Collaboration and remote communications have become a part of our way of working to learn, connect, and share information. Microsoft Teams, a powerful platform that is known for its extensive range of tools for communication, has gained a huge amount of traction to facilitate effortless virtual meetings and collaboration. But, as technology advances and evolves, so do the ways for using these platforms.
You can join Team calls by dialing a telephone number. The number will be listed in the invite to the meeting. Here are some tips to remember while participating in an upcoming Teams call without an app:
To participate in the Microsoft Teams meeting without installing the application, you require an up-to-date browser such as Chrome (or another browser based on Chromium), Firefox, Safari and others.
To participate in a Microsoft Teams meeting without the official application installed on your device then you must make a call to the meeting. It’s not difficult, but the number you dial may be or have a toll-free number. Because of obvious reasons, you will not be able to see videos from all the participants.
Microsoft Teams is the ultimate messaging tool for your business. It’s a workspace that allows for real-time collaboration, communications, meetings, file or app share even some emojis! All in one location that is free and available to anyone.
1. Avoid duplicate team names
The first steps you’ll need to do when you launch MS Teams is to create an existing team (or join one already in place).
Let’s suppose you’re a member of the team. However, if you join two teams sporting the same name, you’ll be confused as to which team is yours each when you launch Teams, don’t you think? It’s important to keep this in mind when you’re the person who is creating the team.
Duplicate team names can be confusing, evidently. However, Microsoft allows using duplicate names within MS Teams, and it’s your responsibility to make sure that there’s no duplicates in your account.
Let me show the consequences of having team names that are different by providing an illustration. Let’s say your iOS team is developing the iOS app, while the Android team is developing the Android app. For the project managers from both teams this is for the XYZ application team. Therefore, both teams can make a discussion group “XYZ app discussion” on MS Teams, leading to lots of confusion among teams. This is the scenario you’d like to avoid.
The most straightforward method to accomplish this is to ask managers/team leaders to review every group name before giving names. After that, they simply enter the name into MS Teams’ MS Teams Search bar in order to see if it is present or not.
2. Set up naming conventions
Another method to prevent duplicate names and improve channels and teams’ navigation more efficiently is to use strict name conventions. In real life situations, people typically belong to multiple teams. Naming conventions help users to navigate more efficiently.
Let me illustrate this by using a simple illustration.
Let’s imagine that you are an agency that is digital. One of your employees is responsible for taking care of your clients’ social media. There are many ways to set up a channel or team that is specific to the individual. For instance, you could create a social media team channel in which you talk about everything related to social media, or create an individual team for every client and a separate “social media” channel per each team. Which one is more effective? !
A naming convention like “Name of The Project – Country – Project,” “Name of The Project – Department – Project,” “City – Country – Store,” “Department Name – Country – Department,” etc. These could improve MS Team’s experience more efficiently. MS Teams experience more efficiency.
3. Use chats for one-to-one messages and general channels for collaboration
For MS Teams, there’s a chat option as well as the Teams option. Both are different for what they do and, in a nutshell, chats are used for messages that are one-to-one and channels to collaborate. Let me sum up the major elements to help you understand:
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4. Make important groups private to let the team focus on their work
Sometimes, discussions don’t require the participation of a lot of channel members. In such instances discussions that are ongoing in the same channel may cause them to be distracted from what they’re supposed to accomplish. For instance, you don’t have for the scheduler of your social media on the same page in discussions about creatives. Therefore setting up an individual group that only members who are connected can participate in discussions and read messages makes sense.
5. Set up teams for each project
I have discussed this issue during my “naming conventions” section. But, there are many times when the same people are working on various projects. It is therefore essential to create the teams to work on each task in which the discussion and documents remain with the team working on the project. This makes searching and navigating more easy for members of the team.
6. Familiarize your team wiyh Folders and Files
MS Teams offers robust file-sharing capabilities. However, the thing to remember is that the system is able to store all files and folders on Sharepoint. This includes each file and folder that is shared in the discussion or that is manually added by clicking using the “Files” tab at the top of every channel.
It’s your job to train your employees with this feature. They can then add, browse, download, reshare, and view the same folders and files directly to or from Sharepoint through MS Teams.
7. Set up Notifications
Some notifications may not be required. For instance it’s not necessary to be aware of discussion on lunch in the chat room; nor would you like to receive an every-second pop-up from private channels and teams which have more than 150 participants. Set up your notifications correctly is possibly the best way to utilize Microsoft Teams efficiently, if you’re not doing it correctly. Here’s how:
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8. Do not set files library private
If you’re a channel or team leader, you will be able to manage all the folders and files within the channel or team. Be sure to never change the settings of the library for files to private unless you are not allowing teammates to access the files. As a default, owners and members have the ability to edit folders and files, while viewers are able to look them up.
9. Connect Teams with Live Chat
Have you ever thought about how you could make use of MS Teams as more than an internal collaboration tool?
One example is that you can join live chat via MS Teams.
In this way, you are able to communicate with your existing and prospective customers in real-time, as their needs change and help them in real time with the program you have available all day long.
That means, instead of the customer needing to email or fill out a support ticket, only to be disappointed with the delay in response You can build an excellent customer experience. If you’re not aware that 86% of customers will spend more money to have a better experience with their customers.
Additionally, a disoriented customer is more likely to seek help via live chat, rather than taking the time to locate your email address and make inquiries. Connecting MS Teams with Live Chat effectively helps to bring prospective customers into your sales funnel.
10. Set up all calendar meetings in Teams, not Outlook
Meetings with team members are an essential element of executing successful projects. Microsoft’s Outlook + Skype for Business is a fantastic tool for scheduling and conducting meetings for teams. However Microsoft’s Teams simply makes it easier by adding the Meetings capabilities of the platform.
It is possible to schedule meetings and inform team members directly via Teams. Better yet, if you’re required to discuss something during the call, while having an informal chat with your team and you want to start a meeting, simply click “Meet Now” and start the meeting immediately.
11. Use Notes in Teams to collaborate on documents
OneNote can be described as Microsoft’s note taking app which is used for free-form information gathering and collaboration. It serves as a hub to keep all of your notes. Notes can be organized in separate notebooks, make sections inside notebooks, include multimedia files, make notes and much more.
With the OneNote integration with OneNote, you are able to collaborate on documents and note notes directly using MS Teams.
Brainstorm ideas. Gather information. Make notes during the meeting. Send pictures. There are many scenarios to use Notes in Teams and make workflow more efficient.
12. Change background for video calls
One last suggestion I’d like to share with you especially for moments like these, where so many of us need to work remotely, should be changing the background on calls.
Here’s how you can do it in Teams:
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