But how can Microsoft Teams make the most of your employees’ time and increase your organization’s productivity?

Attracting and Keeping Better Employees

A strong digital culture is paramount to attracting new employees. Having the freedom to work remotely without losing effectiveness makes your business an attractive workplace. Whether they are looking to work from home or on the go, Microsoft Teams allow for the kind of digital work environment that attracts the best of the best. A remote work solution that allows for instant, secure idea-sharing also makes location less of a hurdle for potential new employees. It also improves the morale of current employees as well as reduce turnover rates.

Keeping Everything in One Place

Microsoft Teams has everything your team needs for successful remote collaborations in one place. Meetings, chats, files, calls, and tools, all in one convenient package will revolutionize your company’s digital workplace. Keeping everything your team needs in one single and secure location, Microsoft Teams is simply an essential tool for productivity.

Bettering Day-to-day Productivity

Microsoft Teams makes it possible to keep conversations going in real-time regardless of where employees are located. Microsoft Teams can be accessed on mobile devices as well as PCs and laptops, making it possible to keep a conversation going while traveling and to continue without hitch in a new location.

It is easy for all team members to review drawings or emails, share files, and to use chat and video calls. Seamlessly integrated with Office 365, Microsoft Teams is a fully functional system for any workplace that wants to go digital.

Easier Collaborations

Giving your employees the tools to work together digitally automatically results in higher productivity, more mobility, and better communication between teams. It is also easier to keep all your team members up to date on your organization and industry.

Ready to increase your team’s productivity? Contact 6th Street Consulting for a free virtual consultation!

The post Transforming Organizational Productivity with Microsoft Teams appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

Preview Meeting and Call Experiences on Desktops

Now when you join a Teams call or meeting by using the desktop app, it will open in a secondary window.  That way you can navigate around Teams without losing track of where your meetings or call is located on screen.

More Control Within Teams Meetings

Hosting a meeting, but need a few more moments to get ready?  Now you can have the option of making everyone wait in a meeting lobby when joining a meeting that you have organized.  To access this setting open the Meeting options and then select Only me in the Who can bypass the lobby? field.

(Updated 7/17/20)

Search within a chat or channel

Search makes our lives easier and not you can search within specific channels or even chats.  Just like with typical Microsoft applications Ctrl+F (of Cmd+f on Macs) will bring up a search bar to search for whatever you need.  Works great in any chat, one-on-one or group chat rooms.

Cortana Voice Assistance coming to Teams

While Cortana doesn’t have the most forward-facing role with Windows 10, the digital assistant is coming to Teams mobile app.  In the coming weeks, expect to see Cortana’s voice functionality helping users to schedule and join meetings, send chat requests, share files and more.

(Updated 6/28/20)

Improvements with Safari

No longer will you need to use the dial-in audio conferencing options when using the Safari browsers to operate Teams.  Your device’s built-in speakers and microphone will be available for speaking and listening to the other meeting attendees.

Apps in Chat

App and chatbot functionality has come to private and group chats within Teams.  You can now update apps to be used in the various chat types.

Microsoft Teams introduces some important updates for the Summer of 2020. As everyone works toward the new normal, there’s new territory to conquer in the world of virtual meetings. There are several updates to Microsoft Teams. Here, we will cover just a few of them.

A Larger Group Chat

Those chats are expanding! With the new update, you can include 250 people on the group chat.

Phone Privacy

This update hides the phone number for people dialing into the meeting. The phone number will still show for people who are within your organization.

This update provides important privacy protection for people who may be a guest or who is calling in from another organization.

Teams Now Have Meeting Options

There is a new button in Teams. It is labeled “Meeting Options.” This button appears after you have sent your meeting invite. Click on it to alter the settings for your meeting.

Use it to change things like who can present or the lobby bypass.

Bookings

You can now book online meetings and in-person appointments using Teams. Use Teams to stay organized and on-time for education appointments, doctor’s visits, and more.

You can book only meetings with Microsoft Teams as far as virtual meetings.

This new feature allows designated schedulers to manage the schedules for entire departments as well as their staff.

A New Way to Manage

As remote work becomes more commonplace and people use more video in their workplace, it is important to try to centralize communication.

These updates make a central calendar that includes all virtual communication, in-person appointments, and chats. Keeping things together has just become more manageable.

Larger Groups

There are several updates relating to meeting and group size. The inclusion of up to 250 people per chat is a big game-changer for large companies.

In the past, people using chats had to keep several chats going at once to manage large discussions. As people try to clarify details between groups, the chats could easily multiply. Multiple sub-chats emerged. The larger number of people per chat will help with this sprawl.

250 is easily the largest chat group size manageable for most people. With more people than that, threads become too much to keep track of.

