Our top Microsoft Teams hacks for productivity

We’re working in an era where some employees are dispersed across locations; working from home,  from the office, or from another remote location. Various locations means new pain points, particularly around collaboration, teamwork and productivity.

So what can IT do to help? Online collaboration tools make it easier for your employees to keep in touch with one another, and work on tasks, projects and documents collaboratively. Here’s how Microsoft Teams can help bridge the gap between remote and office based employees.

How your business and employees can benefit from collaboration and planning software

Online collaboration tools are a great way for your workers to feel connected with one another whilst not physically in the same room, and the right software will increase productivity.

Better information access

Working across Teams means your employees have centralised access to all files, documents and media. Regardless of the locations of your employees, your employees will have ease of access to business critical files through the cloud. And with Teams, your users will be able to work in real-time. It’s probably fair to say we’ve all been there copy and pasting files and renaming a document ‘Final2’ or ‘Final_JohnSmith Version’! Users can also restore previous versions of documents.

Client facing calls

At a time where face-to-face meetings have decreased, workers can use Microsoft Teams to not just work with their colleagues, but also work with their clients. Whether it’s an important meeting, a catch-up or an informal chat, Teams can be used to video, chat or call leaving your inbox free for important emails.

Online collaboration tools are more secure

With online collaboration tools, your data is stored in the cloud. And granted that the cloud isn’t exactly perfect, ( let’s face is no system is), but it is much more secure than storing your data locally. When storing data locally, your business will be responsible for keeping it secure, but working with a provider means they’ll manage the security side of it for you. It’s a benefit because a good provider will work to:

• Keep you updated on product updates to ensure you’re using the latest version
• Keep you aware of security threats
• Work with you to organise backups and contingencies in case of any incidents

Our top hacks for Microsoft Teams whilst remote/hybrid working

Manage and assign tasks with Microsoft Planner

Not being present in the office together can cause quite the difficulty in collaborating and planning & managing tasks along with deadlines. Microsoft Planner is a great tool to set tasks or projects, assign to the appropriate users and to set deadlines. This enables teams to have a comprehensive view into all tasks. And best of all, it integrates right into Teams which means when tasks are assigned to a specific person, the user will get a notification in Teams.

Leverage OneNote

Your users able to take shared meeting notes by adding notes, images, ideas and audio recordings. Multiple users are able to annotate at the same time which increases productivity and keeps all users updated.

Email integration

We’re well aware of how important emails are when it comes to communication. Through Microsoft Teams, users can forward emails from Outlook to a channel. All users have to do is click on the ellipses next to the channel, and then select ‘Get email address’. This will then create an email address for the channel, from there users can forward on messages and attachments.

Install the mobile app

Both the iOS and Android apps are created with including the most crucial and intuitive features to adapt to a smaller screen size. With the app your users can always be kept up to date on ongoing projects

Make use of channels and channel tabs

Encourage your employees to use the channels as a way to stay organised with documents, conversations and planning. When you create a team, it’ll automatically create a ‘general’ channel. But to take it one step further you can add further channels as and when needed to stay organise.

 Every one of your channels will also have a post tab which can be used for conversations and managing documents. From here you can also add additional tabs. A few examples are a OneNote notebook, a planner or a third-party app.

For more information on Microsoft Teams, contact our Microsoft Gold certified team today.