What Are the Best Microsoft Teams Collaboration Features?

Microsoft Teams is one of the top collaboration and productivity tools available in the market. Primarily geared toward businesses and organizations, Teams is one of the most popular go-to products for groups of all sizes.

Initially released in 2017, Microsoft Teams has grown by leaps and bounds, even surpassing competitor Slack in 2019. In 2020, corporate use of Teams spiked even more as remote work was necessary, but this product did not fall by the wayside once people returned to their offices. It remains as popular as ever, with more than 320 million daily users as of 2023.

Today, Teams has evolved into an all-in-one solution for business environments. This is largely due to the many useful collaborative features it offers when contrasted against its competitors. In this article, we’ll talk a bit about how to use Microsoft Teams for collaboration. We’ll also take a look at some of the collaboration features that make Microsoft’s product so appealing to businesses, both in the private and public sectors.

What is a Team in Microsoft Teams?

Before we delve into the best Microsoft Teams for project collaboration features, let’s define a “Team” within the Microsoft ecosystem. If you’re not familiar with Teams, a “team” is a collective group of individuals, content and tools designed for specific topics, projects or departments within your organization.

Teams can be public or private. Either way, they are created to facilitate collaboration and communication for explicit purposes. This could mean a project, department, topic or other common interest the group shares.

Reasons to Use Microsoft Teams

Traditionally, when collaboration in the workplace is necessary, people have had to meet face-to-face, talk on the phone or go back and forth in emails. Sharing files could be incredibly cumbersome and involve sending large file attachments, which may need to be broken up into multiple emails

As a collaborative tool, Microsoft Teams eliminates many of the burdens people have historically faced when working together. The following are good reasons to consider choosing Teams as the software to integrate into your workflow.

• Highly user friendly. With the click of a button, conversations and meetings can easily take place.
• One-stop collaboration. People can meet, chat, call and collaborate in one digital space, even with other apps.
• Multiple collaborative tools. Not everyone works the same and Microsoft accounts for this by including numerous features; continuously adding more. App integration is very straightforward.
• Cost-effective. Teams comes with an Office 365 subscription, making it highly affordable.

Top Microsoft Teams Collaboration Features

If your organization is seeking an online platform to empower your employees to chat, interact and collaborate? If so, Microsoft Teams may be the right solution for your organization. It offers powerful capabilities that can be leveraged by businesses to drive engagement and productivity.

Let’s take a look at some of the most attractive and practical features to help your teams communicate more effectively, stay organized and simply get work done — whether they’re in the office, remote or hybrid.

Practical Features Included in Teams

The practical features embedded in Microsoft Teams are highly useful in boosting productivity while simultaneously providing your employees with an easy-to-use product. Since it seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365, this can help your organization get more from Teams. The following are great practical features that can help the internal Teams your organization establishes.

Channels

Channels is a Teams feature that many organizations find highly useful. It can be used to organize conversations and projects by department, topic, project or client.

Channels are online spaces where people can have conversations and work collaboratively. They can be structured as standard (open to all team members), private or to be utilized by people both inside and outside the team.

Additionally, any files shared in Channels are stored in SharePoint, which is easily integrated with Teams.

Chat & Threaded Conversations

Chat and Threaded Conversations are core features of Teams. With terrific communication features, your employees can enjoy real-time messaging and easy file-sharing for their collaborative efforts. Additionally, chat history is compiled all in one place, and users can establish different chat channels to organize by topic, making these “threads” easy to find.

Able to support both individual and group messages, your teams can work in small or large groups. If necessary, they can be elevated to video or voice calls with a simple click of a button. Additionally, users have the handy option to send emails to their Team Channel members. When a message is sent, it appears in a threaded conversation, easily viewable by all Team members.

Calling

Teams includes a cloud-based telephony feature to allow users to call one another from within the Teams environment. The options within the calling feature are robust, supporting audio conferences and voicemail.

Meetings & Video Conferencing

Teams offers users comprehensive virtual meeting capabilities with its video conferencing features. Users can enjoy one-on-one or group video conferences, which include customizable options, such as virtual backgrounds, the ability to record, screen sharing and live captions.

Need a large virtual space? Teams’ Webinar feature supports up to 1,000 meeting attendees. Meeting leaders have access to moderation controls, and attendees can post live reactions. Have a larger group you want to broadcast to? The conferencing feature can accommodate up to 10,000 view-only attendees.

File Collaboration

File-sharing and co-editing are vital components of collaboration, and Teams does include features to help users easily facilitate sharing. Files can be shared in one-on-one chats, in group chats or in team channels. Files in chats are stored in OneDrive for Business, while those in channels go to the team’s SharePoint location.

