8 tips for success with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is cloud-based team collaboration software that is part of the Office 365 suite of applications. The core capabilities in Microsoft Teams include chat-based business messaging, calling, video meetings and file sharing, across all devices.

Teams is one of the fastest-growing business apps that help organisations boost collaboration and productivity. Although it’s gaining popularity, changing behaviours and habits is always met with resistance.

How to set up Microsoft Teams for success

To help migrate these challenges we’ve put together 8 top tips that are designed to help make the migration to Microsoft Teams, easier.

1. Explain the full capabilities of the platforms

Create a “Get to know Teams” team where early adopters can explore, question, and discover the capabilities of Teams.

• Chat: Instant message one-to-one or create teams of people inside and outside of your organisation to push fast and inclusive conversations.
• Collaborate: You’ll have the ability to access, share and edit Word docs, PowerPoint, and Excel files in realtime from wherever you like.
• Call: Take the stress out of conference calls, use Teams calling, Phone System, Calling Plan¹, or Direct Routing to host calls from anywhere!
• Video conferencing: Even if you’re all in different locations or you’re a team of 5 or 500, using the video call function will give you the power to host a meeting from anywhere. You even have the option to share your screen, so your client or colleague can follow what you are doing – excellent if you need to go through some reports or a presentation!
• Tabs: Teams also allows you to add Tabs to a document, a SharePoint Site, external website, Power BI Report, etc.
• Connectors/Apps: Connect to third-party software and bring in the content inside of the Channel! Since there will be a direct interface between Teams and that other software, when you add a Connector, you have to authenticate and provide software credentials to connect the two.

For the best experience and feedback, ask your team to install both desktop and mobile applications.

New to Microsoft Teams? Download our guide for beginners to get you started

2. Establish an adoption framework

Having an adoption framework gives you a foundation for an agile service management approach. It also enables an ongoing interaction for adoption throughout your journey with Microsoft Teams and Office 365.

There are three main phases to the adoption framework: Start, Experiment, and Scale. This framework helps improve the core collaboration that teams can get from utilising Microsoft Teams. It also allows you to onboard early adopters and people who may become champions later on.

3. Provide staff training

We all engage with content in different ways, so you will need to adapt your Microsoft Teams training programme to reflect this.

A video is an important tool to get across information quickly! Short, to-the-point videos are easier for users to absorb and apply content learnt to the platform. Physical training days, also hold value if done correctly. An idea could be designing scenario-based training sessions, more people will be engaged if it is relevant to their role. There are loads of free training resources available on the Teams website.

Check out our webinar titled “How to Use Microsoft Teams to Increase Team Productivity” for an introduction to the basics of Teams, how to use key apps and advanced features, and discuss Teams live events, covering how and when to use it. You can watch it here.

4. Lead by example

A key factor in making your Teams integration success is ensuring leadership is using Microsoft Teams in their day-to-day activities. If the people at the top don’t lead by example, how can you expect your staff to cooperate?

Key points to share with leaders could include how Microsoft Teams can increase transparency through its Team structure and massively enhance team organisation via its chat functionality. And for those that still need a little extra convincing, you could show them case studies of past Microsoft Teams success stories.

5. Create a Teams champions network

By building a champions network you are basically creating a set of people within your business that will help the drive adoption of Teams. Your champions need to be excited and passionate about the changes that will follow. Ideally, you’ll want them to hold an interest in the new tech you are introducing – Microsoft Teams.

We all discuss changes in the workplace, which is why having a community champion program will prove useful. The champions will be able to help with a range of things including training delivery and gathering feedback on what is and isn’t working when it comes to adoption.

Creating incentives will go along way in encouraging people to pursue activities outside of their workload. This could be something as simple as creating a reward scheme, or digital badges for your champions – it just shows that you value their dedication. A little goes a long way!

6. Mark changes and highlight your successes

You should clearly underline how your organisation has changed and what are your success factors are. You can keep track of your data by enabling Microsoft 365 usage analytics – if you haven’t already, you’ll need to sign up for the free Power BI service to enable this feature.

Collecting this data will allow you to see exactly which workloads are and aren’t being used. You’ll be able to get right down to the nitty-gritty and see role types, departments and even locations. All this data will lineout your next steps with regards to training or adoption activities for specific areas of your business slaking.

7. Seek regular feedback

Create regular feedback sessions for both your all users, general and champions. They are the ones using the technology, any type of feedback, positive or not should be listened to and acted on.

8. Be aware of the accessibility features

A business is only as good as it’s employee’s and if they do not feel supported, you’ll find their work will suffer as a result. Microsoft 365 has a wide range of features designed to empower those with disabilities in the workplace. So, it is important that your adoption program includes all these accessibility features available within the toolset.

At Netitude, we can support your workforce to adopt Microsoft Teams in any way you need, just get in touch! If you haven’t migrated to Microsoft 365 yet, but want to explore other ways it could benefit your business, contact us today.