5 ways to get the most out of teams

15 Ways to Get the Most Out of Teams


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Contents

2. Deliver chat and meeting capabilities

3. Run a project in Teams

5. Automate repeated workflows

Start creating your Teams center of excellence

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4. Streamline a processPag. 24

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1. Plan your Teams adoption inside a Teams workspace


Who should read this

Business, team, and IT leaders who recognize the potential of Teams to empower their organization and are looking for guidance to ensure a rapid and successful rollout while taking advantage of all the solution has to offer. This e-book will help you:

Estimated reading time: <12 minutes

Follow a proven plan for driving Teams and Teams Platform adoption and increasing ROI through the use of advanced features in a manageable way.

Understand the benefits of Teams as a platform beyond basic collaboration scenarios.

Work with specific departments to run projects in Teams as a pilot to support phased adoption.

Run projects in Teams with Teams apps.

Streamline processes using Power Platform.

Automate workflows using Power Automate.


As digital teamwork becomes increasingly important to your business, you’re probably wondering how to get the most from the tools you have in place—particularly Microsoft Teams. In this guide, we’ll cover proven strategies for using Teams not simply as a tool for digital meetings and file sharing, but to transform the way your business works.

Introduction

With effective planning, a phased approach, and the effective use of built-in project management, partner applications, workflow, and process automation tools, you can ramp up Teams usage to achieve new levels of collaboration and productivity.

You can start by using Teams to plan the adoption process itself. This gives you valuable experience using the platform and makes you the expert other employees can turn to for advice.

Appoint Teams champions:

Create a team to track adoption:

Use Teams tools to track the progress of the adoption plan:

Choose one or two people to be accountable for driving adoption across the business, preferably with a mix of IT and business knowledge.

Bring together leaders who can promote Teams usage and ensure progress is being made.

Track activities using Tasks (previously Planner): If you’re using Microsoft Teams, organize your work by adding one or more Tasks tabs to a team channel. You can then work on your plan from within Teams or in Tasks for web, remove or delete your plan, and get notified in Teams when a task is assigned to you in Tasks.

1. Plan your Teams adoption inside a Teams workspace


Communicate within Teams:

Schedule a recurring stand-up in Teams:

Use Teams to share data, chat, and meet with the adoption group.

Make it a habit to have short daily meetings reviewing progress.

Review adoption analytics in Power BI: With Power BI, you can use Microsoft 365 usage analytics inside a Teams tab to gain insights on how your organization is adopting Teams to communicate and collaborate. You can visualize and analyze usage data, create custom reports, and share the insights within your organization.

Invite leaders and influencers to the adoption workspace. When they use Teams, it inspires others to do so, as well.

Get caught using Teams

Turn on Teams for everyone:

Separate chat and meeting deployment from longer term activities:

As an administrator for your organization, you can assign user licenses to control individual access to Teams.

You may be undertaking more complex tasks such as migrating PBX functionality or adding Teams calling to meeting rooms, but you can provide employees with Teams on their personal devices immediately.

Use adoption assets:

Get everyone on board using ready-to-use Teams adoption assets from Microsoft.

As the Teams adoption project moves forward, don’t wait to enable basic Teams functionality for everyone in your organization.

2. Deliver chat and meeting capabilities

https://aka.ms/teamsadoption


Encourage teams to create their own workspaces with apps:

Encourage everyone to download the mobile and desktop apps

Teams often have their own best ideas for how to organize workspaces. Empower them to get started right away.

Teams can be installed on PCs, Macs, and mobile devices. Get the apps. Teams also provides a high-quality experience on popular web browsers.

A longer-term plan for encouraging adoption of advanced features is important, but it’s also key to encourage people to get started right away with chatting, meetings, and workspaces.

Don’t overthink it

https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/download-app

https://support.microsoft.com/office/use-teams-on-the-web-33f84aa9-2e8b-47ac-8676-02033454e385

Demo Microsoft 365 apps in Teams, including Word, Excel, Tasks, and more.

Help the group identify common projects, workloads, and audiences for Teams.

Guide them in setting up a workspace.

Evaluate the workspace after a few weeks and adjust.

Replicate these successes with other teams and use a template embodying best practices for your organization.