Users can also co-author and co-edit documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint directly in Teams; this can be done separately or in real-time. Simply open the file in Teams, either online or on your desktop.

App Integrations

Teams can integrate effortlessly with other Microsoft products, including 365, OneDrive, SharePoint, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It also has built-in tools, such as Planner, OneNote and Power BI; you can even integrate numerous third-party apps.

Shared Calendars and Scheduling

One of the biggest challenges enterprise-sized organizations face is getting everyone aligned with one another. Team’s shared calendars and schedule features can help keep everyone on the same page. Users can quickly look at the calendar and keep track of meetings. With Teams’ seamless integration with Outlook, your employees will receive automatic notifications for any meetings scheduled in Teams.

Search & Command Bar

Microsoft Teams offers a convenient feature in its command bar, located at the top of the Teams window. Users can utilize it to quickly find messages, identify locations of or access files or launch actions.

Teams App Bar

This feature empowers users to pin personal apps to their Teams. Once pinned on the Teams app bar, the app is available for quick, one-click access. Your users can also pin apps to specific channels or chats.

Security

Keeping unauthorized eyes off data is important for all organizations. Teams is an important distinguishing feature that other like products do not offer. If you’re worried about Microsoft Teams collaboration security, you need not fret. Microsoft Teams is aligned with Microsoft 365’s security standards. Users will need to follow two-factor authentication and single sign-on prompts. Teams’ administrators also have the option to set boundaries to restrict user access so they cannot view sensitive information.

Slash commands

Slash commands are a favorite feature for many because they save time and facilitate productivity. Users just need to simply type the “/” command in Team’s message box and numerous options pop up.

Users can send quick messages, make a call, show gratitude to Team members, set status, send invites and much more. For example, you can quickly type “/away” and your status is instantly set.

Virtual Whiteboard

Teams’ virtual whiteboard works much like a traditional board because it’s a way for people to collaborate in one section. Whether your teams want to brainstorm, contribute comments and share ideas, this helps them easily do this. Meeting attendees can utilize the Whiteboard app to exchange content in real-time, including adding and removing ideas – a great collaborative tool.

Meeting Recaps

At the heart of Teams is meetings. Meeting recaps are automatically generated when a meeting concludes, so all users can easily access the key points of the meeting. Within the recap are attendees, chat messages, meeting notes, files shared and a recording of any videos.

Guest User Access

Organizations that are partnering with other organizations to fulfill a mission can utilize Teams through its guest access feature. One organization can allow external members with corporate or personal email accounts to have access to things like Team meetings, threads, meetings and files.

Custom Tabs

Conversations in Teams contains a feature called Tabs, which allows users to easily access their most frequently used tools, services and files. Tabs offers two types, one for individual users for their own convenience, and the other can be utilized in group chats occurring in Teams channels. Creating a Tab is straightforward; simply click + on the Tab bar, choose the app you want to add, give your Tab a name, and then save it.

Polling

Users can create their own polls to gather feedback from participants in meetings or group chats. When collaborating with others, this is helpful to solicit opinions. This feature is also highly time-saving if you need participant input to make quick decisions.

Organizations Often Underuse Teams

Teams is packed with features — but many companies underuse it. This underuse can be attributed to many factors, including but not limited to: reliance on legacy systems, inadequate user training, organizational resistance to change, unclear ownership of who owns and manages Teams, security risks and compliance issues.

Teams “Sprawl” is also an ongoing and persistent issue for many organizations. What this means is essentially an underutilization of Teams, and results in significant cost implications. For example, unnecessary creation of Teams or underutilized groups use storage space and lead to other IT overhead expenses (e.g., cleaning up Teams and SharePoint locations).

Learning how to effectively leverage Microsoft Teams and its many features can be a great asset for organizations, but underutilization will be a costly hindrance. To alleviate the problematic issues many businesses routinely face with Teams, consider working with a partner to help with training, customization and governance.

Want to Make the Most of Your Microsoft Subscription? Red River Can Help!

Collaboration internally or externally between organizational members is a vital component to getting things done. Teams is a great tool to help your company collaborate in a productive and cost-efficient manner.

There are many intricacies involved in successfully setting up Teams software. Misusing or underutilizing features can quickly create a cumbersome and expensive experience. The professional experts at Red River are fully versed in Teams and can help your company effectively integrate it into your workflows.

Red River is often chosen as a trusted partner for a number of reasons. Our team is a group of seasoned professionals with extensive experience. Our experts continuously keep up-to-date on the newest products and features, passing on what they know to our clients, helping them to gain access to cutting edge tools and maintain a competitive advantage.

Ready to better leverage Microsoft Teams?  Contact Red River today to schedule a consultation.