Bring your Remote Workforce Together with Microsoft Teams
Now, with your workforce working remotely amid the ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, communications and information sharing can be a challenge. Microsoft Teams (included with most Office 365 plans) is a powerful tool for enabling communication and collaboration among your remote workforce.
Microsoft Teams works by assigning your users to different groups (Teams). These Teams can be departments (accounting), function (first aid), or any other logical grouping you can think of. In the Microsoft Teams app, each user gets automatically added to any Teams they are a part of.
Each Team in Microsoft Teams can have one or more Channel. A Channel is a grouping of information which can include a bunch of different information types
Posts & Instant Messaging: Group-based communication/chat, almost like Facebook posts, enables you to post announcements, share files, engage in conversations, and interact with your Team using features such as Polls.
Meetings & Audio/Video Conferencing: Teams enables you to easily create online Team meetings, which allows Team members to meet using audio/video conferencing, share their screens and create virtual whiteboards.
File Sharing: Teams enables you to create file shares specifically for the Teams Channel. This is natively done using SharePoint/OneDrive for Business, but you can also link other Cloud Storage services like Dropbox or Box if you already have those tools in place.
Wiki: Teams also lets you create fast, simple-to-use Wikis for your Channel. A similar to a multi-page document that allows your Team store to important information and easily access it.
Much more: You can also integrate other documents, web-sites, Microsoft and 3rd Party cloud apps etc. directly into your Channel.
In addition to features designed for Internal Communications, Microsoft Teams also provides you with the ability to have Audio/Video/Web meetings or presentations with people outside your organization. These Online events can be 1:1 or accommodate over 10,000 participants. Optionally if you want external parties to be able to Phone into your Conference, you can do so with a simple add-on license.
Microsoft Teams has so many features that it’s hard to cover it all in an article. Given that Microsoft Teams is so powerful and that for many companies there is no additional cost to use it, we encourage all of our clients to explore Microsoft Teams and see if it will be a good fit for your organization. The best place to start is by watching the 2.5 minute video from Microsoft (link below) that gives a high-level overview of Microsoft Teams and lets you see it in action.
Talk to an Expert
If you are considering Microsoft Teams and have any questions or would like assistance in implementation, please reach out to your happier IT representative or email team@happierit.com.
If you’re not yet a happier IT client, but you are interested in becoming one, please contact sales@happierit.com.