How to maximise the use of Microsoft Teams in your business

The way in which we are working is changing, with more and more businesses becoming global and mobile. Working on the go and collaborating on different projects is fast becoming common place in the modern-day workplace.  

This is why it's so important that your business embraces this change in business environment by using the latest technology, such as Microsoft Teams, to make working together more efficient and productive. To help you on this journey, in our latest tips and tricks article we will provide you with 7 of our best tips on maximising the use of Microsoft Teams in your business. 

Tip 1: Avoid Team Duplication

Before you go about creating a new Microsoft Team, it is of the utmost importance to make sure that you check to see that another team doesn’t already exist. This has further importance if you provide users with the ability to create new Teams and Office 365 Groups as Microsoft Teams is unable to detect duplicate team names.

Tip 2: Define naming conventions

In principle, ensuring that you have a strong naming convention for Teams and Groups in your business is a good idea. However in practice, it can be quite challenging to enforce especially if all users can create their own Team. The key to ensuring that naming conventions succeed in your business is all about good communication with your peers. Parts of the naming convention can be automated within the Office 365 Admin Centre which allows you to block certain words from being used or certain suffixes/prefixes which can be applied to all Group/Team names.

Tip 3: Create a Team for each project

Ensuring that each project has its own Team can make it much simpler for team members to stay focused on that specific project as well as making it easier for them to be able to organise and access the relevant documents for that project. This can be particularly handy when you have employees working on multiple projects at the same time, as well as when Microsoft allows external users to join a Team.

Tip 4: Ensure connections are two-way

Two-way connections between Teams and SharePoint can be created through a link to the Teams team on SharePoint, copying the URL of the Teams team and adding it to the Quick Launch links. From this, you will then be able to use the link to open the Team when you access Microsoft Teams.

Tip 5: Don’t get carried away with planning

Whilst having a plan to establish initial channels is a good idea, it is important to ensure that you don’t get too carried away with it all. Each channel has its own separate Files tabs within the Team’s document library. By setting up a channel which doesn’t include anything simply adds to the number of tabs that people have to go through to be able to access documents. The best approach is to start slowly with a few channels and then add new channels as and where appropriate.

Tip 6: Don’t customise shared document libraries

It’s widely recommended not to tailor the default documents library. This library can be used for general use sharing, providing access to users that need these shared documents. If you want to use customised document libraries these can be established on the Teams site for team-relevant files.

Tip 7: Create a consistent user file experience

Connection to files within Microsoft Teams is via the Teams chat facility or through the Team site in SharePoint. Through the creation of tabs using SharePoint for all document libraries on the Team site and a tab with the Website tab connector on the Team site, all Team members will be able to access the new files wherever they have been created.

If your business is looking to learn more about Microsoft Teams or is looking for a one to one consultation or advice on how to use it effectively, then get in touch with Advantage today.

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