With remote working becoming the new normal for many, people are having to find different ways of effectively functioning as a team.<\/p>\n
Microsoft Teams is designed to keep colleagues productively connected and ensure that everybody can continue to work as collaboratively, efficiently and securely as in the office.<\/p>\n
So, whether you already use it or are yet to try it, here are six tips to help you get the very best from Microsoft Teams while working remotely from home \u2013 or anywhere you need to:<\/p>\n
Recent research from Microsoft\u2019s Work Reworked report reveals that people feel that a staggering 52% of their work time each week is spent inefficiently due to things like unnecessary interruptions, searching for information and inefficient meetings.<\/p>\n
The end-to-end capability of Microsoft Teams\u2019 meetings helps remove frustration and inefficiency by bringing everything you need for every meeting into one place. As you plan meetings, you can use Teams to add an agenda, documents to pre-read and other discussion topics.<\/p>\n
Then, during the meeting, you can keep everybody focused on the topic by switching on video for a more engaging personal experience, blurring the background to avoid distractions, and using live captions so every word spoken is clear to all. Plus, you can collaborate on Office 365 documents and develop ideas in real time using the digital whiteboard.<\/p>\n
After the meeting, all the meeting assets, including a recording, action points, whiteboard and meeting notes are available, so the team can continue to discuss and collaborate on topics started during the meeting. That means everybody\u2019s in the loop and nobody gets frustrated trying to find materials developed or shown during the meeting. Even those who couldn\u2019t attend.<\/p>\n
With Microsoft Teams live events you can organise larger meetings such as town halls, marketing webinars, launch events and training events \u2013 delivering presentations with up to 100,000 attendees inside or outside your organisation. That means you can be sure that everybody working remotely can participate and get up to speed.<\/p>\n
Apps let you do more in Microsoft Teams. Think about the familiar tools, files and dashboards that your organisation already uses. Many of them can be added to Microsoft Teams, and you can add new ones by going to Apps. You can use them in both chats and channels, so you\u2019ll have all the relevant information and tools you need to be as productive as possible, whoever you\u2019re working with.<\/p>\n
Here are some interesting apps and bots to check out. Go to the Apps section in Teams to discover more \u2013 new ones are being added all the time.<\/p>\n
Who: Use this bot to get information about anyone in your organisation. You can check out the Meetings tab for participant information, so you know exactly who you\u2019ll be meeting with. It\u2019s also very handy when you receive a message from someone unfamiliar and quickly want to find out who they are and what they’re working on.<\/p>\n
Microsoft Planner<\/a>:\u00a0Organise upcoming tasks by adding one or more Planner tabs to your Teams channel. You can track the status of existing tasks and be notified if a new one gets assigned to you.<\/p>\n Icebreaker<\/a>: This\u00a0Microsoft Teams bot<\/a>\u00a0helps your team get to know each another by pairing two random team members every week to meet online or \u2013 when possible \u2013 offline. The bot makes scheduling easy by automatically suggesting free times that work for both. It\u2019s great for strengthening personal connections between remote teams, helping to build and maintain a tight-knit community.<\/p>\n