Intuition and Ease of Use

These updates are small yet powerful additions to the capability of Microsoft Teams. Like the updates that usually come from Microsoft, everything is easy to work with and does not require too much thought.

This intuitive design and framework combined with the adjustments in numbers of participants should make it easier for larger companies to adopt Microsoft Teams.

Larger teams are a largely untapped market for this software, which started out with capabilities for smaller offices. There are potentially more updates to come regarding large businesses.

A More Powerful Software

These updates are helping Microsoft Teams pack a lot of power. This software does an amazing amount with a relatively simple dashboard. The question is really how complex people’s meeting schedules are.

There is a lot going on with meetings that take place online. Be sure to check back for more updates as this software develops more features.

The post What’s New with Microsoft Teams (Summer 2020) appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

Teams came after Slack, but it has a strong competitive edge via integration. This software allows for full integration of Microsoft Office. It also integrates with other apps, and new app capability is being added all the time.

People can easily receive notifications from Microsoft Teams even if it’s not their software of choice. This makes it a strong candidate for large and diverse virtual teams with many different personalities.

Microsoft Teams is a large program. It keeps all of the interfaces from Microsoft, including Office, in one spot. If you are ready to combat the piecemeal nature of working virtually, Microsoft Teams should be on your purchase list.

Master Notifications and the Activity Feed

The first thing you need to do is realize that people get tons of notifications every day. You’ll realize just how many you get once they’re all in one place. Don’t get overwhelmed!

Learn to use the notifications and the activity feed.

Set good boundaries with your notifications settings. Just like with any notification feed, you shouldn’t try to follow every last detail of your contacts’ behavior. Work with what you can work with.

Use the different notification settings, and turn off different teams you don’t need to hear from right then.

As with most Microsoft products, there is a lot of user-friendly capability with these features.

Learn Teams Commands

There is a good-sized list of commands that will make your day go faster. They are intuitive and easy to learn. Use them just like you would any shortcut command for programming or accessing a computer.

The commands are the fastest way to set your status (such as Do Not Disturb or Be Right Back) and call people.

Focus Mentions

Mentions are a great tool for communicating with lots of people. As with all interfaces, it takes some discipline not to overuse personal mentions and channels.

The mentions are intuitive. Use the @ sign followed by someone’s name to mention them directly.

Use tags to mention people in a group by their tag name. For example, if you are managing a team of writers, you can get everyone a notification by categorizing various names under the team “writers” and then using “@writers” to send them a notification.

Make Great Video Calls

Video calls are a whole different idea than in-person meetings. It’s too easy to have a clamoring meeting of voices. People have to practice good video etiquette, but what really helps is appointing a chairperson for the meeting.

The chairperson should give clear direction. They can utilize non-distracting background effects and direct people to use the mute button where appropriate.

It will take some practice to form strong teams that listen to each other on video calls. Start off on the right foot by clearly outlining rules for everyone. Appoint a chairperson right off the bat.

It is easy to share meetings with people who couldn’t attend on Stream.

All in One Spot

Microsoft Teams is the software for people who need to take control of their desktop. It does take a little bit to learn, but the truth is that you are probably spending that amount of energy jumping from app to app anyway.  Dive right in and experience the difference when you manage everything from one interface.

The post Become An Effective Microsoft Teams User appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

In the past, Zoom has been an incredibly popular product for holding these meetings. Microsoft Teams has long offered a viable alternative to Zoom, with significantly better security measures that result in a Tier-D security compliance rating. This compliance rating makes Microsoft Teams usable for even the strictest government sector meetings. Meanwhile, Zoom has come under fire during the Coronavirus outbreak for weak security measures. Some of these Zoom breaches have come to be referred to as “Zoombombing”, but they are no laughing matter.

Microsoft Teams Features Compared to Zoom

Microsoft Teams offers several important security features that Zoom does not. Besides having a greater emphasis on the security features of its products, Microsoft has greater bandwidth to deal with providing quality service.

Microsoft is a more mature company and deletes user data after accounts are removed. The company works hard on creating transparency reports, which Zoom is still working on creating for its users.

It’s important to note that several government agencies have banned using Zoom for their business, given the recent security breaches and the lack of cooperation with law enforcement on the part of the company.

Microsoft offers a detailed report on the security measures they take, including how their protocols for data transfer are stored and what they do with data. As an added benefit, Microsoft Teams does not utilize ads in their product.

Microsoft Teams For Government Agencies and Defense Contractors

We are sure that government agencies like defense contractors and schools are getting a better product with Microsoft Teams. Given the recent choice of other government contractors to stop using Zoom, we offer Microsoft Teams as a superior option.

You have a lot more control over how you manage security in Microsoft Teams, and we are happy to offer demos at our company. Microsoft is a much older company and has a stronger culture in security than other newer products, like Zoom, can offer.

