Since its introduction, Microsoft’s Teams platform has enjoyed widespread success and adoption. However, most organizations are not taking full advantage of all Teams has to offer. Beyond just a tool for hosting meetings, Teams offers so much more!  In this article, you will learn about five specific features in Teams that you should be using today.

Teams’ roots lie in Skype for Business, which served businesses well for almost two decades. However, Microsoft is officially ending all Skype for Business services on July 31, 2021, in favor of using Teams as a communication platform. When you choose to use Teams as a communications platform, you have multiple options for connecting and communicating with others, including internal and external participants. Your Teams-based communication options include:

• Voice-only calls with individuals and with groups,
• Video calls with individuals and with groups,
• One-on-one chats and group chats, and
• Screen-sharing calls.

Each of these communication options can be scheduled in advance or initiated on-the-fly, providing flexibility when launching some form of communication. Further, Teams offers a “live caption” option that can make your meetings more inclusive for those who are hearing-impaired.

Multi-user, simultaneous access to standard file types such as Excel spreadsheets and Word documents is challenging in traditional environments. Teams can change that! When you store an Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or OneNote document in Teams, you can easily share the file with others. Upon doing so, each person can access and edit the file simultaneously and in real-time. Imagine, for example, multiple team members working collaboratively on the Excel workbook that serves as the foundation for your organization’s budget. Consider how much more efficient it would be to have multiple users editing a PowerPoint presentation simultaneously. Both these scenarios are possible when you store documents in Teams.

Although Teams is immensely powerful without any modifications, you can customize it by adding other apps. For instance, suppose you need the ability to execute digital signatures in Teams. If so, you could add the Adobe Sign app into Teams to provide that functionality. Similarly, if you require robust project management features in teams, you can add Zoho Projects to your Teams account. You can choose from over 200 apps that are currently available to integrate with Teams. Each of these apps allows you to extend the functionality of the platform and accommodate almost every need.

One of the commonly asked questions about Teams is “can we use Teams to communicate and collaborate with external parties, such as customers and clients?” The short answer is yes! More specifically, you can configure Teams to allow external access and guest access, two ways of communicating with those outside your organization. When you enable external access (also known as “federation”), you can connect with people in other domains, such as users at a customer/client or vendor location. On the other hand, when you enable guest access, you can add specific persons outside your organization as guest users by using their email address. Note that someone with administrative rights in Teams may need to configure both these options for you.

CLICK HERE to see a detailed comparison of external user access compared to guest access.

As you are aware, data security is one of the most challenging issues facing business professionals today. Consequently, it should be a top-of-mind consideration in virtually every business decision we make, including our choice of technology platforms. Fortunately, this is an area where Teams shines. For example, consider the following security techniques that are available in Teams.

• Team-wide and organization-wide multi-factor authentication, to reduce the likelihood that unauthorized users will be able to log-in
• Full encryption of all data stored in Teams
• Availability of Microsoft’s Advance Threat Protection to proactively look for malicious content and block end-user access to that content
• Safe Attachments, a Microsoft technology that allows admin users to create policies for handling potentially unsafe attachments that might carry malware

Additionally, the mere fact that Teams will likely reduce dependency on email – a notoriously unsecured medium for exchanging information – will likely boost security also. Further, admins can configure Communication Compliance, Retention, and eDiscovery policies in Teams to reduce risk and ensure long-term availability of data. Similarly, you can enable Data Loss Prevention in Teams to ensure that users do not disclose sensitive information to unauthorized persons. When taking a holistic view of the security features available with Teams, it is easy to conclude that Team offers the potential for much better security than what most organizations are currently able to provide.

Teams is a component of many Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions and, accordingly, the number of users with access to Teams continues to grow as more business migrate to Office 365 and Microsoft 365. However, many individuals with access to Teams remain unaware of some of the platform’s better features and use it almost exclusively as a chat-based communication platform. Certainly, Teams offers much more than just chat! If you have access to Teams, consider how you can take advantage of the platform to enhance communications, improve collaboration, and operate more securely. As a bonus, you just might find your personal and organizational productivity begin to skyrocket!

A collaboration platform, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams, provides everyone with the tools to work together. These tools include chatting, audio calls, video calls, file sharing, file commenting, and file co-authoring.  With all of this in a single application, it is very efficient for people to work as a team without being at the same physical location.

For us, this has been a great addition to our workflow. Simply ping someone in a chat and meet anytime quickly. Microsoft Teams collaboration platform can extend to people in organizations outside of your own. Recently, while working with another firm on a joint project, we used Teams to meet, collaborate, and share files. The collaboration was all done with the security of Teams allowing the outside organization access only to the project.

