Teams across the globe are moving to remote work. Microsoft aims to keep teams connected while they work apart by making Microsoft Teams available to as many people as possible.
Here are some tips on working together:
Make up for missing hallway talk
The quick chat at the water cooler is what many people miss the most when working remotely. Instead, be deliberate about connecting with your coworkers. Think about chat messages as your virtual water cooler and set yourself a reminder to check in with people regularly.
Be mindful and inclusive
A crowded conference call can make it difficult for people to share their opinions. Pause frequently to allow time for questions and remind attendees that they can use the chat window to share their thoughts.
Bring the team together
Working remotely can feel a bit isolating. It’s important to create opportunities for the whole team to virtually get together, whether through large brainstorms with the Microsoft Whiteboard app or daily check-ins over a virtual coffee.
Have fun
Use Teams to encourage fun activities and challenges to maintain morale. Holding a photo contest or praising employees for creative ideas are great ways to help the team stay positive, engaged, and energized.
Microsoft Teams Courses & Certifications
There are 2 popular Teams courses by Microsoft:
We can help your organisation obtain the security skills you need. Our VILT training method allows candidates from any location to attend training.
Microsoft Teams for End-Users
This course will give guidance on how to use the tools for chat, file sharing, meetings and calls. The course will also give direction on best practices for sharing files with external parties and show how to access other services available in the tenant directly from within Teams. There will be a series of labs to practice the methods taught during the course.
The intended audience for this course are Power Users who will need to support the user base, advise on functionality and when to use what tool for the right collaboration need.
Contact us to attend the Microsoft Teams End-User course.
Managing Microsoft Teams (MS-700)
The Microsoft Teams Administrator configures, deploys, and manages Office 365 workloads for Microsoft Teams that focus on efficient and effective collaboration and communication in an enterprise environment.
The Teams Administrator must be able to plan, deploy, and manage Teams chat, apps, channels, meetings, audio conferencing, live events, and calling.
Contact us to attend the Microsoft Teams (MS-700) course.
Role-based Tips for Teams
Marketing
Marketing teams need to create, collaborate and show results while working with a diverse group of people from both inside and outside the company. Why not do it all in one place?
Teams provides a shared workspace for all conversations, files, and third-party services. Now it’s easier to manage marketing campaigns and social channels, collaborate on content creation, and plan events.
Create a new team named Marketing. Invite internal and external teammates from all marketing groups, including PR, Brand and Design.
Add channels for marketing initiatives, projects and teams, such as Go-to-Market, Public Relations, Event Planning and Budget; as well as channels where marketers can interact and communicate with agencies, consultants, and partners using secure guest access.
For each channel, connect relevant third-party services, such as Bing News Alerts, Twitter Connector, Adobe Creative Cloud, HootSuite and YouTube.
Create and store marketing assets - such as plans, briefs, press releases and design files - in the Files section.
Pin the marketing plan, budget and / or campaign landing page to relevant channels for easy reference.
Schedule and hold all meetings in Teams using audio and video conference features, as well as chat and file-sharing.
Sales
Teams can help sales teams quickly build proposals with input from different stakeholders, while making it easier to manage longer term projects and programs, such as planning, training and sales readiness. Collaboration, reporting, and knowledge sharing can happen in one place, helping sales professionals everywhere—in the home office and the field—work together to meet sales objectives.
Create a new team for your entire sales organisation or a team for each sales segment.
Add channels, such as Sales Readiness, Sales Planning, RFPs / Proposals, Wins, and Best Practices; as well as a channel for general topics.
Schedule recurring team meetings, such as monthly business reviews.
Upload team documents to relevant channels - sales playbooks and guides in the Sales Readiness channel, RFP documents in the RFP / Proposals channel, and so on.
Provide important data and customer information in one place. Pin apps used by your sales team - PowerBI, Planner, task management apps like Trello - to each channel.
Set up connectors, such as RSS feeds for customer updates.
Finance
Finance teams need to aggregate and report on data while conducting business reviews on a regular cadence. Teams provides a hub in which all files, data, conversations and meetings can happen in a single place, safely and securely.
Create a new team for your entire finance organisation.
Add channels for Finance Reviews, Business Insights, Audits, Governance and Compliance.
Schedule recurring team meetings, such as monthly business reviews.
Upload team files to the channels, such as annual financial statement reviews and audit reports.
Pin relevant apps used by the team - Excel, PowerBI, Planner - or pin critical files, intranet portals, or websites.
Human Resources
Teams can help HR professionals manage recruitment and employee onboarding activities, including sharing resumes and interview notes, keeping track of candidate information, communicating hiring decisions, and sharing new employee documents.
Create a new team for your HR department.
Add channels for Recruitment, Training, Events, Reviews, and Onboarding.
Schedule meetings - planning, interviews, candidate reviews - in Teams.
Upload team files to the channels - HR policies, candidate information, offers, training or recruitment guidance notes, HR portals, feedback forms and surveys.
Use a shared OneNote or Wiki for candidate feedback.
Host training sessions using audio/video conferencing in Teams.
Share agendas, presentations, and post-training surveys using third party apps like Survey Monkey.
Pin apps used by your HR team, such as Excel, PowerBI, and Planner.
Information Technology
Teams provides IT professionals with a single hub to plan, execute, and manage all phases of infrastructure deployments and roll-outs - a useful tool to help drive transformation and change management across the organization.
Create a new team and add members from IT and other stakeholders from across the company.
Add channels for Service Strategy, Problem, Incident and Change, Deployment, Health and Reporting, Readiness and Adoption, Support and Management, and Governance.
Upload important files or logs to the channels.
Pin relevant apps used by your team, such as Word, Excel or Planner.
Set up connectors, such as bots for process automation.
Schedule and hold recurring or impromptu meetings with key stakeholders from within Teams.
Engineering
Engineers move quickly between ideation, development and deployment of a concept when delivering new features. Teams is integrated with developer tools, enabling continuous discussion across a distributed team to keep projects on track during sprints, as well as ongoing bug resolution.
Create a new team for your engineering group and add key stakeholders across the company.
Add channels for General, Feature Releases, Testing, Feedback, Competitive Information, Go-to-Market, Research and Product Analytics to organise and discuss these topics.
Upload relevant team files to the channels so everyone can easily find the latest versions.
Add tabs for quick visibility to apps and services your team uses, like Planner and PowerBI.
Add tabs and connectors for developer tools like VSTS, JIRA, BitBucket, GitHub and more to view and triage issues and pull requests.
Schedule and hold regular or stand-up meetings in Teams with key stakeholders.
Project Management
Project managers often struggle with a myriad of planning, meeting, and communication tools and services. Teams enables collaboration in one central hub with all the tools to organize and share project files, manage stakeholder meetings, and track progress for multiple projects.
Create a team for each project, and then add stakeholders from across the company.
Add channels, such as Planning, Budget, Analytics, Reviews and Feedback.
Upload project documents to the channel, such as budgets, schedules, information sources, and guidelines.
Pin relevant apps used by your team within each channel, such as Planner, Trello, Smartsheet and PowerBI.
Set up connectors, such as bots for process automation.
Schedule and hold recurring or impromptu meetings with key stakeholders from within Teams.
Microsoft Teams Quick Guide
New to Microsoft Teams? Use this guide to learn the basics.
Want the competency and skills?
Contact us to get your Microsoft Teams technical competency, or end-user skills.