Every group is different. They won’t know what they really need until they get started. Don’t be afraid to dive in and adjust along the way.

Iterate as you learn more

While people are getting used to using Teams for everyday chat and meetings, the adoption working group should choose a pilot department to work with. In this section, we’ll provide templates for a variety of departments.

During this pilot project, you can:

3. Run a project in Teams

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Marketing

Marketing teams need to create, collaborate, and show results while working with a diverse group of people from both inside and outside the company. Why not do it all in one place? Teams provides a shared workspace for all conversations, files, and third-party services. Now it’s easier to manage marketing campaigns and social channels, collaborate on content creation, and plan events.

Run a project in Teams


1. Create the team:

3. Add apps via tabs:

2. Add channels:

Create a new team, Marketing. Invite internal and external users from all marketing groups, including PR, Brand, and Design.

Add apps that helps with marketing project. For example, track marketing deliverables in Tasks, connect assets in Adobe Creative Cloud, model budget in Excel, or measure effectiveness with SurveyMonkey.

Add channels for marketing initiatives, projects, and teams, such as Go-to-Market, Public Relations, Event Planning, and Budget. Also add channels where marketers can interact and communicate with agencies, consultants, and partners using secure guest access.

4. Create and store files:

Create and store marketing assets—such as plans, briefs, press releases, and design files—in the Files section.

6. Collaborate at will:

5. Pin your plan:

Schedule and hold meetings in Teams using audio and video conferencing features, as well as chat and file sharing.

Pin the marketing plan, budget, and/or campaign landing page to relevant channels for easy reference.

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Sales

Teams can help sales quickly build proposals with input from different stakeholders, while making it easier to manage longer term projects and programs, such as planning, training, and sales readiness. Collaboration, reporting, and knowledge sharing can happen in one place, helping sales professionals everywhere work together to meet sales objectives.


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1. Create the team:


2. Add channels:

Create a new team for your entire sales organization or a team for each sales segment.

Add apps that helps with sales project. For example, check sales metrics in Power BI, manage RPF templates in Word, track future fiscal plans with Trello, connect to CRM applications such as Dynamics 365, and celebrate success with Kudos.

Add channels, such as Sales Readiness, Sales Planning, RFPs/Proposals, Wins, and Best Practices, as well as a channel for general topics.

4. Meet regularly:

Schedule recurring team meetings, such as a monthly business review.

5. Share documents:

6. Connect to informationSet up connectors, such as an RSS feed for customer updates.

Upload team documents to relevant channels, for example sales playbooks and guides in the Sales Readiness channel and RFP documents in the RFP/Proposals channel.

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Finance

Finance teams need to aggregate and report on data while conducting business reviews on a regular cadence. Teams provides a hub for file and data sharing, conversations, and meetings backed by the security and compliance of Microsoft.


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1. Create the team:


2. Add channels:

Set up a new team for your entire finance organization.

Add apps via tabs that helps finance project. For example, track budgets in PowerBI, forecast future budgets with Excel, create and review business plans in Word, execute contracts with Adobe Sign, and manage budget requests with Power Automate.

Add channels for Finance Reviews, Business Insights, Audits, Governance, and Compliance.

4. Meet regularly:

Schedule recurring team meetings, such as a monthly business review.

5. Share documents:

6. Get quick access to apps:Pin relevant apps used by the team—Excel, Power BI, Tasks—or pin critical files, intranet portals, or websites.

Upload team files to the channels, such as annual financial statement reviews and audit reports.

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HR

Teams can help HR professionals manage recruitment and employee onboarding activities, including sharing resumes and interview notes, keeping track of candidate information, communicating hiring decisions, and sharing new employee documents.


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1. Create the team:


2. Add channels:

Create a new team for your HR department.

Add apps that helps HR projects. For example, gather employee sentiment with SurveyMonkey, engage in companywide Q&A with Yammer, plan shifts and work assignments with Kronos, track new hire onboarding with Adobe Sign, and deliver training and onramp content with Go1.

Add channels for Recruitment, Training, Events, Reviews, and Onboarding.

4. Meet regularly:

Schedule meetings, planning, interviews, candidate reviews all in Teams.