We encourage you to try it for yourself, but we also encourage you to review Microsoft’s detailed outline of the transfer protocols for Teams. This report offers insight into how the security ratings are achieved and why Microsoft Teams is HIPPA-compliant.

The post Microsoft Teams vs. Zoom Meetings in the Era of Coronavirus appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

Integrated Outlook Experience

Teams are where work gets done.  And today, a lot of work and time goes into email communication.  Teams set out to make your email work harder and improve the way that employees communicate and collaborate with each other.  By integrating Outlook and Teams, you can now move a Teams conversation from Teams to Outlook with just a few simple clicks.  Additionally, you can take an email conversation and move it to Teams (including images, tables, and attachments).  Learn more about this new feature.

Targeted Communication

Teams is smart.  When it comes to communication, Teams can help you to define the audience that you need to message automatically.  By using an @tag, Teams allows a user to message an entire audience associated with that @tag with just one click.  Need to message the entire marketing department about a new product, use their @tag (for example @marketing), and in one-click, your message is ready to send to the whole group.

Files Powered by SharePoint

Never lose track of a file again.  With the new Teams file experience powered by SharePoint, the File tab of a channel includes the ability to sync files directly from your PC.  Now you can see previews of file types including images, videos, Microsoft 365 files like Word & Excel, and much more directly within Teams.

Stay tuned to the 6th Street Consulting blog for more updates on the latest functionality coming to Microsoft Teams, and contact us if your company or organization is looking to customize or optimize their Teams experience.

The post What’s New with Microsoft Teams Functionality appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

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.

According to Forrester Research, the amount of time Microsoft Teams saves businesses has a direct correlation to how much money Microsoft Teams saves businesses.

First, let’s look at time.

• Workers save 4 hours/week because of Microsoft Teams’ improved collaboration and information sharing platform.
• Employees sit in meetings 18.9 percent less of the time because of Microsoft Teams.
• Microsoft teams replaced 150 trips with just-as-successful online meetings.
• Decision makers made choices 17.7 percent more quickly with the help of Microsoft Teams.

Here’s how that translates into money saved

Based on a study of businesses over three years – Forrester found a $30.3 million impact.

Companies saved:

• $6.9 million being more effective in meetings.
• $451,300 making faster decisions
• $4.8 million not having to consistently switch and cater to different applications with remote workers

“Teams is a cohesive environment where a user has access to everything in one place,” GM, telecoms.

The post Microsoft Teams … and Money appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

In today’s workforce teams are spread out all over the States. In order to stay in the know and discover relevant people and important content when you need it most, based on who you work with and what you work on, SharePoint should be your go to. Read on to discover how SharePoint can help.

Discover relevant, recommended content

Search for and discover content when you need it most. See real-timequery suggestions and get personalized results in sites, files, and people with full-text matches across Office 365. See personalized content that Delve surfaces to you from OneDrive, SharePoint, Yammer, and other sources. In Yammer, uncover conversations, groups, and people to leverage the knowledge of others.

People and content find you

Be discovered and connect with other people—including by their expertise, projects, education, and contact details. Let others find and tap into your expertise with your skills and interests listed in Delve and your conversations in Yammer. Gain insights and perspective to make better business decisions by connecting with the right people and content—even if you didn’t know you needed it.

Get the right information quickly

See refined and relevant search results with SharePoint’s built-in enterprise search capabilities. Easily see sites you frequent or files you’ve recently viewed or edited. Take advantage of the type-ahead and smart results features as you search for sites, files, or people. Search for sensitive content and use SharePoint’s search capabilities to support eDiscovery and compliance.

6th Street Consulting is a Microsoft technology firm specializing in user productivity and collaboration on SharePoint and Office365.  Our biggest differentiator is we put business before technology in creating solutions tailored fit to your organization.

For additional information please contact:

Michelle Hollis

michelle.hollis@CulverG.com

(310) 694-3844

The post Find Content and Expertise Across Your Company appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

There are a ton of great new features launching into 2018 adding great new value to Office 365 subscribers, with updates that enhance how teams work together and unlock new ways to create and manage content across devices. Read on for details.

Get more done in Microsoft Teams

New features for Microsoft Teams enable you to interact with apps in new ways, customize your personal workspace, and take quick actions.

Find and use apps in new ways—Now you can include interactive cards from apps in conversations the same way you would add an emoji or GIF. With one click, you can bring important information, like a task from Trello, into a channel conversation or chat. Finding new apps and services in Teams is now easier with the new Store, where you can search for apps by name or category, such as “Project management” or “Analytics & BI.”

Command apps and take quick actions across Teams—Also introduced is the new command box in Microsoft Teams, a single point of entry that integrates your search and command experiences. Now you can quickly interact with apps, perform tasks, and navigate throughout Teams directly from the command box, in addition to searching across people, messages, files, and apps.

