In the last two years, remote and hybrid working has emerged as one of the major trends in the working space. This work style has pushed team leaders to rethink and improve their ways of team collaboration and communication. Traditional methods of communication and project collaboration are no longer feasible.

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If you’re tired of constantly having to switch between different apps and platforms, or if your team is, you might benefit from switching to Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams is the collaboration platform for Office 365. This platform is meant to be used when teams need to come together to collaborate on projects, have discussions, plan next week’s schedule, and so much more. Meant to replace those pesky email threads, Microsoft Teams allows you to share documents, set up video calls, and keep all your office communication in one place.

Here are 9 ways Microsoft Teams can help you improve your team collaboration.

1. Brings all your documents in one place

The chat feature in Microsoft Teams is the most commonly used one. This is because not only is it a quick option to ask your teammates questions or convey important information, but it also allows you to share media and attachments. You’ll also be able to set up meetings, and schedule reminders all inside the chat.

Even better, the platform allows you to pin documents for quick access, which saves a ton of time and effort. There are many ways you can use this app for your benefit while communicating and sharing documents with your remotely working teams e.g. you can create a team by simply selecting members in your contact list and share a project brief with those working on a specific project, or you can pin the style guide for a team of content writers in the chat, or share screenshots to better explain tasks as you assign them to the members of your team. You can easily accomplish efficient collaboration knowing that your documents are accessible with just one click.

2. Has video calling and screen sharing

Microsoft Teams has one of the simplest and efficient video calling functionality we’ve seen in the market so far, with joining a video call being as simple as clicking the “Join” button, and starting the video call being as simple as clicking the “Meet Now” button.

Once the call has started, you can share files and documents that you want to discuss in the chat portal. This once again saves you the hassle of handling multiple platforms at once – one for the video calls, one for chatting, and another one where you shared all the required documents.

If you’re looking for efficiency and a platform that addresses all your collaboration needs – especially in today’s work-from-home and hybrid working environment – this is the tool for you.

3. Integrates with other apps easily

There are countless apps on the market that integrate easily with Teams, not to mention how easily all apps across Office 365 work with it. With OneNote and SharePoint working well with Microsoft Teams, importing and exporting information is hassle-free.

You can even use Microsoft Planner as an extra tab in Teams, which – you guessed it – allows you to plan and schedule work, meetings, and deadlines. It also tells you when certain work commitments are overlapping with others, and notifies you about any upcoming projects that are due soon.

Teams connects with over 200 Microsoft and third-party apps to give you a seamless work experience, from CRM tools like Salesforce to even social media apps like Twitter and LinkedIn. It’s a fully customizable collaboration platform.

4. Is cost-effective

Teams comes in the same bundle as the rest of your Office 365 stuff, so you won’t have to spend any extra money in order to take advantage of the functionality and the convenience it provides. This is a huge advantage if you want to minimize expenses in the company, and when free collaboration platforms just aren’t cutting it anymore.

5. Improves communication across teams

We all know that countless projects in business require different departments in a company to collaborate with each other. This is because Teams can be integrated with over 200 Microsoft and third-party apps.

When you can customize and integrate apps to your Teams platform at will, it becomes easy to turn it into the ideal place for cross-department collaboration in different company projects.

6. Flexible and feasible to use anywhere

One of the most important features any collaboration platform needs to have today is a good mobile app. The Teams app allows you to make the most out of your time away from your laptop, and allows you to control how your employees use Teams as well as respond to messages and attend calls, all from your mobile phone.

It’s much more than just a useful chatting app on your phone too. You can manage security, change permissions, and control how employees use data through it.

7. Manages your activity feed

The activity feed is one part of Teams that perhaps people find most useful. When you first log into the platform at the start of the workday, you will be able to see a summary of just how much work you have scheduled.
Any meetings, approaching deadlines, mentions, and even track what your employees have done or are supposed to be doing.

8. Is secure

Microsoft Teams offers a lot of the same security benefits that all of the other Microsoft platforms do, like two factor authentication and firewall protections. These make it easy for you to ensure that all your data is secure in a company policy compliant way, and allow for worry free collaboration and data sharing.

Of course, some of the burden to ensure data security also falls on you, like making sure all of your employees do use the multiple factor authentication feature to avoid their accounts being hacked.

9. Offers features suitable for remote working

Since 2020, Microsoft – along with countless other collaboration platforms – has ensured that it is the best tool to use for remote workers. With meetings being scheduled with ease and the platform itself being available on multiple devices, you can see how Teams is built for remote collaboration.

What’s more is that it contains certain features like inserting an artificial background behind you in video conferences, which is great for when you don’t have a professional-looking nook at home.

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