A beginner’s guide to Microsoft Teams

Across the world, businesses who can are working from home in an effort to curb the spread of coronavirus – Moneypenny included. 

Remote working has transformed the way that many businesses operate, and there are a wide range of digital collaboration tools out there to support businesses in remaining productive.

Microsoft Teams has taken the remote working industry by storm and has proven to be a highly effective tool for businesses to maintain that all-important communication. It’s one we have found particularly useful as we focus on keeping connectivity and collaboration strong amongst the Moneypenny workforce.

What is Microsoft Teams?

Part of Microsoft Office 365, Teams is a collaboration and communication tool that allows remote workers to transform their home into their virtual office. It has been specifically designed to ensure that teams remain as connected as possible and are able to collaborate with one another, in spite of the fact that they may be in two, three, four or dozens of separate locations.

With entire workforces now working from home, utilising Teams can make a huge difference on how businesses are impacted by this drastic change in working practices. So, what can you expect from Teams?

Key features of Teams

Focus your conversations

The chat functionality of Microsoft Teams offers much more than traditional emailing can. You can organise various aspects of a project into separate chats, allowing your conversations to be much more focused and much easier for team members to catch up on.

Meet virtually

Whether it is two, four or twenty of your team members meeting, Teams is the ideal platform on which to do so. An added bonus of this is reducing how isolated your remote working team could feel when working from home for the foreseeable future. Instead, they can virtually meet and maintain those all-important colleague relationships.

Look back on key meetings

A very handy feature of Teams is that you can look back on past video meetings that are recorded and saved. Ideal for those that have missed the meeting and need to catch up, or for those looking for a refresher on what was covered.

Share, edit and save documents

Accessibility for remote workers is of the utmost importance and Microsoft Teams seamlessly enables this. Those with Microsoft Office 365 will already be familiar with cloud file sharing, through tools such as SharePoint; Teams integrates with this functionality so that your workforce is able to collaborate on their respective parts of a project simultaneously.

Collaborate with clients and suppliers

In a time when the majority of office-based businesses are quickly transitioning to home working, collaboration with fellow businesses can be trickier. However, you can provide certain levels of access to your clients, suppliers or partners on Teams, allowing you to continue sharing documents, contributing and meeting virtually with key contacts.

The benefits of Teams for remote workers

Keep everyone in the loop

Every aspect of a project can be put into Teams (including meetings, documents, conversations, etc.) so that your workforce can carry on with their work and find the information they need quickly and easily. As a result of this, members of your team don’t need to worry about ‘falling behind’ as everything will be there for them on the Teams platform.

Improve productivity

With everything in one place and easily accessible, your team is able to get stuck into their work. And with the added bonus that projects can be worked on by multiple people at the same time, you could find your team’s productivity levels skyrocket.

Security

Cybersecurity, now more than ever, is vital. This is a significant worry for many businesses when operating remotely and should be a key consideration. As you will have come to expect with Microsoft applications, Teams comes with the latest and greatest cybersecurity defences that are continually updated in line with technological advancements.

Keep your team motivated

It is essential to maintain these vital communication links between team members at a time like this. Feelings of isolation can be common for remote workers and businesses need to ensure their team remains motivated and positive. Teams is a great tool for keeping internal conversations flowing throughout the day and bringing teammates together. It’s real-time messaging and chatroom-style environment allows colleagues to chat in a more casual environment than email, for instance – which encourages more effective collaboration and communications.

Getting started with Microsoft Teams

Setting up Microsoft Teams is fairly straightforward, and as you would expect, Microsoft provides a whole host of information to help get you started. We have found this helpful video to guide you through the setup process.

We would love to hear from you on how your business is handling remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic. Share your thoughts with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.