When meeting with people, video can make a considerable improvement in communication. Invest in a good quality webcam or use the one on your laptop or phone. To make it easier for others on the call with you, try to book meetings when the house is less active. 

Most online meeting services today allow custom backgrounds. These backgrounds are a great option if you can’t set up a clean physical backdrop.

A good quality ergonomic keyboard makes all the difference in your comfort. Combine the right keyboard and mouse, to make your day at the desk just that much better. Trying to use an inferior quality keyboard just slows you down.

Scanning and storing documents electronic keeps the home office clean and organized without taking up valuable floor space with filing cabinets. We have been paperless since 2013 at K2E Canada Inc., and my accounting practice has been paperless since 2005. At this point, I can’t imagine working in a paper-based office.

Microsoft Teams provides a service to collaborate with people both inside and outside your organization. Teams provides chat, secure file sharing, audio calls, video calls, and desktop sharing. Currently, Microsoft Teams is available for free. You can sign up for the service here. If you are already using Office 365, Teams is part of business and enterprise plans.

Bookings is very easy for people outside your organization to set up an online meeting with you. Bookings is available with Office 365 Business and Enterprise plans. Details on setting up Bookings for your organization is available here.

Bookings will automatically create the team meeting, send the link to the person making the booking, update your calendar and, if requested, send text reminders.

Outlook on the desktop, web, iOS and Android allow selecting Teams meeting to include the meeting link in a calendar invite automatically.

When you are a member of a team in your organization, you can create a meeting under Calendar using the Teams desktop app or website. The options are to Meet now or New Meeting.

Clicking Meet now will open a meeting, click join to start the session. The people panel opens on the right where you can enter an email address or copy the join information for forwarding to attendees.

The New meeting button opens up a calendar invite to be completed and sent to attendees.

Clicking a meeting link will open your default web browser where you can either download the app or “Join on the web instead.” For people not currently using teams, “Join on the web instead” is the quickest option as there is nothing to download or install to join the meeting.

The web client for teams opens where an attendee clicks “Join now” to enter the meeting. Optionally you can turn on or off your camera and mic, as well as make any device configuration changes that may be required.  

As you start to use Teams, a couple of tips to help are:

1. Do a trial run before working with people outside your organization
2. A proper mic and headset dramatically improve the experience for everyone
3. Video does improve communication
4. To make entry to the meeting more comfortable for people outside the organization, check the meeting options link under the Join Microsoft Teams Meeting link and allow everyone to bypass the lobby.
   

During a recent client visit, the ubiquitous question was asked: "Why would I use SharePoint or Teams instead of OneDrive." These three services from Microsoft all provide file storage, sharing, and collaboration, so it is easy to understand the confusion. Let's look at when each is the right choice.

OneDrive's name is an attempt to note that this is the location for One person, you, to store your files. An option in OneDrive is to backup your essential PC folders, including desktop, documents, and pictures. To turn on the backup feature, go to OneDrive settings > Backup > Manage Backup. 

In the window that opens, select the folders you will backup to OneDrive. It will be syncing the files providing access from any device and creating automatic versions of data in case you make a mistake or become infected with ransomware.

OneDrive is the storage location for your files. Sharing of files is possible with OneDrive, but that is not its primary role.

SharePoint is for sharing files. It is the equivalent of your network share, providing centralized controls and file access permissions. Providing critical advantages over a file share on the network SharePoint allows for the uncomplicated implementation of data loss prevention and policies to the data.

Using the OneDrive app, you can sync a SharePoint document library to your local computer for a simple method to access, save and share files. The files remain in SharePoint and will download when opening. You can mark files that you may need while offline as "Always keep on this device."

Microsoft Teams uses SharePoint document libraries file storage and therefore has all the benefits of using SharePoint. Additional benefits of Microsoft Teams are the integrated chat, video conferencing, presence awareness, and a simplified interface to providing security over your organization's documents.

If you have not started replacing your network file shares with SharePoint, then Teams is the place to move files. It provides the same sync and access to data as SharePoint does with a much easier process to set up and the additional collaboration features. The one cautionary note, at the time of posting, is that Teams does not allow for file sharing to people outside the organization unless they have a Microsoft Account associated with their email address.

For efficient and effective file-sharing, use Teams and SharePoint, and for your files OneDrive. Make sure to take advantage of the OneDrive app for syncing and backup of your Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders.

Bring your team together with Microsoft Teams, one of the best additions to the Microsoft stack in years. In this post, we will discuss how to use Microsoft’s Teams application to organize workflows, communications, and document sharing for your workgroup, department, or organization. No matter the size of your team, having all your team’s information in one place, with complete integration into your Office applications, can dramatically improve teamwork and performance.