Work together more effectively with updates to iOS and Mac

New Office 365 capabilities for iOS and Mac enhance how teams create content together, make it easier to produce advanced documents, presentations, and spreadsheets from anywhere, and introduce new ways to search, preview, and interact with files.

Co-authoring for iOS and Mac—It is now easier for individuals to work together across devices with the general availability of co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for iOS and Mac. Now, whether you work on a Mac, PC, or mobile device, you’ll know who else is working with you in a document, see where they’re working, and view changes. Co-authoring is already available on the Office desktop applications for Windows, Office for Android, and Office Online.

Automatically save your work on Mac—This month also marks the general availability of AutoSave in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on Mac for Office 365 subscribers who store their documents in OneDrive and SharePoint. Whether you’re working alone or with others, your latest changes are now automatically stored in the cloud, so you never need to worry about hitting the Save button again. You can also view and restore content from earlier versions of the document at any time with support for version history.

Drag and drop content and files on iOS—The Office and OneDrive iOS apps now support drag and drop for content and files. One of the most common and powerful tasks when creating content is integrating photos, graphs, and other objects from a variety of sources. Now Office 365 subscribers on iPad and iPhone can easily drag and drop content into documents, presentations, and spreadsheets from other Office apps or OneDrive. Support for drag and drop for iOS also enables you to move files to and from OneDrive and other sources—such as SharePoint or iMessage—making it easier to organize content scattered across different apps and services.

Access OneDrive files from more iOS apps—OneDrive for iOS now natively supports the new iOS 11 Files app. This means iPhone and iPad users can upload, access, edit, and save content to OneDrive or SharePoint from any iOS app that supports File app integration—a top requested feature. Users can also tag their favorite OneDrive and SharePoint files from within the Files app, making it easier to find and use the content that matters to you.

Preview more file types with OneDrive for iOS—Microsoft redesigned the OneDrive for iOS app with a more detailed list view, making it easier to scan file names, see relevant information, and sort files by specific attributes. The updated OneDrive for iOS app also creates crisp thumbnails and supports previews for over 130 file types, including Adobe Photoshop and 3D objects, so you can open, view, and share the right content without leaving the app.

Search across your organization with Outlook for iOS—The new search experience in Outlook for iOS leverages the Microsoft Graph to surface results from your top contacts, upcoming travel itineraries, package deliveries, recent attachments, and more. Together with proactive search suggestions and a unified design, it now provides consistent, personalized results that enable you to discover information from across your organization faster.

Improve reading skills with Learning Tools for Mac—Word for Mac now supports Immersive Reader and Read Aloud, tools previously available in Word for Windows and mobile apps. These tools enable content to be viewed in ways that are optimized for learning differences and allow documents to be read back with simultaneous highlighting. These features make it easier to recognize and correct errors as you write, improving reading and editing accuracy for everyone—especially users with learning disabilities such as dyslexia.

Additional updates

• New ways to share on Yammer—Earlier this month, Microsoft introduced new ways for users to share engaging company-wide content from wherever they are with the Yammer mobile app. Users can now post announcements to groups, add animated GIFs, and more.

The post New in 2018—enriching teamwork across devices appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

If you use the SharePoint app on iOS, you get the first look at the mobile experience of team news. When you tap the Newstab, you will see a list of aggregated news using the intelligence of the Microsoft Graph from the sites you work in, the sites you follow and the sites your colleagues work in. SharePoint mobile on iOS gives you one place to catch up on the news from across your intranet. That’s your news in your pocket!

News on SharePoint mobile will come to other platforms as a future update.

Create a modern team site and an associated Office 365 group from the SharePoint home

We’re pleased to announce that soon you’ll be able to create a site and a group for your team—right from SharePoint home in Office 365. The Create site wizard will create an Office 365 group as well as a modern SharePoint team site. You will even be able add members and classify the site along the way. And if you’ve ever waited for a SharePoint site to be provisioned in the past, you’ll discover this process will create the site in mere seconds.

Create a team site right from SharePoint home.

Know who’s who, and who’s working on what, with new people cards

Teamwork is all about the people and what they’re working on. Now, when you see a person in a SharePoint team site, document library, list, or in OneDrive for Business, the value of discovering more about that person lies at your fingertips where you are already working.

People cards appear in SharePoint document libraries when you hover over a person’s name.

When you hover over a person’s name or photo, you’ll now see a richer people card. Previously, the card contained basic contact information and one-click methods to connect with the person. Now, you instantly see who the person works for and what documents they recently worked on. Powered by the Microsoft Graph, these intelligent people cards provide a personalized and actionable experience as you work with your files across Office 365.

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