Introduction

HR and IT services got huge relief when ServiceNow introduced chatbot builder technology called Virtual Agent. As we know it, Virtual Agent, powered by automation, resolves issues just like an IT help desk.

TeamsHub by Cyclotron has taken an effort further to incorporate ServiceNow platform to deliver an unparalleled user experience. Interestingly, a bot-driven process is a great way out to handle unending routine queries by users. Using ServiceNow, developers can build conversational interfaces for common service requests which helps in reducing call volumes. And as a result, it scales across business and reduces costs.

Benefits of using ServiceNow with TeamsHub by Cyclotron

Now, let’s take a quick walkthrough to some important advantages of using ServiceNow with TeamsHub by Cyclotron:

• Firstly, ServiceNow chatbot is meant to simplify end-users’ task.

• Secondly, the smart chatbot raises incidents or requests on user’s behalf.

• Thirdly, it is not only understands your issues but also provides you with solutions intelligently.

• Fourthly, users get instant assistance by simply choosing some options provided by chatbot without filling out long forms and lists.

• Next, managers can request for analytics and reports without traversing through menus on portal.

• Lastly, the support is available to you 24*7!

Thankfully, if you are using MS Teams as your messaging platform, TeamsHub by Cyclotron can let you integrate ServiceNow in just couple of minutes. You can simply install and integrate ServiceNow using a connector with TeamsHub by Cyclotron. Using Virtual Agent Designer in ServiceNow, you can define the topic flow with user inputs, bot responses and actions performed by a bot.

Moreover, the interface is user and mobile friendly. Additionally, TeamsHub by Cyclotron overcomes Teams limitations with ServiceNow such as:

1. HTML content and cards are displayed in the form of image.
2. For connection, one-time authentication is required which cannot be automated for all users.
3. As both the platforms, MS Teams and ServiceNow are interdependent, an upgrade in one platform might affect the other.

Summary

TeamsHub by Cyclotron makes the human-bot collaboration seamless. Let not legacy service management systems hinder your service delivery and business operations. Give your developers the power to explore bot creation and options to extend its capability using ServiceNow with TeamsHub by Cyclotron.

Use TeamsHub by Cyclotron and allow bots optimize your workflows to improve engagement, speed up business decisions and accelerate project efficiency.

Introduction

Automation and governance is a winning combination to scale MS Teams collaboration system. With the advent of this new paradigm, we can start tackling more complex tasks and transform the entire MS Teams experience – whether it is application design to application usage. This fusion enables organizations to simplify and accelerate the administrative processes radically and achieve real breakthroughs in short time. But which parts of the governance process should be automated?

Governance components to automate in MS Teams

Microsoft Teams is deeply integrated with other Microsoft 365 apps and effectively enables collaboration among a large number of teams, sites and groups. As a result, governance in MS Teams demands constant monitoring of the ecosystem, enhancement of the architecture capabilities as per business needs and management of the infrastructure in tandem. Consequently, establishing business workflows and processes is increasingly complex, repetitive, and time-consuming.

Hence, to reduce excessive burden on IT and get the best results out of MS Teams, you must primarily focus on automating the five crucial components of governance which we have consolidated all in our single product called TeamsHUB by Cyclotron. Let’s go through them one by one –

1. Automate site provisioning

Automate team creation process and get rid of uncontrolled growth, unused workspaces and risks pertaining to loss of critical information.

“TeamsHUB by Cyclotron provides the easiest way to automate team creation using a dynamic form that collects team’s metadata to be approved by the administrator. It also ensures that all your workloads follow a specific naming convention before creation to prevent content duplication and minimize the mess. This enables teams to work in a structured workspace without limiting their freedom.”

2. Automate insights and monitoring

Automate analytics and reporting in MS Teams to proactively monitor Teams environment in real-time.

“Use TeamsHUB by Cyclotron and stop manually exploring your business data to get the answers you need. Auto-detect actionable insights, deviation, pattern, trend, etc. in an intuitive dashboard in real-time. Get smart reports with graphical visualizations and decipher data for making quick and informed decisions.”

3. Automate voice

Automate Direct Voice Routing in MS Teams and enable a zero-code telephony solution to configure and route voice calls to PSTN directly.

