Cooking Up Great Collaboration with Microsoft Teams

A delicious dish begins with superb ingredients. The same is true for online collaboration. A tool like Teams combines all the best ingredients for truly outstanding communication and collaboration. Let’s look at the components that make up an industry-leading application like Teams. Grab your apron and chef’s hat and let’s get cooking!

Ingredient #1: Chat

But not just any chat. Teams chat is more than simple instant messaging. It includes a variety of useful features that keep your group feeling truly connected even when they’re far apart.

With Teams, you can:

• Hop on a group call or video call directly from a group chat
• View the entire chat history (it’s also searchable)
• Schedule a meeting with the person you’re chatting
• Attach documents or images
• Add emojis, GIFs, and stickers for fun

Ingredient #2: Voice

There’s nothing like hearing a colleague’s voice or seeing their face to make you feel more in tune with each other. With so many of us working from home these days, we can start to feel disconnected from our work groups. Teams keeps your group face-to-face even when they can’t be face-to-face, with:

• Voice calls & conference calls
• Video calls & video conference calls
• Screen sharing so everyone can see the same document
• Fun backgrounds to hide your messy house
• Record option so you can go back later and review what was said

Ingredient #3: Project Management

If the thought of trying to keep a project on time and on budget when everyone is working remotely gives you a headache, relax. Teams makes project management much simpler.

• Use the Tasks tool to create and assign tasks, reorganize priorities, and check task status
• Create chat channels (or even private channels) for specific teams or projects
• Collaborate using the OneNote tool – create a group workbook to keep track of meetings notes, project details, and more
• Use the Wiki tool as a repository for important links, information, and how-to info

Teams also integrates with a wide variety of additional project management apps such as Trello and Evernote.

Ingredient #4: Document Management

You and your colleagues can create, modify, and access any document through Teams thanks to its tight integration with Sharepoint. You can:

• Access and make changes to files right from Teams
• Keep your files organized
• Ensure everyone sees the most up-to-date version of documents

Ingredient #5: Security

No one wants a random hacker to drop into their video chat or grab sensitive information from a shared document. Fear not. Teams is part of the Office 365 enterprise-grade cloud with advanced security and compliance. Key Teams security features include:

• Team-wide and organization-wide 2-factor authentication
• Single sign-on through Active Directory
• Data encryption in transit and at rest
• Files are stored in Sharepoint and backed by Sharepoint encryption
• Advanced Threat Protection determines if any Teams content is malicious and blocks access to it

You can read more about security and compliance for Microsoft Teams on the Microsoft blog.

Now, take these ingredients, add your employees, mix gently, and voila! A 5-star collaboration experience for your organization.