How we adopted Microsoft Teams – part one
Microsoft 365 Microsoft TeamsWe started using Microsoft Teams at Breadcrumb about two years ago. Although it was easy to get started, there was still a learning curve so in this series of three articles I will share our firsthand experience and answer the following questions:
- Why do we use Microsoft Teams? (read below)
- How do we structure Microsoft Teams? (read part two now)
- What are our top tips for using Microsoft Teams? (read part three now)
Part one: Why do we use Microsoft Teams?
Teams is the first application we launch in the morning, and we use it all day long. Here’s what we use it for and why:
Internal communication
From day one, we banned using Outlook for internal communication. All discussions, approvals, reviews and document sharing happens in Teams. We find chats in Teams are quicker, more personal and more engaging than emails.
Over time we perfected our online group communication skills and developed some rules that help us to use it effectively. You’ll learn more about it in the third part of this article series (coming soon).
External communication
Using Teams for internal communication gave us the confidence to start using Teams with many of our clients. Having clients in Teams allows us to be in touch more frequently and work closely on projects. We use video calls and screen sharing to save travel time, discuss issues as they arise and make decisions collaboratively. Co-authoring allow us to work on documents together and we know everyone always has access to the most recent version of documents.
Document management
Since all communication happens in Teams, document management naturally follows. We find it very useful that Teams has seamless integration with SharePoint. Before Teams we used SharePoint for document management, but with the introduction of Teams it has become even easier to store, share and find documents.
As interactions with documents now happen through the Teams’ interface, it’s also handy to see the conversation history for each document. We’re confident that our documents are stored in a safe place and the right people always have access to the latest version from any device.
In summary
The transition to Teams required some adoption measures, initial planning and ongoing monitoring, but looking back we can say it was worth doing. Teams has become a ‘killer’ app for us.
If you want to know how we set up our Teams to use it for external and internal communication and document management check out part two of this article series.