Microsoft Teams is included with Office 365 Business and Enterprise subscriptions and as a limited free service. The inclusion with Office 365 means many organizations from small business to enterprise are ready to get started immediately. For those not using Office 365 you can sign up for a free account at https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/free .

The primary differences between the free and subscription versions are:

• Teams free is limited to 300 members per organization vs. 5,000.
• Teams free has 10GB of shared storage and 2GB/user vs 1TB/user for the paid version.
• The paid version of Teams offers scheduled meetings, meeting recording, additional administrative tools, usage reporting, and configurable user settings and policies.

Microsoft Teams makes a desktop app available for Windows, and mobile apps available for iOS and Android. The desktop app provides additional controls in meetings, including desktop sharing.

Teams provides a threaded and persistent chat conversation available to the team, a group or a private 1:1. To get someone’s attention, Teams allows the use of “@mention” to draw attention to a post and send alert emails to the individual or team.

For those times when a meeting is more productive than chat, Team Meetings allows for people inside and outside of the team to join an online meeting. Team Meetings supports audio, video, whiteboard, desktop app, and file sharing. Anyone with a web browser can join the meeting with a link, which can be provided via email or when scheduling a meeting.

Teams uses SharePoint Online as the backend for file sharing. This provides the security and controls over files required by your organization. Files are available from within the desktop, mobile, and web app. A persistent chat conversation relating to a file in Teams ensures the entire team is aware of what is happening with any file. Also, with the file stored in Teams, co-authoring is available using the desktop, mobile, or online apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

For those using other cloud storage services, Teams can integrate with them. These alternative cloud storage locations include Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and ShareFile. 

Teams integration with Exchange Online allows for automatic setting of your status with easy to see icons. This allows others on the team to see if you are available for a quick meeting or chat. To make sure you keep current of activity in Teams, the app provides a count indicator of unread updates. Activity can also be viewed by individual.

Apps are available to extend teams functionality of Teams. Examples of these apps include Planner, Adobe Creative Cloud, various bots, and Power BI to name but a few.

Keeping everyone on track and up to date is made easier by Teams. A couple of tips to keep in mind when starting out are:

1. Create Teams based on security requirements of the information.
   
2. Create Channels in teams to separate topics.
   
3. Individuals outside the organization that you add to a Team will clearly be indicated with “guest” after their name.
   

Teams is one of the most exciting tools Microsoft has added in years. Under the Teams umbrella, you can collaborate and communicate with other team members quickly and easily, allowing you to get more done in less time. Further, you can easily extend your team by inviting individuals from outside your organization into the environment. And, if you are an Office 365 subscriber, there’s a good chance that you already have access to this amazing tool. But even if you don’t have access to Office 365, you can still sign up for a free account and take advantage of many Teams features. If you’re looking to maximize both individual and workgroup productivity, be sure to check out Teams today.

In a series of messages, Microsoft announced major changes to OneNote, Teams, and Outlook this week. These changes potentially impact Office 365 subscribers who use these tools in various capacities.

OneNote 2016 No Longer Available for Some UsersFirst, Microsoft announced that OneNote 2016 will no longer be available as part of the download for some Office 365 subscribers. Those subscribers affected by this change are those enrolled in the Semi-Annual Channel as part of their Office 365 subscription. This change does not mean that these users will no longer have access to OneNote. Rather, consistent with previous  announcements, OneNote for Windows 10 is now the default OneNote experience and is included in Windows 10 at no charge. Importantly, subscribers who must utilize OneNote 2016 still have access to it. For more information on this change – including how to download OneNote 2016 – click here.

Outlook on the Web Gets a New Tasks ModuleSecond, Microsoft announced the addition of a new Tasks module to Office 365 subscribers who use Outlook on the web. Importantly, this new feature does not impact users when they are working in their desktop version of Outlook. Rather, if you are using Outlook on the web, you will see a redesigned Tasks function which is powered by Microsoft To-Do. Microsoft’s aim is to make it easier for Outlook users to manage tasks when they are away from their desktop computers. The Tasks feature appears beginning in the 2nd quarter of 2019. You can learn more about Tasks in Outlook on the web by clicking here.

Teams Now Accommodates Up To 5,000 MembersFinally, Microsoft’s Teams application is getting a major upgrade – an expansion allowing teams to consist of up to 5,000 team members. This doubles the previous limit of 2,500 members in a team and facilitates collaboration and communication across large teams in enterprise-class organizations. If you are using Teams, this feature is available to all users automatically. You can learn more about this upgrade by clicking here.