How Small Businesses can get the Most out of Microsoft Teams
If you are a small to medium-sized business, you should be using Teams.
Teams is the best way for modern companies to collaborate and communicate. Within one chat window, you can safely and effectively share files, schedule meetings, and take video calls.
Because of integrations through Microsoft, there is no longer a need to switch between apps like slack or zoom.
Simply put, Teams makes the online meeting experience so much better. And there are plenty of ways to successfully set up and manage your business using Teams.
In this post, we’ll be going over the best practices for using Teams effectively in your business. From segmenting your business to scheduling recurring meetings, we’ll cover it all.
Teams Best Practices
Organize with Groups
When we are able to seamlessly work together, work is more collaborative.
As I’m sure many of you know, group chats are a great way to communicate with different people.
Teams excels at being able to group people by job or project. Create a group just for your marking team so they can manage content and communicate with each other.
You might even create a group that includes your entire business. Groups like these are an effective way of making company-wide announcements.
Pin Important Groups and Chats
Have a chat you want to keep top of mind? Pin any group or chat to the top of the chat list to always stay updated on it.
“Pinning” is a great way to differentiate the chats you interact with on a regular basis from the ones that pop up here and there.
Never let your chats get lost in the crowd again.
Getting the Most Out of Chat Box
@Mentioning
You can do a lot with Teams chat to maintain an effective and efficient workplace.
For example, did you know you can call a colleague’s attention by @mentioning them in Teams?
By simply placing the “@” symbol before their name, that person will receive an alert in their activity stream that you have mentioned them in a message.
You are able to @mention multiple people in a single chat message to get the attention of several people at the same time.
Formatting
Teams offers a lot of freedom when it comes to formatting messages.
Use the built-in formatting tools to add emphasis on any message or important announcement to the entire group.
You’ll find the formatting button under the compose box. There, you can do things like create a heading, color-code, highlight, and even insert a table all from the chat.
The last thing I want to mention is a feature that I often see overlooked.
Schedule Reoccurring Meetings
Meeting with the same person or group on a regular basis? Sounds like the perfect opportunity to schedule a reoccurring meeting.
While creating a new meeting, you can set the meeting to repeat daily, weekly, or on a custom schedule.
One thing to note about reoccurring meetings is that regardless of how many times they take place, they will always use the same meeting chat. This means you’ll always have the ability to go back to meeting notes and chat messages.
Overall, Teams is a great tool. It truly makes remote collaboration so much easier.
We hope these best practices show how small businesses can get the most out of Microsoft Teams.
Check out last week’s blog post where we go over the Cybersecurity Trends to Expect in 2023.
If you’re interested in migrating your office to a Microsoft ecosystem, feel free to set up a call with me via the Calendly link below. I’d be happy to help your business out.
Click here to schedule a free 15-minute meeting with Stan Kats, our Founder and Chief Technologist.
STG IT Consulting Group proudly provides IT Services for Small to Medium Businesses in Greater Los Angeles. We’d love to see if we can help you too!