“TeamsHUB by Cyclotron provides you a full GUI for creating, troubleshooting, and testing your Direct Routing configuration. Now manage your voice infrastructure from a single pane of glass with greater flexibility. Also, monitor call quality to deliver right experience and access number management to make it simple to connect with your users and clients using all-in-one communication solution.”

4. Automate workload lifecycle

Automate team, site, or group lifecycle management for better organization of workloads and optimization of resources.

“Use TeamsHUB by Cyclotron for effectively managing the lifecycle of teams and other workloads by archiving or disposing them when they are no longer needed. Simply decide a threshold of inactivity in days and let the owners be notified to trigger a new, archive or delete action shortly before reaching the threshold.”

5. Automate access management

Automate user access management to delegate right responsibilities to right users in order to exercise a better control over the tenant.

“Using TeamsHUB by Cyclotron, you can easily define user as administrator, owner, member and guest and grant special privileges to each according to their role. TeamsHUB by Cyclotron is committed to provide you an unparalleled guest user experience with greater collaboration control and file security during exchange. Get various external collaboration settings in just a single page and quickly enable or disable guest user capabilities as per your business mandates.”

To learn more about TeamsHUB by Cyclotron, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo

Introduction

The need for improved employee communication, enhanced efficiencies and workforce productivity continues to push organizations toward cloud adoption.

Cloud collaboration is a common practice in majority of organizations across the world today which includes storing files in the cloud and then sharing and co-editing corporate content among virtual team members. We all know how successful Microsoft Teams has been as a cloud-based collaboration tool used for knowledge sharing, mind-mapping and other collaboration needs. As the demand for cloud collaboration is steadily on rise, the future of MS Teams is predictably bright and beneficial.

How to ease Teams deployment journey

Yet, there are confusions and hypes that surround MS Teams establishment as mainstream in organizations. This is because there is a constant set of myths that emerged with the advent of Microsoft Teams and are still prevalent among IT leaders. To learn about these myths, please check this blog.

Another reason is the challenges they encounter during change management such as user resistance, inadequate technical expertise, and lack of executive engagement which impede MS Teams adoption and progress. So, let us now uncover a few important MS Teams adoption strategies to effectively counteract such challenges and derive greatest value from Teams –

1. Prepare your organization

Assess your organization’s technical readiness for Teams. Verify your bandwidth requirements as per the amount of traffic your environment will need, Microsoft 365 domain as well as licensing agreement with Teams. Talk to companies that are already using Teams to get the best user experience from them.

2. Conduct an internal pilot

Test a broader roll out on a smaller scale by running a pilot program to validate user readiness. Involve actual users and impersonate communication and collaboration on Teams to achieve realistic outcomes. Keep utilizing your legacy applications and use Teams side by side to let users develop the flavour of it gradually. Alternatively, you can choose to deploy one functionality such as calls and conferences to tap into the right path forward for your organization.

3. Communicate the value

Engage executive sponsors to evangelize Teams value and communicate cultural transformation benefits to prepare employees upgrade to Teams. Create enthusiasm among employees for the new ways of working and demonstrate how to use Teams as a hub for teamwork. Provide them the content such as guidelines, training materials, etc. at different stages of adoption journey. Also, let users have a conceptual understanding via hands-on training.

4. Develop product thinking for Teams adoption

We suggest you treating MS Teams adoption as a product, not a project. A project has a start and finish date, but a product undergoes repeated testing and tweaks throughout its stages of development. Based on user feedback, you can also keep incorporating additional features or functionalities in MS Teams to ensure a smooth transition.

5. Create tangible use cases within business

Users tend to develop more inclination to a software or application that can offer a creative solution to their business problem. So instead of mentioning about features during the roll-out, a more practical approach to boost MS Teams adoption is to say something like  – ‘Here is how you manage guest access in Teams’.

6. Simplify Teams administration

Let not MS Teams governance create any havoc or burden on your IT teams or stakeholders and create user frustration. Teams is closely knitted with Microsoft 365 apps which demands constant monitoring and management of remote workforce.

