We’ve always been very familiar with spending our working lives on software, but with the rise in remote working, Microsoft Teams has provided solutions for a fair number of processes and tasks.
In a world where teams are more dispersed it’s boosted productivity, collaboration, and communication when we’ve needed it most.
But are we getting enough out of it?
Here are 6 ways you can maximise the effectiveness of Microsoft teams, giving your employees the tools to work smarter.
- Try everything it offers at least once
You can use Teams just to have a chat with colleagues, but there is much more you can get out of it. Share a file and follow up with a call to chat it through – see all the history of the document so you can see who shared it and what amends have been made.
There’s a whole suite of options, so try them all out – OneNote is a note-taking platform that has multiple benefits both inside Microsoft Teams and outside of the ecosystem, so make sure you try everything it offers to see how it might save you time and hassle.
- Fall in love with meetings again
Meetings can waste a lot of time at the best of times – finding a time, sharing agendas (if there even is one!), noting action points, following up etc.
Use Microsoft Teams to manage your whole meeting process. Once you’ve booked in the meeting, you can chat to everyone straight away. Want to share the agenda or plan? Send it in the chat. Any other documents to send? Use the chat. It all stays in one place and will be there for future reference as well. You can even take a poll right there in the same window.
Once the meeting is over, the recording will be there straight away in the same place. Missed a key bit for the notes? No problem you have the recording, no need to hunt around for it, it is there.
- Hate the reply all?
If you asked employees what their least favourite part of their workday would be, right after meetings would be working through emails. If you’re bored of getting a massive chain of emails and not being able to follow it in real time, encourage your teams to use the instant chat feature.
You can chat directly to the person you need to with Teams, it also keeps all your history in one place in an organised manner to stop your mailbox filling up repeatedly.
If somebody needs to send you a file, or ask you a quick question? That’s what chat is for!
- Stop, Collaborate and listen
Thanks to the tight integration with Office 365, you don’t need to switch apps when you need to collaborate on a document. You add Word, Excel or PowerPoint document in Teams, immediately share it with your co-workers and then co-author within a blink of an eye.
No more sending out different versions through email and the resulting version confusion. You can add comments and to-dos, and chat with your co-workers to discuss the document right there.
- Stay connected, everywhere you need
With the Teams app on your phone, you can stay connected wherever you are. Join meetings, update your team, join meetings and share files.
Access all your apps and documents on the move. You can keep in touch on your travels, forgotten an important file on your way to a meeting? It will be there ready and waiting for you.
- Not just a boring chat client
Teams isn’t just a boring faceless communication tool; you can build a good friendly culture. Inject a bit of fun with inbuilt GIFs, stickers and you can even send praise to colleagues.
