Enhance modern workplace collaboration with Microsoft Teams

Virtual collaboration is the beating heart of the modern workplace. Without it, we could not work with people from different geographical locations, move projects forward from the comfort of our homes, or collaborate with clients without travelling to meet them.

Behind remote work, we have found ourselves moving between separate platforms. You might leverage Slack to send instant messages and then move onto Zoom to take a conference call with the same people you messaged. Jumping between platforms creates lags in collaboration as information becomes scattered across disparate platforms.

Organisations worldwide have made modern work their modus operandi, with many also adopting Microsoft Teams as their collaboration platform. We all know that Microsoft Teams is a central location for messaging, video calling and document sharing. But, there are other features that you can leverage to enhance how your staff collaborate on the platform itself.

Microsoft Teams use cases for modern workplace collaboration

Microsoft Teams offers various use cases for collaboration beyond its most prominent features like instant messaging and video conferencing. You might consider leveraging Microsoft Teams for:

• Task management allows you to oversee active projects, deadlines, assignees, and any other information necessary.
• Document approvals enable people to share, edit and approve Office documents within Microsoft Teams rather than send them back and forth via email.
• External access and guest access allow people outside your organisation to communicate and share documents in a secure environment. If you work with client organisations, you might benefit from this greatly.
• Cloud-based calling removes the need for traditional phone systems by facilitating internal and external phone calls from various devices.

Microsoft Teams technical readiness essentials

Before diving into Microsoft Teams adoption, I recommend getting across the technical readiness requirements. Our definition of readiness covers identity and access, network requirements, endpoint device selection, licensing and technical skills, to name a few.

For example, you will need to ensure the devices your staff leverage for Microsoft Teams are up to scratch. For example, if your devices have low camera quality, people might become frustrated and resist adopting the platform.

Furthermore, you will need to review your current Microsoft 365 licence and consider what else you might need. The proper licences and add-ons can facilitate great modern workplace collaboration.

Understanding and using Microsoft Teams Administrator Roles

Before you deploy Microsoft Teams, you need to understand administrator roles as they provide opportunities to improve collaboration.

The Microsoft Teams Admin Centre allows you to control the channels and chats available to users. If people set their Microsoft Teams settings to a particular language, you can enable translation to their preferred language. You can also create custom messaging policies for specific people or external parties as an admin.

Microsoft Teams training to drive modern workplace collaboration

You cannot truly enable modern workplace collaboration if you have not provided appropriate training to your users. Please remember that traditional training approaches – such as delivering a lecture – are not ideal for Microsoft Teams. An excellent method of training people on Microsoft Teams is encouraging them to collaborate on their learnings.

Of course, you need to provide your users with information sessions, but you should also offer advanced materials. These might include video tutorials and automated tips and tricks. People also learn well from each other, so I recommend encouraging your team to share the journey and collaborate on their learnings.

How collaboration on Microsoft Teams drives innovation

Enabling connections between everyone in your organisation drives innovation. Microsoft Teams offers various third-party integrations that allow your business to come together, share ideas, and innovate. Many companies continue to work with the default settings. I recommend configuring the core and additional settings to enhance how you collaborate. 

Moreover, as users become more concerned with their privacy and security, they need solutions to collaborate and innovate without worrying about confidentiality. Security concerns go for file sharing as well. Microsoft Teams enables built-in access to SharePoint and OneDrive so that people can collaborate and innovate on one platform securely.

Microsoft Teams Apps for modern workplace collaboration

Third-party software vendors typically create Microsoft Teams apps to support integration with their platform. You can leverage these apps to deliver a better overall experience in Microsoft Teams and enhance how your team collaborates.

Custom Microsoft Teams apps deliver the integrations you need for specific business apps. You can obtain custom apps in three ways:

• Vendors might upload their custom applications to the App Store.
• Uploading applications to the Microsoft Teams client so that users can install them. We call this side loading.
• Leveraging user-built apps, including Power Automate flows or embedding a Power App as a tab in Microsoft Teams.

Optimise modern workplace collaboration with Teams governance

Microsoft Teams governance includes the policies, processes and regulations that underpin each communication channel on the platform. Rather than becoming a burden on IT, it organises communication and enhances collaboration.

Allowing individual users to manage channels and chats results in poorly structured communication, duplicate channels or public channels that should be private. Moreover, you risk creating channels without goals. When you have dedicated channels for specific projects, you promote collaboration on one platform, and people may feel less tempted to collaborate elsewhere.

How Experteq enhances modern workplace collaboration

Modern workplace success requires you to leverage the right tools for communication and collaboration while minimising costs and increasing security. Experteq understand the modern workplace, through and through. We firmly believe in its merits, and we can bring these to your organisation as well.

Please take a look at our Productivity Apps solution page for more information on how we can serve your modern workplace.