Furthermore, writing complex PowerShell scripts or configuring governance policies manually and repeatedly is an arduous and time-consuming process. This creates inefficiency which is a major roadblock in Teams adoption. To ensure that end-users work flawlessly, securely and effectively, automate MS Teams governance and provide them an exceptional user experience to enjoy scalable and consistent collaboration.

If you want to know more about MS Teams adoption or need any help in defining adoption strategies for your company, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com

Introduction

There has been an unprecedented rise in the usage of collaboration tools during the times of pandemic. We all know how Microsoft Teams strengthened digital communication and helped remote workforce to collaborate extensively from multiple devices. It established a flexible working culture by knitting all elements together that support the new way of working. Organizations that are already the consumers of Microsoft Teams continue to reap enormous benefits out of it some of which are mentioned below:

Benefit #1: Teams is user-friendly

Teams is extremely straightforward to use and facilitates virtual work environment by effectively connecting users and teams of an enterprise for a better teamwork. Also, it is quick to set up in just a few clicks. The simple and intuitive interface of MS Teams makes it easy for users to learn. Thereby users can start performing their daily tasks quickly with greater efficiency.

Benefit #2: Teams develops collaborative mindset to help agile teams work remotely

Teams allows a shared workspace to promote a natural collaboration among agile teams who are traditionally accustomed to thrive well when members are co-located. Eliminating all communication barriers, Teams encourages cohesion, facilitates problem solving and enables fast paced decision making to so that remote teams deliver as much value as co-located teams.

Benefit #3: Teams supports real-time collaboration

Teams offers variety of tools for seamless communication and collaboration such as instant messaging, audio-video calling, screen sharing, file co-authoring, etc. Besides, it is integrated with multiple Microsoft 365 apps such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc., and other powerful cloud solutions such as SharePoint, OneDrive, OneNote and more for remote teams to plan, ideate, create, or innovate all in one place.

Benefit #4: Teams is constantly updated with new features

To revive user experience and strengthen its role to play in future, Teams is constantly evolving with new updates. You can search apps and easily integrate them in Teams to improve productivity. Besides productivity apps, you can also integrate intelligent apps such as Who, Conversational bot, Calls and Meeting bots, etc., to handle repetitive tasks and give users a personalized experience.

Benefit #5: Teams aids adoption and engagement by enabling extension of native functionalities

Teams allows you to renew the platform by extending its capabilities to enjoy seamless, stable, and secured collaboration. You can enhance Teams security posture by implementing governance policies or by using automated governance tools such as TeamsHUB by Cyclotron and even create corporate intranet portal for driving greater engagement among remote employees.

Conclusion

Microsoft Teams helped millions of employees to work remotely during quarantine effortlessly. Thanks to it to keep businesses on track when situations were extreme. For organizations that are planning for digital transformation, it is an exciting time to modernize workplace with Microsoft Teams, empower employees to work smarter and unfurl productivity regardless of unexpected dramatic shifts in the world.

Introduction

In the age of disruption, closely knitted teams that work toward a common goal in an organization need excellent communication and easier collaboration. Therefore, businesses today are reliant on collaboration tools for efficient teamwork and fast results, especially when team members are geographically distant.

We all know how vigorously collaboration tools have been used ever since after the global pandemic outbreak and a vital role that it plays in agile organizations today. A good base of collaboration empowers workforce and improves productivity as teams can coordinate on projects in a smarter way without wasting their time in emails or getting things done in traditional and unproductive methods.

There are a variety of collaboration tools available in the market. However, one needs to be selective while choosing one of them as every business has  unique set of requirements.

In this blog, we will learn about different types of collaboration software and share their key characteristics to make it easy for you to choose right one that gives you a great deal. Let’s begin:

Types of Collaboration Tools

Broadly, collaboration software can be categorized under two main dimensions:

1. Synchronous

Synchronous collaboration software is a real-time software which allows team members to interact, co-edit a file, exchange files – all at the same time on the same platform. Some of the synchronous collaboration tools that are market leaders today like Microsoft Teams have powerful features to make communication hyper-efficient and expedient.

