Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks: How to Get the Most Out of Your Teams
Microsoft Teams is a fully featured platform that’s growing all the time. Between its native features, third-party solutions, and complete Office 365 integration, there’s a lot to work with. Consequently, it’s no wonder that not everyone is leveraging MS Teams to its fullest extent. Here are some Microsoft Teams tips and tricks to make Microsoft Teams more useful and usable for your office.
Schedule Meetings in Teams and Outlook
Meetings in Teams can be synced with Outlook calendar, and even launched from within Outlook calendar. By scheduling meetings like this, you make it less likely that team members will forget to participate or prepare. When properly integrated, your Outlook calendar can track everything that you need to know, making it a one stop dashboard for all your scheduling needs.
To Meme or Not to Meme: What Should You Allow in Teams?
Microsoft itself recommends using GIFs to “inject some personality into your conversations,” but whether that’s right for your company depends on your company culture. GIFs and emoji make it easier for employees to communicate tone. Teach employees how to properly use GIFs and emoji in a professional but friendly way, and you’ll be on your way to building up your office camaraderie.
Encourage Tagging to Improve Response Times
Why use Microsoft Teams if it isn’t to make sure you’re heard? When employees tag each other, it sends an alert. Anything that needs a response quickly should be tagged. Make sure employees aren’t tagging each other constantly, because that can just cause disruption (and lead to people ignoring the tags moving forward).
Explore Integration with Your Existing Solutions
MS Teams can support a wide variety of integrations, including Salesforce and other popular suites. By integrating your Microsoft Teams installation with your other solutions, you can use MS Teams as an all-in-one dashboard for everything going on in your organization. And through the Teams API, anything that isn’t already integrated with MS Teams can be with a little extra work.
Have Policies in Place Regarding Channel Creation
Channels are the heart of what organizes your communication. Each team has a channel, which they can use to communicate with each other, and consolidate their information. But while you can make multiple teams and channels, you should make sure to limit it. Too many teams and too many channels will lead to confusion. Teams should represent permanent and semi-permanent groups of individuals who are working together consistently, with a shared goal.
Don’t Forget to Use SharePoint for Your Files
SharePoint is one of the most useful integrations for MS Teams. By consolidating your document management through SharePoint, you can ensure that everyone gets the same copy of each file, while also making sure that files aren’t overwritten, and multiple copies of the file aren’t floating around. Attach and link SharePoint files, and keep each SharePoint file secured on your Office 365 server.
Looking for More Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks?
MS Teams is a full collaborative and communication solution, which means there’s a lot more out there about its use. Check out the Collab365 Community for others tips we haven’t mentioned here.
When you use Microsoft Teams correctly, you’re using an incredible productivity and collaboration tool. But if it isn’t used correctly, it’s just another communication suite. Contact Red River today.