5. Share documents:

Upload files to Teams channels such as HR policies, candidate information, offers, training or recruitment guidance notes, HR portals, feedback forms, and surveys.

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IT

Teams provides IT professionals with a single hub to plan, execute, and manage all phases of infrastructure deployments and rollouts, making it a useful tool for driving transformation and change management across the organization.


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1. Create the team:


2. Add channels:

Create a new team and add members from IT and other stakeholders from across the company.

Add apps that helps with IT projects. For example, sketch new software projects with Freehand by InVision, follow work items with Azure DevOps, resolve tickets in Zendesk, and follow uptime with Pingdom.

Add channels for Service Strategy; Problem, Incident and Change Deployment; Health and Reporting; Readiness and Adoption; Support and Management, and Governance.

4. Share files and logs:

Upload important files or logs to the channels.

5. Get quick access to apps:

6. Meet regularly:

Pin relevant apps such as Word, Excel, or Tasks.

Schedule and hold recurring or impromptu meetings with key stakeholders.

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Engineering

When delivering a new feature, engineers move quickly through ideation, development, and deployment. Teams is integrated with developer tools that enable everyone to stay on track during sprints, collaborate in real-time, and fix a bug from anywhere.


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1. Create the team:


2. Add channels:

Create a new team for your engineering group and add key stakeholders across the company.

Add apps that helps engineering project. For example, track documents and plans with integrations in Files, follow project plans in Wrike, and resolve tickets in Zendesk.

Add channels for General, Feature Releases, Testing, Feedback, Competitive Information, Go-to-Market, Research, and Product Analytics to organize and discuss these topics.

4. Share files:

Upload relevant team files to the channels so everyone can easily find the latest versions.

5. Connect to tools:

6. Meet regularly:Schedule and hold recurring stand-up meetings with key stakeholders.

Upload team files to the channels, such as annual financial statement reviews and audit reports.

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Project management

Project managers are often overloaded with planning, meeting, and communication tools and services. Teams enables collaboration with a central hub to share files, manage stakeholder meetings, and track progress across multiple projects.


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1. Create the team:


2. Add channels:

Create a team for each project, and then add stakeholders from across the company.

Add apps that helps project management via tabs. For example, track key metrics in PowerBI, review team tasks with Trello, request team feedback with Pulse Surveys from Polly, or pin a team charter as a Word document.

Add channels such as Planning, Budget, Analytics, Reviews, and Feedback.

4. Share files:

Upload project documents to the channel, such as budgets, schedules, information sources, and guidelines.

5. Get quick access to apps:

6. Meet regularly:Schedule and hold recurring or impromptu meetings with key stakeholders.

Pin relevant apps used by your team within each channel, such as Tasks, Trello, Smartsheet, and Power BI.

The next level of Teams usage is to streamline and simplify business processes. As with running projects, the best way to get started is to choose a specific group or department with a process that could use help.

The basic sequence looks something like this:

4. Streamline a process

A group can bring structure and order to a process by using a Teams workspace to coordinate tasks.

Rally around a process

1. Choose your group or department to work with.

2. Demonstrate a process template to streamline the workflow.

3. Demonstrate Office 365 apps in Teams.

4. Help the group set up a workspace.

5. Create a routine for process improvements.

6. Evaluate after a few weeks and adjust workspace and process based on learnings.

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Teams 25

Process Example:

A team for a sales cycleIn this example, our sales team is on site with the potential customer, gathering requirements, and ultimately submitting a request. Since they are doing this in real time at a construction site, our salesperson is using a tablet. The organization created a custom app that helps the salesperson capture the right information. The company used Power Platform to build the app. This app can be accessed directly from Teams.

Most sales organizations use a CRM tool for generating and nurturing leads. Teams connects directly to Dynamics 365 CRM, Salesforce, and other popular CRM applications to enable this functionality.

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In the following example, we’ll look at how a sales team might use this process to streamline their work.

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The sales team can update its bid documents and verify material prices via an always up-to-date SharePoint list, also accessible through Teams.

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The team can check its embedded PowerBI dashboard to check their progress against sales targets.

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Instead of time-consuming, complicated, manual processes, the salesperson simply submits the completed bid to a folder, which kicks off a Power Automate flow.