Using instant messaging, chat and conversations, voice and video calling, whiteboard applications and more, synchronous collaboration is more productive, clear, and purposeful as there are no lags and delays in responses. Example: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, etc.

2. Asynchronous

Asynchronous collaboration software allows team members to work at different times. Such software does not support instantaneous activities or tasks. Some of the features of asynchronous collaboration software include email, bulletin board, document sharing, web logs, group calendars and more.

Asynchronous platforms are useful when projects need enough time to improve the quality of documentation before presentation. However, due to mismatched time zones and schedules, it causes communication delays and other collaboration issues.

Now, let us categorize collaboration tools based on the domain that they serve –

1. Communication software

Communication software helps remote teams to connect from anywhere and anytime and helps in problem solving faster. The features and capabilities that lie at the core of such software are instant communication, live chat and messaging, comments, audio-video conferencing, screen sharing, discussion threads and more.

2. Task management software

Task management software enables teams to manage their tasks by keeping track of deadlines and also by providing boards, calendars and timelines. Other key features that it includes are task assignment to appoint users, task prioritization to move tasks, planning and scheduling to create plans and meet deadlines, and file management to arrange files.

3. Document management software

Document management software enables storing, accessing, synchronous editing and cooperative writing on different files in real-time. It allocates a central repository for users to access files on any device. Additionally, users can track changes in files made by their team. They can also use ready-made templates to create documents faster.

4. Information sharing software

Information sharing software are notification-based software where users can send alerts or updates after signing off a project related task. It also allows users to share or access critical business information when they need it. This improves project management and better workflow in a business.

5. Time management software

Time management software helps organizations to stay organized using digital calendars for scheduling, employee attendance tracking, event alerts, notifications, and other time-saving administrative features such as ability to view and approve timecards electronically.

6. File sharing software

File sharing tools allow seamless and secure sharing of files when organizations have huge volume of files including those that are large sized to work on effectively. Such tools store files in the cloud and lets users to sync them across multiple devices for easy collaboration. Files or documents are encrypted before sending it to the recipient, so users need not to worry about information theft or loss.

7. Project management software

Project management software allows end-to-end execution of tasks, permissions, responsibilities, and activities in a project. It also provides transparency to guest users during project execution. Such software also incorporates task management module to keep track of resources and other elements for efficient project management.

7. Knowledge management software

Knowledge management software includes features and capabilities that support collection of data and information, storage of incoming and currently-owned data, communication and interpretation of data, data querying and information-based inputs, and creation and deployment of data and evidence-based knowledge.

Factors to consider while comparing different collaboration tools

Furthermore, we share a few considerations while comparing different collaboration tools before you pick one –

• Think about what problem you want to resolve with this software.
• Determine your company’s requirements and which features suit your particular case.
• Consider ease of use and how widely the software can be accepted by your teams.
• Check for a software that has high usability ratings.
• Consider your budget for collaboration software. You can also try trial or free versions before making a final decision.

Microsoft Teams – a junction for all your collaboration needs

From a variety of cool collaboration platforms, we understand that it can be a bit tricky to choose one. Hence, we would like to recommend Microsoft Teams using which you can revolutionize your business in a cost-effective way.

Microsoft Teams is the world’s leading communication platform which serves as a unified collaboration solution to connect your remote teams and provide them with most useful apps, tools, services, and solutions to manage projects, tasks, information, users, resources, etc., and other business operations productively and securely – all in one place.

So let’s grab this opportunity to unite dispersed teams, shun communication silos, and make sure you keep them alive remotely and turn them to high-performing teams using Microsoft Teams!

Introduction

We have stepped into a digital age where communication is instantaneous and effortless between businesses, employees, and customers. While talking about corporate communications, how can we skip ‘Intranets’ which have been a key communication tool for many enterprises for almost three decades now. But are they still relevant to keep pace with modern workplace?

Intranet Evolution

Traditional or legacy intranet portals were static with outdated content and had clunky interface which caused a massive decline in the employee usage. As companies got fragmented, reaching out the front-line workers effectively and keeping them engaged using traditional intranets became a pressing issue for IT leaders.

