Microsoft Teams Training For Business Professionals
New research from Stanford indicates that an astonishing 42% of the United States labor force works from home full time. Your employees must have the ability to communicate regardless of their physical location. Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based portal for businesses to use for collaboration, project management, connections, and workgroups. Having a single location for many of these activities allows companies to utilize similar features on popular social networking platforms. Microsoft Teams rivals Zoom with its video conferencing functionality with the bonus that it can be seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Groups.
A World Without Teams
It’s hard to believe that businesses were able to operate in a time before computers, where all computations had to be written out by hand, and communication was generally performed in person or on the phone. Without easy access to shared files, the ability to videoconference by clicking a few buttons, or chatting real-time about a project, the daily work volume would be overwhelming for many companies.
In a world without Microsoft Teams, companies may need to purchase a variety of software suites to fulfill all of a modern organization’s needs. Fortunately, Microsoft has pulled together core functionality that is critical for businesses worldwide under the umbrella of Microsoft Teams — and made it easy to move projects forward and collaborate securely both within your organization and with external partners, vendors, and customers.
Implementing Microsoft Teams may be easier than you realize as long as you understand these few simple principles.
Step One: Create Teams
One of the initial tasks is to understand the difference between teams and channels. A team is a collection of people and is often project-based or department-based. A channel is where the action happens. Think of the team as the house and the channels as the rooms within that house.
To create a team, select members from your organization to be a part of the team by adding them to the team. Teams can be either public or private or contain every member of an organization. Each team should contain more than one employee in the owner’s role so that the team can be managed by more than one person in the event of time off from work or responsibility changes within the organization.
Step Two: Determine Channels
Channels are active places where work gets completed and are helpful to separate different tasks, topics, projects, or make announcements within a team. Channels are public or private. Meetings take place within a channel.
Within each channel, there are tabs for posts, files, and other items. The chat function is used for personal or private conversations. Additionally, messages can be sent with @mentions, emojis, and reactions like popular media platforms and can be formatted to appear more like an email. The calendar function allows the owner to set meetings or meet now for urgent meetings.
At any time, the command box at the top of the Teams screen allows the user to search for people, conversations, channels, or teams. Microsoft just announced “a ton of new capabilities to help people stay connected, collaborate, and build solutions in Teams” including Together Mode, allowing the user to set the scene for their virtual meetings, and the Breakout room, allowing larger groups to split out into smaller groups for portions of a meeting.
Use Advantage Industries to Launch Microsoft Teams Successfully
If you are ready to implement Microsoft Teams to increase productivity and collaboration across your company’s facets, contact Advantage Industries for support from our Microsoft experts. We will ensure the seamless integration of Microsoft Teams with your existing programs and promise to stay apprised of the most recent developments, allowing you to maximize your IT budget. Contact our team at 866-443-8238 or reach us by email at sales@getadvantage.com to schedule a free consultation or learn more about the implementation of Microsoft Teams in your office.
