Please note: This post was written by Highlander prior to their rebrand to FluidOne Business IT - Sheffield.
Your people are keen to collaborate. They want to communicate quickly, share their ideas in one place and work together in real time to complete projects. As a result, giving your people the tools they need to do this has become one of IT’s top priorities, especially with so many of us now working remotely.
If you’re taking your first steps with a collaboration tool, then there’s no better place to start than Microsoft Teams. It’s built with a familiar look and feel and easily integrates with the other Microsoft applications your team use every day.
The best part is that it’s included with many existing Office 365 licenses, so if you already subscribe, there’s a good chance you have everything at your disposal to collaborate better without spending on new tech. All you need to do is get started.
With that in mind, here’s our take on 4 of the best features included with Microsoft Teams to help you get up to speed.
1. ‘Channel’ your efforts in one place
One of the key features of Microsoft Teams is that you can create projects and align them to the appropriate people.
By adding the right users to specific teams, you can ensure that everyone working on a particular project is able to centralise their collaboration in one place. This is done within an area of a team called a channel.
From inside the channel your users can communicate directly with those involved, seeing that all of the important conversations, file sharing and decisions are kept in one location avoiding cross over, confusion and clogged email inboxes.
2. Quick calls and easy communication
Microsoft Teams is replacing Skype for Business and is designed to quickly and easily facilitate calls and video conferences. You can call individual Teams users with a click of a button and speak to them via audio only or video chat. With some integration you can also dial external phone numbers directly and connect your call to them through Teams to conduct the call via your PC. There’s also a simple instant messaging chat for you to send short messages to other Teams users and help keep discussion away from email. These can be direct chats with individuals or with designated members of a specific team. The chat function can even be enabled to allow communication with people outside of your business also on Teams.
Setting up larger conference calls or briefings is just as easy. You can send a single invitation to multiple people on the fly, including those within specific channels, and even add in additional users as you go. Teams also integrates with your Outlook calendar, so any pre-scheduled calls can be easily joined without needing to locate any dial-in details.
As a couple of nice additional features, you can also blur your background when undertaking video chats from external or busy locations and easily share your screen with others on the call in one click, even handing control over to another participant as and when required.
3. Simple file sharing
As a Microsoft product, it’s no surprise that Teams is able to integrate with some of the other Microsoft platforms already available, and that includes your SharePoint site.
This means that you can easily share important files with other members of your particular channels in one place, allowing them to access the important documents they need without wasting time looking for them outside of Teams.
What’s more, you can also upload new files directly into Teams and these will be automatically added to your existing SharePoint sites.
Teams also includes native access to online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint so you can read and amend files from inside the application itself.
4. Stay in touch from your smart phone
By installing the Microsoft Teams app on your mobile devices, you can keep working and stay up to date on your key projects while you’re on the move.
Available on both iOS and Android, the app lets you access all of the features of Teams as you would do with your desktop client. That means that you can still chat with members of your channel, set up and answer calls and review files and make amends directly inside the Teams app without needing to access your desktop or PC.
At Highlander, we’re not just concerned with turning our customers on to the next big thing. We’re big believers in maximising the value of the tools you already have to help you work more efficiently, and that includes Microsoft Teams.
As mentioned in a previous blog, Microsoft Teams is just one of the cool features included with Office 365 that our customers can utilise to realise the full potential of their subscription.
To learn more about Teams and to understand how you and your people can start using this tool to work more collaboratively, get in touch with a member of the team.