This suggested developing a cohesive approach to employee engagement by creating a central hub for knowledge and tools and streamlining internal communications using cloud solutions. This is how modern intranets emerged. Although traditional intranets have taken a back seat due to stale content, poor experience and other complexities, modern intranets are proving to be instrumental in driving business productivity today.

Features of Traditional Intranet

The traditional intranet was confined to the company’s local network which acted as a gateway for desk employees seated at an office computer during the business day. The features of traditional intranet portals typically included:

• Corporate news from the internal or employee communications team
• A repository for information and linked resources maintained by IT
• Linked connections to some corporate systems, such as HR, payroll, expense reporting and so on

What is Modern Intranet?

Internal communication revival forms the core of IT modernization. Using modern intranet businesses are creating a new experience to meet the needs of every employee.

Today’s employees are design focused. A modern intranet is interactive, typically designed to help employees become more efficient and effective at their jobs. Alternatively, it can be defined as a next-gen platform that offers a virtual work environment by integrating contemporary communication, real-time collaboration and social networking features to perform multiple tasks such as

• Accessing corporate information via mobiles or web easily
• Reading personalized content, company news, updates, etc.
• Searching and finding documents, apps, tools, etc.
• Ability to socially connect with co-workers to enhance bonding

Furthermore, let us quickly learn some key benefits of having a modern intranet that helps in building a collaborative and engaging environment in a company –

1. Brings strategic alignment

Now avoid being buried by email messages, notifications, alerts, and static posts on old and creaky intranets. Modern intranet unlike conventional intranet portal supports two-way engagement. It displays a creative and personalized home page with updated content and company news for every employee on their screen automatically. This further ensures that no critical information is ever missed or overlooked.

Additionally, modern intranet reduces passive consumption of information by enabling employees to actively participate by asking questions, posting comments, sharing information, providing feedback and more.

2. Improves employee efficiency

Modern intranet, eradicating the loopholes of communication and information management, helps employees to carry out their daily tasks faster without hassles. They can reach out for assistance and resolve their problems quickly to ensure all projects are executed systematically. Besides, sharing all corporate information at a central hub where employees perform their daily tasks ensures less context switching and thus, less waste of time.

3. Promotes collaboration

Modern intranet brings together all people, resources and tools at one place to get work done. It enables multi-location teams to freely communicate, share ideas, exchange files or plan events easily. By pulling information from other collaboration tools such as SharePoint Online, MS Teams, Yammer, OneDrive, etc., modern intranet simplifies work while streamlining functionality of applications and processes.

4. Offers centralized communication

Modern intranet offers centralized communication providing space for targeted discussions in a team-wide environment. This streamlines decision making process across cross-functional teams while promoting transparent communication.

5. Enhances teamwork

Modern intranet supports peer-to-peer communication to be straightforward and thus enables all employees to find answers quickly, collaborate on projects effectively and strengthen camaraderie. This further cultivates an inclusive environment and a happier workplace.

6. Secure knowledge management

Modern intranet provides one central repository for embedded knowledge to store all company documents and makes it easy to find, access, and manage content with the help of right navigation tools. Additionally, modern intranet promotes organic knowledge sharing by enabling connections. As knowledge experts and employees can easily connect, job-related insights, experiences, knowledge or independent learnings can thus be transferred to each other for better organizational performance.

8. Strengthens HR and IT

Modern intranet eliminates inefficiencies and frustrations of HR and IT teams who constantly support users by answering their queries via email or phone. The entire process is apparently time consuming and costly as many users ask the same questions repeatedly. Modern intranet is a source of self-service resources such as how-to guides, instructional videos, company policies document, employee handbook, etc. to help employees get quick solutions to common help desk issues.

Choose the perfect intranet solution for your business – Try TeamsHUB by Cyclotron’s Engagement Platform!

Intranet is a powerful source to boost employee engagement. However, all intranets available in the market are not equal. As such, how do you pick one from a countless portals that can offer you the best possible ROI with minimal disruption during deployment phase?

The engagement platform offered by TeamsHUB by Cyclotron is an intuitive and visually appealing intranet portal that ensures continued business success post launch. Built on top of Microsoft Teams, TeamsHUB by Cyclotron’s new age engagement features makes it an interesting platform for your remote employees to stay connected, collaborate, access internal resources, manage projects, socialize, recognize each other’s contributions, and much more.

