It goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to many businesses adopting a more home-based working environment. With this sudden shift, the use of video conferencing software such as Microsoft Teams has rapidly increased with over 44 million daily users using it as it stands.
For those of you that don’t know Microsoft Teams that well, essentially it is a chat and collaboration platform for Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365) that allows users to share files and schedules, work together on projects and switch seamlessly between voice, video and text chatting. The good news is that the application is free for those already using Microsoft 365. However, for those that are not using that platform you are able to use Teams for free if you have less than 300 individuals that need it. It is important to note that the free version of Teams only has 10 GB of storage which doesn’t include Office 365 services so it may be best to get Microsoft SharePoint implemented or consider a cloud platform such as Microsoft Azure.
No matter what way you choose to use Microsoft Teams in your business, the collaboration platform can form an extremely helpful part in remote working adoption by making it easy to stay connected with those employees that are working remotely.
To help you get the very best out of Microsoft Teams whilst working from home, in our latest blog article, we’ve put together 7 Microsoft Teams tips that will help you whilst working from home.
1 – Pin apps to the left-hand rail
This feature which is often overlooked allows a user to pin personal apps to the Teams app bar on the left-hand side which provides much better accessibility. To do this, all you need to do is find the app, right click on it and select Pin.
2 – Build teams across your business
You will find that all SMEs have a single team channel contained within Microsoft Teams. If you have admin rights and a team of less than 5000 users, you can simply create an ‘Org-wide team’ by using the ‘Build a team from scratch’ option in Teams. The best part of this is the fact that this group will automatically keep membership up to date via the Active Directory as users both join and leave the business.
3 – Easily sync files to your desktop via Teams
You will find that each Teams user is able to sync files directly from Teams straight to their desktops. Completed via SharePoint, Microsoft recently rolled out its state of the art new file experience that gives users the power to see previews of documents for over 320 file types, easily view document life cycles & much, much more. For businesses, this is perfect as users can save their most critical files to their devices directly from a Teams message.
4 – Easily Record Teams meetings and group calls
You will find that each Teams user can now easily record their Teams meetings as well as group calls, capturing both audio & video in addition to any screen sharing activity which is particularly useful for long meetings or when critical information is divulged. However, it is important to note that you will need access to Microsoft Stream to do this.
5 – Directly share to Outlook via Teams
Microsoft recently released an update that allows users to share either a chat or channel conversation as an email via Outlook – better still you can do this without even leaving the Teams app. To be able to do this, simply within a message or channel, select More Options followed by Share to Outlook, select the recipient, customise the email and send it!
6 – Easily assign tags to names
This makes life so much easier as rather than copying and pasting the same message to each individual in a group, Microsoft have now simplified this process by giving users the ability to assign team members with specific tags. To give you an example of this, if the head of Sales want to send a message to all managers, all they need to do is simply select the @manager tag to send the message to those people. Furthermore, you are able to group users further by common attributes, roles, projects, locations and much, much more.
7 – Easily add important apps to Teams
Within Microsoft Teams, users can easily use their favourite apps. In order to find an app, simply go to Apps on the left-hand side and either search for the app or browse the app categories. After you have found the app you are looking for, all you need to do is click Add. After you have done this, the app will be added as a tab in channels, group chats or to individual conversations simply by using the Add a tab button.
Next Steps?
If you are a business that is looking to get started with Microsoft Teams or have any other Managed Services related requirements then please get in touch with our teams of IT experts today.
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