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5 The manager automatically sees that a bid needs their approval. They can access the file and the approval tool within Teams for the simplest workflow. The entire process is documented and auditable.

The bid is approved. The team can finish their proposal. They search for a prior proposal that fits their needs, so they don’t have to start from scratch.

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7 The proposal is presented to the customer via a virtual Teams meeting. The verbal “yes” is provided on a PSTN call.

It’s also important to let the team know what happened so they can get started on the work, and of course, celebrate these wins together.

Power Platform provides templates for a wide range of business needs, including new-hire onboarding, incident management, contract lifecycle management, and sales.

Using Power Automate, you can simplify repeated tasks in processes like these and many more. Once the solution has been proven in one business area, it becomes easier to expand further.

Let’s look at three examples of process automation within Teams that you can use as starting points: Create a hub for new hires in your organization. Resolve incidents within a Teams workspace. Manage a contract lifecycle.

Automation works best on processes that have already been tested and tweaked with the group.

Improve processes within your pilot teams

Teams includes built-in automation functionality provided by Power Automate, part of the Power Platform. As with other phases of Teams adoption, the Teams working group should choose a specific business functional area to focus on for its first automation.

5. Automate repeated workflows


Introduce new members to the team.

Connect new members to common resources for their role.

Create tasks and to-dos for new hire managers.

Notify Teams about new hire opportunities.

Create an Azure DevOps work item to order new hardware or set up accounts.

Schedule follow-ups and new hire experience reviews.

Track and route new hire onboarding forms through Adobe Sign.

Send onboarding feedback questionnaires after one month.

Create a hub for new hires in your organizationAutomate new-hire onboarding tasks within Teams to deliver a consistent, connected experience across your organization. First, create a dedicated team or channel for new hires.

Use Power Automate flows to:


Add a rule when a new team member is added to a Teams

Retrieve information about the new user

Automatically post a welcome message to the channel

This Power Automate flow will generate a customized message to the channel when someone new joins the team.


Create incident discussion channels in response to things like input forms, management alerts, data thresholds, and security incidents.

Automatically notify incident owners if there is no action within a specified period.

Create new process documents in a team for managing flow.

Handle the resolution and closing of an incident.

Automatically schedule follow-up postmortem briefings.

Resolve incidents within a Teams workspaceEmployees who provide support are often burdened with repetitive, manual steps—a perfect opportunity to create efficiency through automation. First, create a channel or team for managing incident lifecycle, then add automation to save time and stay focused.



Create an input form for users to report the incident

Retrieve details about the incident

Create an item in a Sharepoint list for tracking

Post a message to alert the incident management team

Create a Teams channel to centrally manage communications on an incident

A Power Automate flow can automatically generate a record for tracking an incident as well as a Teams channel to help the support team collaborate effectively.


Create approvals for every stage of the document creation, editing, and approval workflow.

Move documents to different folders for different stages of the process.

Send out documents for e-signatures via Adobe Sign.

Use tools like OneNote for brainstorming contract details.

Keep team members in the loop.

Manage a contract lifecycle

Typically, contracts must be shared, reviewed, and approved multiple times across various people inside an organization. Use a team workspace to manage the lifecycle of critical documents in your organization, then add automation to save time and stay focused.



Update the team when new assets are added

Kick off a quick approval process

Notify the team when approved

Using Power Automate, you can ensure that document approvals are completed in a timely fashion.

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Getting the most out of Teams requires the right balance of encouraging people to get started on their own and providing focused guidance for adopting more advanced capabilities. Getting people started right away with meetings, chat, and document sharing can help them acclimate to a digital teamwork style. Then, with your working group in place, you can work with small teams on focused projects to adopt apps, process management, and workflow automation using Power Platform.

There’s a phenomenal amount of power for your business in your Microsoft 365 subscription—with apps and solutions designed to work together and empower everyone to do more.

Start creating your Teams center of excellence

Boost your skills and knowledge with step-by-step guidance from Microsoft 365 learning paths >

Learn how to use Power Platform >

Find a partner to help you deploy Teams >

See how others are using Teams >

Get apps that add value to Teams >

https://docs.microsoft.com/learn/browse/?products=m365&resource_type=learning%20path&roles=business-user



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5 ways to get the most out of teams

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