, remember that the whole business trip is at stake unless you make sure all the information you are acquiring day by day will not disappear, by accident or because stolen. For this you can use a flash drive to download at night all your daily efforts, but the best solution is to directly work on a cloud system, like Google Drive, One Drive or ICloud. Your data will be safely and automatically stored as soon as your device is connected to the internet. They are all pretty good and which one to choose is up to your personal taste (plus consider if they are easy to interface with all your devices).

I hope this list can be a good start for the new travellers and offer some good inspiration to veterans, but overall rest assured setting up your mobile office gets easier and easier the more you do it.