Teamwork makes the dream work. A good percentage of us have probably heard of this saying before, but the significance of this saying holds true no matter the circumstances. A Wrike writer states that in a UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School white paper, it was found “collaboration permeates the entire organization, there are huge benefits to your bottom line, which includes engaged employees, retention, and attraction of talent, increased velocity, and profitability.”
Microsoft Teams meetings are a great way to come together with your colleagues and clients both inside and outside of your organization. You also don’t need to be a member of an organization – or even have a Teams account to join a Teams meeting. Beyond an online meeting location, Teams is designed to be a centralized hub for collaboration and sharing.
Teams not only modernizes the way businesses communicate both internally and externally but provides an array of built-in features to enhance teamwork as well. With Teams, users can create meetings, host live events, share files, have private chat with individuals or groups, and have dedicated channels.
Teams Meetings
Meetings in Teams include audio, video, and sharing. You can join any meeting by link, phone, calendar, or chat. You can join on the web or download the desktop app, or you have the option to dial in by phone by using the conference ID provided in the meeting invite.
Setting up a Teams Meeting from your Outlook calendar is simple! The first thing you need to do is make sure you have Teams downloaded as a desktop app. Once that is installed, it will automatically show up in Outlook on the top ribbon.
When you would like to send a new Teams meeting, you can go to your calendar, and select ‘New Teams Meeting’ on the top ribbon.
You can then send this meeting invite to whomever you would like included whether they are inside or outside your organization. If they do not have Teams or would like to call in, they will receive a dial in number along with a conference ID on the meeting invite.
In late July, Microsoft announced the retirement of Skype for Business and the transition to Microsoft Teams. However, Skype for Business users will not have to panic as Microsoft will guide the transition to Teams step-by-step.
Teams Live Events
Users can host webinars or large meetings through a Team live event. Similar to webinars, people can broadcast video and meeting content to a large online audience, facilitate audience interaction, receive attendee reports, and record the event. Recording is available for regular Teams meeting as well. With the recording, users can share the content on various platforms, share amongst colleagues that couldn’t attend, or for future review.
Sharing Files in Teams
The file-sharing feature in Teams allows users to share content with other Teams users in their organization. Whether they’re videos, images, or files in general regardless of content size, Teams users can easily share the necessary documents with anyone in the organization within Teams via OneDrive. If you’re interested in learning more about this feature, I recommend reading this Microsoft article.
Individual and Group Chats in Teams
A very important feature within Team chats are gifs, you can now send gifs to everyone in your organization. In addition to the gifs, you can send emojis and stickers, private messages, attach files, schedule meetings, and more for both one-on-one and group chats.
Microsoft Teams Channels
Channels are dedicated sections within a team to keep conversations organized by specific topics, departments, projects, etc. The conversation in a channel is public to everyone in the channel. In a channel, team members can conversate through text, audio, and video, share files or notes, and add apps. Microsoft published a good overview of both teams and channels to familiarize the feature with users.
Microsoft Teams is not only meant to be a centralized location for connection but a hub for collaboration as well. With Teams, organizations can have all their collaboration tools on a single application; eliminating the need to jump from platform to platform and cost of those different platforms. Teams is designed to modernize and promote teamwork.
If you have any additional questions about Teams or want to request a free demo to see the application firsthand, don’t hesitate to contact KTL Solutions. As Teams users and experts in Microsoft applications knowledge, our team can help guide you in seeing if Microsoft Teams is right for your business.