To learn more about our dynamic intranet portal and how it helps bringing your employees close to your business systems, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo

Introduction

Collaboration data delivers crucial insights into Teams activity. Activity tracking and monitoring is an important aspect of Teams administration to ensure continued productivity. Microsoft 365 offers variety of reports to check if users are fully engaged and utilizing the platform to its maximum potential. Using these reports, you can analyze collaboration data, visualize productivity pitfalls, and improve ways of working.

For example, if there is a user who never logged in to Teams, you can evangelize about useful features of Teams which will help them to complete their tasks efficiently. Thereby, providing better training, you can make immediate cost savings to your organization and increase ROI.

Further in this blog, we will explore more about reporting on Microsoft 365 to understand its impact on organization. Let’s begin –

Understanding your reporting goals

You can access extensive reports from Microsoft 365 admin center to determine how your teams are collaborating on the platform. This will give you a clear visibility on licenses that are still unused, Teams features that are underused and patterns that display unusual exchange of information. Gathering such insights, you should be able to devise a strategy to secure your cloud environment while elevating its usage. You can choose to derive Microsoft 365 reports on regular intervals such as daily, weekly, or monthly by setting a reminder in your calendar.

Now, let us see which reports you will find on this platform.

Microsoft 365 reports in the admin center

Depending upon your subscription, the following reports are available in all environments:

• Microsoft browser usage
• Email activity
• Email apps usage
• Mailbox usage
• Office activations
• Active Users
• Microsoft 365 groups
• Microsoft 365 Apps usage
• OneDrive for Business user activity
• Microsoft Teams device usage
• Yammer activity
• Yammer device usage
• Yammer groups activity report
• Forms activity
• Dynamic 365 Customer Voice activity
• Skype for Business Online activity
• Skype for Business Online conference organized activity
• Skype for Business Online peer-to-peer activity
• Viva Learning activity

Out of the abundance of reports that can be generated in Microsoft 365, you can choose to download only those that match your services. Remember, reports are available for the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days. Data won’t exist for all reporting periods right away. Hence, there is a time delay of 48 hours before reports become available to you.

Since Microsoft 365 reports provides you with user-level insights, you can easily understand user’s struggles in adopting the platform. You can extend the platform usage by encouraging people to access Teams via handheld devices such as smartphones, mobiles, tablets, etc.

Microsoft has come up with latest reporting features covering various aspects of collaboration which were only possible with PowerShell scripting before. However, while these reports are helpful, they only provide high-level statistics about your organization.

For example, there is no direct way to detect inactive or obsolete groups that are sitting idle in your environment. This restricts you to draw a definite conclusion about how progressive your teams are. Another issue that you will notice is that the Microsoft 365 reports cannot be produced in real-time. This hampers quick and effective decision making and creates a lag in situational awareness. Next, Teams user activity report cannot show you the trends older than 180 days.

Next-level reporting for MS Teams using TeamsHub.io

So far, we have observed both the advantages as well as limitations of Microsoft 365 reporting. Thankfully, using third-party tools such as TeamsHub.io, you can enhance reporting and analytics for Microsoft Teams and obtain granular workplace statistics in real-time.

We take pride in offering you an intuitive and detailed dashboard with the ability to detect inactive teams, archived teams, teams with no owners, and a plethora of other features. You can further monitor guest access and track files shared outside of your Teams environment to ensure greater security.

TeamsHub.io combines intelligence to Teams platform to empower agile organizations and enable them to deliver accurate and informed business decisions via on-demand reporting. With smart analytics, you can generate detailed reports on types of coordination activities, top users, top teams, teams inventory, installed apps, device usage, audit logs, etc., in a couple of clicks. You can also configure automatic scheduling of report generation periodically without having to add a reminder. Moreover, you don’t need to navigate multiple admin panels anymore to fetch various reports; TeamsHub.io displays it all on one common interface!

