There are numerous benefits of Microsoft Teams and how they can help your business.  From boosted efficiency to improved collaboration and communication, Microsoft Teams empowers businesses to thrive.

Talking with staff around our office, we compiled a list of our favorite aspects of Microsoft Teams to provide you with no-nonsense benefits and ways it can help you too:

Agility

Teams is a tool with purpose and incorporate conversations from both email and chat and improve the quality of these conversations to cut down on the number of emails and chats necessary.  Additionally, logging all the communication in one place being able to circle back and view conversations and files cuts down on wasted time and eliminates unnecessary conversations.

Customization

Microsoft Teams is extremely flexible and can be customized to meet the needs of any user.  The software promotes connectedness among staff and can be displayed using the branding of a business for unique personalization.

Collaboration

Collaboration is more than a buzzword; it is the new way of doing business.  Rarely are decisions made solely by one individual, so having the ability to quickly come together and collaborate increases the likelihood of decisions being made together and more quickly than ever before.

If your company is still deciding on whether to adopt Microsoft Teams, take it from us and get started.  Not only will it provide improvements in communication, but it quickly will become your go-to business tool providing sleek and easy communication and transparency of information.

Download our free Microsoft Teams Whitepaper to better understand the platform and how 6^th Street Consulting’s talented group of developers and architects can help you maximize the resources of your first-line staff.

The post Real World Advice for Incorporating Microsoft Teams into Your Business appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

Business process automation is integral to any growing business. Let’s look at how SharePoint can help business’ of all sizes streamline, automate, and transform processes with rich forms, workflows, and custom mobile apps.

Gather and manage data and files

SharePoint lists collect data—just like you might in Excel—and are easy to share and manage on an intranet. More than ten million custom lists are in use across Office 365—from simple lists like contacts and tasks to lists that power mission-critical business operations for large enterprises. Use Microsoft PowerApps to build custom forms to view, create, and modify data and files.

Automate repetitive tasks

Free yourself and your team from the time you spend on recurring manual team and organizational processes. Use the simple, visual designer in Flow to lay out the steps. You can do everything in Flow from configuring alerts and approvals to modeling complex, multistage processes.

Connect to and integrate data sources and services

When your process needs data from other sources and services, Flow lets you automate data exchange, synchronize files, and more. Use Flow, for example, to copy information entered by a sales team in Microsoft Dynamics to a SharePoint list used by operations. Flow also integrates with on-premises and third-party services.

Build apps that transform your business

With PowerApps, you can create, without writing code, apps that interact with data in SharePoint lists and libraries, as well as other cloud and on-premises sources. Use PowerApps to create digital experiences that take advantage of technology like cameras on mobile phones to work in innovative ways.

The post Do Less So You Can Achieve More with SharePoint appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

Transform business process

SharePoint enables you, your team and your organization to streamline tasks, automate workflows and integrate processes seamlessly into your work—on any device and from anywhere you work.

Create custom SharePoint forms and digital experiences with PowerApps

Starting this summer, you will be able to use Microsoft PowerApps to easily create custom forms and rich digital experiences that surface right in the context of a SharePoint list or library. Users can then create, view and interact with data using your custom form or experience, rather than default SharePoint forms.

Create custom forms inside SharePoint lists and libraries with no code using PowerApps.

This is a significant milestone for both SharePoint and PowerApps, as it empowers any user to drive transformation of team and organizational processes.

Simple approval flows built in to SharePoint libraries

Microsoft continues to deepen integration of SharePoint and Microsoft Flow. New built-in approval flows let you send any document for approval with a custom message. The recipient can approve the request directly from a rich, actionable email message, so approval and feedback can be given without leaving your inbox.

Approval flows, built in to SharePoint, send a rich, actionable email message.

Inform and engage employees

An intranet lets you communicate to people—keeping them informed of news and information. And it enables you to communicate with people—to engage employees and foster open conversation. It is this engagement that is fundamental to driving digital transformation and culture change.

Reach a broad audience with SharePoint communication sites

As the next step toward ushering in the next generation of intranets, Microsoft announced SharePoint communication sites—coming this summer. A communication site is a beautiful, dynamic site that lets you reach a broad audience to keep the organization informed and engaged. Communication sites look great on the web, on a PC or Mac, on mobile browsers and in the SharePoint app.

Easily create beautiful intranet sites to reach a broad audience across your organization.

While your team site lets you share within your group as you’re working, a communication site lets your group share broadly and communicate its message across the organization. News published on a communication site surfaces on SharePoint home in Office 365 and on SharePoint mobile to all users who have access to the site.

Communication sites can be created in seconds. You can configure the default web parts on your site’s pages to tell your story. You can customize page layout with new multi-column sections and drag-and-drop authoring with a range of richly functional web parts, including an image gallery, interactive Bing maps, videos from a Microsoft Stream channel, and a new events web part. Add the Yammer web part to solicit feedback and foster conversation, right in the context of a communication site.

To learn more about communication sites, read “Reach your audience via SharePoint communication sites in Office 365” and watch An overview of SharePoint communication sites. To learn more about business processes, read “Reinventing business processes in SharePoint” and watch Zero code business process apps in SharePoint with PowerApps and Microsoft Flow.

The post Accelerate Your Digital Transformation: Transform Business Process appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.