In the past few years, remote and hybrid working has emerged as one of the major trends. This work style has pushed team leaders to identify new methods for project communication and collaboration.
To understand the benefits of Microsoft Teams in the workplace, it’s important to see how it moves beyond traditional methods of project collaboration, which are no longer feasible.
Microsoft Teams centralizes chat, file sharing, video calls, and scheduling within the Office 365 environment. Below are twelve practical ways Teams streamlines teamwork and boosts productivity across your organization.
1. Organize Your Workspace with Strategic Channels
Structuring your digital workspace is a great way to improve employee collaboration. Microsoft Teams allows you to create dedicated channels for specific projects, topics, or departments, keeping conversations focused and organized.
For sensitive discussions, you can use private channels, limiting access to only invited members. These collaboration methods used by work teams ensure that information is both accessible to the right people and secure from others.
2. Centralize Documents and Team Chat
The team collaboration chat feature in Microsoft Teams is the most frequently used. You can centralize all project files directly in Teams for one-click access. Pin key documents at the top of each channel so everyone can find briefs, style guides, or reference files without switching apps. Using chat or channel tabs for sharing attachments helps keep files organized and prevents version confusion.
3. Streamline Communication with Shortcuts and Alerts
Efficient communication is a priority. Teams helps you cut through the noise with powerful features. You can use slash commands like /goto to quickly jump to a specific team or channel. When a message requires immediate attention from your Microsoft teammates, you can mark it as one of your urgent messages, which sends repeated notifications until it’s read.
4. Run Effective Virtual Meetings
Start or join video meetings in one click with Meet Now or scheduled calls. Once the call has started, you can share your screen or individual windows to walk through presentations and documents together.
This once again saves you the hassle of handling multiple platforms at once – one for video calls, one for chatting, and another for sharing all the required documents. All calls and shared content remain within your secure Office 365 tenant.
If you’re looking for efficiency and a platform that addresses collaboration in the digital age, especially in today’s work-from-home and hybrid working environment, this is the tool for you.
Enhance Meetings with Advanced Features
Teams also offers advanced features to boost engagement. Together Mode places participants in a shared virtual space, like an auditorium, to reduce meeting fatigue and make meetings feel more connected. You can also use fun or professional virtual backgrounds to maintain privacy and professionalism.
For accessibility and record-keeping, the platform provides live transcripts during the meeting, and you can access full meeting transcriptions afterward to review discussions and action items easily.
5. Integrate Apps for Seamless Workflows
Add tabs for Excel, Planner, or OneNote within any channel and work directly in Teams. Connect Power BI dashboards to view reports without leaving your workspace.
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 informs you when certain work commitments overlap with others and notifies you about any upcoming projects that are due soon.
With OneNote and SharePoint integrated with Microsoft Teams, importing and exporting information is seamless.
Turn Messages into Actionable Tasks
A key part of using Microsoft Teams for collaboration is its ability to connect conversations to actions. For instance, you can directly turn messages into tasks in Microsoft Planner without leaving the chat, and create shared checklists using Loop components.
There are countless project management apps for teams that connect with over 200 Microsoft and third-party apps to give you a seamless work experience. This includes Salesforce, Trello, and Adobe Creative Cloud, as well as social media apps like Twitter and LinkedIn. It’s a fully customizable collaboration platform.
6. Utilize a Cost-Effective Solution
Access Teams at no extra cost if you already have an Office 365 subscription. Teams replaces multiple standalone chat and meeting platforms, reducing duplication and lowering overall collaboration expenses.
7. Boost Cross-Departmental Communication
We all know that numerous projects in business require different departments within a company to collaborate with one another.
Utilize organization-wide teams and channels to keep stakeholders informed beyond your department. @mention groups or tags to loop in cross-functional members.
Share company announcements or policy changes in a “General” channel to keep everyone aligned. BrightWork 365 and Teams integration simplifies collaboration between teams and improves business communication in company projects.
8. Enable Collaboration from Anywhere
One of the most important features any collaboration platform needs to have today is a good mobile app.
Download the Teams app for iOS and Android to respond to chats, join meetings, and approve tasks on the go. 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.
9. Stay Updated with 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.
Review your Activity feed to see mentions, replies, and upcoming meetings in one view. Filter by unread, Mentions, or Likes, and use the Filter icon to focus on high-priority notifications.
10. Collaborate Securely
Rely on enterprise-grade security with two-factor authentication, firewall protection, data encryption in transit and at rest, and compliance with ISO 27001, SOC 2, and GDPR. Use sensitivity labels and built-in data loss prevention policies to protect confidential project information.
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 use the multiple-factor authentication feature to avoid their accounts being hacked.
11. Use Automation and AI for Smarter Collaboration
Improve your collaboration by using automation and AI capabilities, which help create a better workplace collaboration experience. You can connect Teams to Power Automate to create custom workflows, such as automatically posting a message in a channel when a new file is added to a SharePoint folder.
With the introduction of Copilot in Teams, you can get AI-generated summaries of meetings you missed, complete with action items, making it easier than ever to stay in the loop.
12. Access Features Suitable for Remote Working
Since 2020, Microsoft and other collaboration platforms have ensured that it is the best tools to use for remote workers.
With meetings being scheduled with ease and the platform itself being available on multiple devices, you can see how effective communication in Teams is built for remote project management.
Turning Team Collaboration into a Competitive Advantage
Microsoft Teams centralizes project communication, collaboration, and reporting within Microsoft 365. Teams is especially effective in hybrid environments, where consistent communication, shared access to information, and real-time task visibility are essential.
Features like channel organization, document pinning, and AI-driven workflows make Teams adaptable without becoming complex. If you’re managing day-to-day communication or coordinating cross-functional projects, Teams provides the foundation for a focused, connected workspace.
How BrightWork Helps You Collaborate Better
BrightWork brings structure to Microsoft Teams with standardized project and portfolio management in Microsoft 365. BrightWork 365 connects task tracking, project requests, templates, and dashboards in a single system, helping teams move quickly from planning to execution.
Project managers and team leads can assign work, monitor progress, and stay aligned, all within the Teams experience. From simple task coordination to full project oversight, BrightWork transforms Microsoft 365 into a cohesive project management solution.
Book a BrightWork 365 PPM demo to see how Teams integrates with our SharePoint-based project portfolio management solution.