For greater usability, TeamsHub.io reporting feature provides critical insights into other tools such as SharePoint, Yammer, Planner, etc., also that exist in your tenant. In a nutshell, TeamsHub.io offers insights far beyond Microsoft 365 reports to let you extract full value of your Teams data and improve collaboration.

To learn more about TeamsHub.io, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo

Introduction

Effective communication and great teamwork are elementary to collaboration success. Poor collaboration has been a major cause of workplace failures. When teams fail to connect and coordinate properly, organizations experience poor performance of projects with frequent delays or cancellation. Such signs of communication issues must be immediately addressed which otherwise can be costly for an organization causing hours of productive work loss.

Lack of team governance

Drilling down to the core issue, it is poor team governance that causes most of the collaboration issues. Let us quickly discuss a few of them –

• Collaboration depends on trust and transparency when teams are remote. Issues can arise when teams are not clear about their roles or purpose of the project.
• Next, relying on emails for sharing varied ideas and opinions by different team members may generate miscommunications and conflicts. This hampers decision making to pick the best idea out of many options.
• Also, due to technology limitations and decentralized organizational structure, remote teams face visibility challenges.
• Improper and inconsistent communication structure greatly affects collaboration with clients or external vendors with whom resources are frequently exchanged.
• Another important barrier that negatively impacts team performance is the use of fragmented or disconnected apps. To drive focus and productivity, remote teams need one curated solution to perform their tasks and avoid switching between apps.

Take advantage of collaboration software

Good news is virtual collaboration technology has made the remote work easier and viable for dispersed teams. Thus, by choosing a right software that meets your teams and business requirements, you can improve the methods of communication and collaboration effectively.

Such tools help in streamlining teamwork by providing everything in one place. There is no need to use multiple apps to do a job or stay relevant. Your teams can chat, call, meet online, share and co-edit files, all in real-time on the same platform with integrated applications.

Using advanced features for project management, your teams can easily plan and schedule tasks, prioritize and assign tasks, set team calendar, share documents to external users, manage resources, create customizable reports and even check project progress on dashboard.

Avoid collaboration issues using TeamsHUB.io

As remote work has been moving upward on trajectory for last couple of years, we understand the dire need of agile organizations to keep their multi-site employees hyper efficient. Accoutered with automation, TeamsHUB.io offers frictionless collaboration and ensures that your remote teams don’t just survive but thrive even in the times of uncertainties.

With remote friendly interface, robust governance features, employee monitoring tools, secure data sharing, user access control, information management, next-gen intranet and more, TeamsHUB.io reinvents employee experience through Microsoft Teams which forms the core of employee productivity.

So, let your work culture be revived and remote teams come alive by breaking all communication silos using TeamsHUB.io as a unified collaboration tool.

To discover more, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo

Introduction

Microsoft improves its ‘Productivity Score’ by introducing a new feature to get better workplace insights. This enables employers to see which Microsoft 365 product is used most by users. They can also detect for how long a user was active on MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, SharePoint, Teams, etc., in a given time period and on what type of device.

What is Productivity Score?

Productivity Score feature offered by Microsoft helps organizations visualize how their digital transformation journey is progressing on a dashboard. It offers metrics to analyse the usage of Microsoft 365 products by employees and collaboration on content.

It helps you to understand the employee experience in five categories: content collaboration, meetings, communication, teamwork, and mobility. You also need to see how technology can better assist you in optimizing productivity. That’s why you also get visibility into your technology experience focusing on your endpoints, network connectivity, and Microsoft 365 apps.

Lastly, Productivity Score assists you in enabling everyone to do their best work by taking action. This is through actions like optimizing your client configurations and implementing end-user training to help people understand the benefit of a specific feature, or documentation that enables you to optimize Microsoft 365 services’ configuration.

In a nutshell, Productivity Score provides end-to-end visibility to check how an organization works and how people and technology experiences can be improved to meet organizational goals.

Since remote work gained prominence in recent years, usage of employee monitoring tools became a viable business practice to check employee engagement. Thankfully, organizations that deployed Microsoft Teams could accelerate productivity in critical times. Yet, we believed that automation would do wonders by simplifying employee management in MS Teams and take employee experience to next level. Hence, we designed TeamsHub.io, an automated Teams platform, which easily removes all productivity and engagement barriers in MS Teams and saves administrators from tons of unnecessary workloads.

