If you’ve never heard of Microsoft Teams, then you’re obviously from a galaxy far, far away, but Microsoft’s collaboration, communication and file-sharing app has been transforming workplaces all over the world.  At Pearce IT, we’re a big fan of Teams, and we’ve been helping our customers migrate their infrastructure to Teams, as well as provisioning Teams for organisations caught on-the-hop by the Coronavirus outbreak. 

Teams is now Microsoft’s fastest growing app ever, with over 500,000 companies using it globally at the time of writing. Microsoft estimates that 75 million people are using Teams daily, and its list of features just keeps growing. Whereas the number of Teams users assuredly got a boost due to the COVID 19 situation, the ‘stay-at-home revolution’ introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed a great many organisations into operational territory they previously didn’t occupy, and weren’t really ready to. This being said, the number of organisations that have adopted and stayed with Teams is a testament to just how easy it can be to provision and implement, and how effective it can be when deployed in your organisation.  

Getting on the Team 

You can start using Teams with a free version from Microsoft, but full-fat Teams comes bundles with most of the Office 365 business licences, so if you have an Office 365 Business Premium, Standard, or Enterprise licence, then you probably have Teams bundles included with your licencing. If you need assistance with this, then we can help you get the right licencing to kick off your Teams journey. 

Teamwork and collaboration being the cornerstone of modern organisations, it’s natural that these are central tenets within Teams operation. If you have an existing Office 365 security group infrastructure then this will simply translate to Teams, as an individual user groups or ‘Team’ is constructed using the Office 365 security framework. You can add or remove members of a team at any time, transferring ownership or permissions within a team is equally simple. Microsoft have a very simple ‘how-to’ on how to set up Teams and channels for your organisation here. 

Collaboration and teamwork are the cornerstones of modern workflow, and since its launch, users have been finding new ways to use Teams daily. But if you’re not currently using Teams, here are some reasons why we think that you should get involved. 

More than just chat 

You can use the chat window in Teams to have quick conversations with your colleagues, but there’s so much more to it. If you need to share a file, then you can just drag and drop the file to the chat. If you need to discuss the file, then you can make a video or voice call straight from the chat window. Once you have finished discussing the file, you can schedule a review meeting without leaving the chat. Teams’ chat function integrates beautifully with other Microsoft products such as Office and OneNote meaning that switching between apps throughout your conversation is no longer an issue. 

Power up your meetings 

Meetings can be a challenging. Making sure everyone is in attendance, that they all have the agenda and access to any required files (or have had them delivered by email beforehand) can be difficult. If you have set up a meeting in Teams it’s very easy to check attendees, conference everyone via video or voice, share documents and screens and even chat via text with attendees whilst in the meeting. 

The recordings of the meeting are immediately available to you in the same tab, so if you missed the meeting, the recording is right there, plus any notes and documents. 

Reduce email, increase oversight 

One great thing about Teams is that it has replaced a great deal of correspondence sent via email in the workplace. If you have a chat conversation that is on a particular subject, you can search that chat using keywords, which will bring out any relevant chat entries related to your search term. Furthermore, everything you do in Teams is recorded by Microsoft if you specify this as a security preference; great for administrative oversight and Human Resources requirements, but also essential for backing-up and securing your data and workflow.  

Integration, integration, integration  

Teams has very tight integration with Office 365 (as well as a whole suite of 3rd party apps), so you can create Word, Excel or PowerPoint document in Teams, and share these for co-authoring without even leaving the chat. Add comments, discuss, and amend versioning in-app.  

File storage for Teams is created under a Teams folder in SharePoint, so users can also view these files using the SharePoint User Interface if they should wish to. Each team can be configured with its own file-sharing and storage allocation or can be built to share files and folders across the organisation; It’s up to you. 

Anywhere-connectivity 

With the Teams mobile app, you have access to your calls, meetings chat and documents on the move, or at home via a smartphone or tablet device. The Teams mobile app gives you the same functionality as the desktop client or the web app, so you can have the same experience regardless of where you are.  

The most exciting connectivity function in Teams is the ability to integrate VoIP packages, allowing the app to receive calls from and make calls to the Publicly Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Right now, we have the ability to roll out Teams with a dedicated VoIP package, meaning that you can make calls from the app to colleagues without Teams, and even include them in meetings with other users. Call-queuing and hunt-groups can also be implemented, and we have specialist handsets that use the Teams app user interface, making it uniform across your organisation.  

Of course, you don’t have to have ANY hardware to run VoIP using Teams, as the mobile, web or the desktop app will just use the integrated VoIP service over mobile data or fixed Ethernet to make calls to the PSTN, effectively meaning that all your workflow can be geographically fluid; you don’t need an office, and you don’t need specific hardware. A user with a mobile phone and a laptop can answer mail, share files, chat, review documents, make calls, take calls, schedule meetings and tasks, all just as they would if they were sitting in the office. 

If you’re looking to harness the power of Teams and you need some advice, or you want to power up your existing Teams infrastructure with VoIP, get in touch.