December 09, 2020

Microsoft Teams: Advanced productivity tips and tricks

Introduction

Microsoft Teams provides a wealth of useful features designed to drive productivity in a remote workspace. Also, Teams’ extensibility is one those unique qualities which gives user an opportunity to explore, experiment and enhance Teams’ capabilities.

There are a number of functionalities in Microsoft Teams that can be automated and help your employees become power users. Let us explore them all one by one and see how your employees can get work done in most effective ways from administration point of view using Microsoft Teams –

MS Teams tips and tricks for productivity

1. Automate team creation

Applying stringent rules or restrictions to use MS Teams platform freely can diminish user enthusiasm to take ownership of their tasks. By activating self-service, you can allow end users to create teams and empower them to collaborate efficiently. Also, it develops a sense of belonging to the platform. Furthermore, with an approval system in place, administrator can ensure that the teams created by users are purposeful and relevant to the business.

TeamsHub by Cyclotron automates site provisioning using dynamic forms, templates and automated workflows.”

2. Create tags within a team

Categorization of teams promotes findability. Tagging or labeling a team is the easiest and best way to classify teams. This helps in better search and organization of teams based on their department, project type or location and so on.

TeamsHub by Cyclotron allows you to classify your teams using tags and labels and later hubify them based on a specific search criteria.”

3. Use analytics within Teams

By gaining insights into teams’ activities, it gets lot easier for business managers, administrators and owners to check teams’ performance and detect any anomaly, if exists. This further helps in taking informed business decisions or actions to resolve complicacies and fulfill company’s goals effectively.

TeamsHub by Cyclotron helps to get real-time usage reports to gain insights into adoption rates and user activity.”

4. Create expiry-policy for teams

Random teams floating all around Teams environment is not good for the health of MS Teams. It is important to manage the lifecycle of teams by configuring expiration policies for their archival or deletion. The intention behind creation of teams is a business purpose to fulfill. Inactive teams or teams that are no longer in often cause content overloading and mismanagement.

TeamsHub by Cyclotron automates lifecycle management of teams and sends notification prior expiration.”

5. Configure bulk updates

Editing multiple teams one by one is time consuming, especially when they all need the same inputs. The phenomenon is frustrating for administrators who are supposed to work in a fast-paced environment dealing with hundreds of thousands of teams. Ability to update a bunch of records in a snap reduces context switching and improves user efficiency.

“With a friendly UI in TeamsHub by Cyclotron, administrators can perform bulk updates swiftly without prior coding knowledge.”  

6. Follow naming conventions for teams

Proper naming of teams prevents creation of teams with the same names  and hence, eliminates confusions in searching a relevant team. By imposing team naming policies, users can gain more clarity while creating their teams such as, for which project it is created, which department it belongs to and so on.

“Configure naming conventions for teams and enlist custom blocked words using TeamsHub by Cyclotron to avoid redundant teams and unethical usage of words.”

7. Automate workflows

You can automate workflows in Microsoft Teams and simplify complex navigation and other manual processes to improve agility and productivity. Integrate code-free solutions to reduce operational risks and errors for achieving accurate business results. This helps you to put  your users’ expertise to work while handling repetitive tasks at the background.

“Use TeamsHub by Cyclotron for configuring auto-approval for requests, automatic labeling of custom site types, mapping external collaboration settings for teams and so on.”

Summary

Productivity in Microsoft Teams rises to the next level when administrative controls are automated. Using third-party automation tools such as TeamsHub by Cyclotron, you can achieve more by doing less. By simplifying administrative tasks, you can create an engaged workforce by removing their burden from non-productive tasks and encouraging collaboration in a user-centric environment.

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

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