Considering the vitality of employee engagement in business success, TeamsHub.io enables employees thrive in digital workspace. As all-in-one collaboration solution, it helps employees to stay focused at one place by providing all critical tools and apps together.

Workplace Insights by TeamsHub.io

We know that MS Teams provides various reports on usage patterns and team activities from multiple admin centers. While this may work well for small-sized organizations, deriving complex reports for larger organizations is typically hard. As there is no user-friendly way to do this, administrators would generally use various APIs and PowerShell cmdlets to deliver reports faster.

Using powerful analytics in TeamsHub.io, administrators can discover anything about remote-enabled workplace in no time. The reporting dashboard is available with a modern interface that provides a quick view on adoption covering all aspects of Teams.

By visualizing graphically appealing and AI-powered reports on inventory, auditing, governance, usage, statistics, etc., it’s easy to spot workplace trends, monitor performance and optimize team collaboration using data-driven insights in real-time. With the power of automation, TeamsHub.io can proactively identify communication gaps, security issues, adoption declivity, call quality issues, etc. This gives opportunities to businesses to work around challenges and re-create better experiences for teams.

To read more about advanced analytics feature and all types of reports that TeamsHub.io offers, please click here.

Elevating employee engagement

Highly engaged employees are the most creative and proactive in workplace. However, employee engagement is not easily quantifiable, especially if teams are working remotely. Hence, it’s critical to have right collaboration software in place. Along with centralizing communication, a collaboration software must have important engagement features to keep workforce productive all the time.

We understand the relationship between employee engagement and team performance. Hence, we created TeamsHub.io to not just offer the capability to measure engagement level but also boost engagement. In an endeavour to do so, TeamsHub.io integrates dynamic intranet within Microsoft Teams to create an inclusive culture which improves participation and fosters a sense of belonging.

To learn more about TeamsHub.io, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo

Introduction

Microsoft Planner is one of the productivity apps available in Microsoft 365 suite. You can create a plan and assign tasks to each team member in a visually appealing way and collaborate effectively. In this blog, we will share four important tips to get most out of Planner app and empower everyone in the team.

Tip 1: Link Planner with MS Teams 

If you use Microsoft Teams, you can add Planner tabs to a team channel. This will make it easy for you to work on your plan from within MS Teams without switching back and forth between platforms. You can easily attach MS Teams files to Planner tasks which makes it less likely to miss anything critical. Linking Planner with Microsoft Teams increases transparency as it helps team members to view which tasks are assigned to whom.

Tip 2: Create reporting on plans using Power BI

Using Power BI, you can initiate powerful reporting capabilities in Microsoft Planner. You can have full visibility on Planner data and derive real-time project reports in a dashboard. Power BI provides powerful analytics for Microsoft Planner projects and teams which makes it easy to track progress and manage people and resources across projects and plans. Furthermore, reports and insights can be shared on desktop and mobile devices across your organization.

Tip 3: Add plan to calendar

You can publish your Planner tasks on Outlook calendar using iCalendar feed. This feature can be used to import Planner tasks into Outlook to help users in time management and tracking of ongoing and upcoming tasks. Furthermore, you can add start and due date while creating a plan which shows up in your Outlook feed.

Tip 4: Get deeper insights with group and filter feature

Group and filter option in MS Planner is particularly helpful when users have a critical project deadline to meet. You can filter tasks based on due dates and get alerts or emails about upcoming deadlines. Also, users can define priorities for important tasks, create labels or buckets for a task, check the tasks unassigned, easily find tasks using keyword or date filters, and more. Good thing about this feature is that you can combine multiple criteria to narrow down the results. For example, you can filter ‘Urgent’ tasks for ‘Today’ or that are ‘Late’.

Conclusion

Planner is an excellent tool to reduce the chaos out of remote teams while creating, assigning, and managing plans. Using Planner, teams can work together closely and effortlessly. Additionally, automating MS Planner can take user experience to next level by streamlining tasks and empowering users.

If you want to know more about MS Planner or how to automate MS Planner to achieve greater business goals, please contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com