Work in Partnership within one application October 23, 2019 – Posted in: News, Productivity – Tags: Productivity

Strengthen your day to day operations within one application

With an assortment of tools available to us on our computers these days, it’s difficult to work out what’s best to use. Few apps are good at more than one job, driving us to juggle various services to achieve our daily tasks, and worse; everyone has their personal preferences, which means we’re often forced to jump between many applications to achieve the same objective.

Teams is Microsoft’s answer to a single-pane-of-glass application covering an open range of our day to day communication & collaboration requirements. Operating both internally & externally to your business, Teams cuts out the time that is lost in the dark of numerous third-party services, along with the pain & disappointment that comes with the more traditional team working by older methods, such as email.

 

Stop the relentless emails

Do away with the constant email chains, being cc’d into emails needlessly, and losing track of the latest file version following multiple versions being passed as attachments between everyone. With Teams, you can unite the conversation.

Every user within Teams, can refer to the “Conversations” pane for that specific group. Just like the feature we’re all comfortable with on social media platforms, users can be tagged, to ensure they are alerted to a point of reference within the conversation related to them. Files, images and videos can all be shared and embedded into the conversation stream. The history can easily be searched through, and importantly all information is viewable on any device in a matter of seconds. Save hours in searching your Outlook mailbox trying to find that specific conversation from months earlier.

Beyond the chat stream, your users can collaborate on files live – right within the app. Microsoft Office Web Apps are supported within Teams, so you can have various team members, (both internally and externally to your organisation), working on the same document, at the same time. You can accurately see your colleagues entering information to the same document right in front of you.

 

You’d rather have a quick chat over the phone?

Text-based instant message conversations are superb, but you’d prefer a quick voice chat? No problem, Teams has that covered too. Built from the foundations of Skype, within the very same Teams application, you can access voice & video conferencing between one or multiple users. Calls can be set up on the fly or pre-scheduled – if you use an Outlook calendar, you can create a Teams appointment just like any other calendar entry. The invitation produces a web link button to join the meeting within the details of the Outlook calendar appointment. So, whether you are inviting colleagues, clients or suppliers to a call – with one click, they can join the meeting regardless of whether they are Office 365 or Teams users or not.

Those non-Teams users won’t need to download any software or go through a lengthy setup. They can join the call from their favourite web browser and simply have at least a microphone active on their device.

At the same time of calling, you can be sharing desktop screens or access the same Office file via the cloud and work together as though you’re sat in the same space.

 

Need some assistance?

If you are spinning in a sea of far too many options and are considering consolidating, Teams might well be the best solution.

At Ontraq, we take a consultative approach to working with our clients. Unlike most IT providers, we take the time to learn our client’s business, operations and processes; enabling us to better tailor workable technology solutions.

If you are considering transferring to the Cloud, use Office 365 but not to its full extent or need guidance around technology solutions to your operational problems – please get in touch.