Tips & Tricks for Maximizing Productivity in Microsoft Teams

So you’ve adopted Microsoft Teams or you’re planning on migrating to Teams. This has no doubt been the result of careful evaluation and thoughtful decision making. That means you’re well aware that Microsoft Teams is a powerful collaboration platform that can overwhelm some users. Without proper preparation, your Teams adoption has the potential of getting off to a rocky start, impacting productivity in ways that may surprise you, including:

• Users who hesitate to use some aspects of the platform
• Complaints about an overly complicated environment
• Rapidly growing clutter that bogs down efficiency
• People feeling like a fancy tool is interfering with real work
• Employees pining for the old days when things were ‘simpler’

BitTitan has helped hundreds of organizations migrate to Microsoft Teams using MigrationWiz. We’ve learned how important it is to prepare users before, during, and after cutover so they can fully integrate Teams into their work lives and maximize the benefits. Additionally, following these tips in your current Teams instance will prepare for a smoother migration down the road. Optimizing and organizing Teams ahead of time allows for a more efficient migration when the time comes. With that in mind, we’ve assembled a list of practical tips and tricks anyone can use to get the most out of Teams.

Stay organized – When a company first starts using Microsoft Teams, there’s a tendency to create a team every time a workgroup forms. This is so common that there’s a name for it: Teams sprawl. And if you let it get away from you, you’ll eventually have a big cleanup job on your hands. These tips will help avoid a mess:

• Create teams based on departments, projects, or key initiatives. Many organizations restrict team creation to certain key roles.
• To keep conversations focused, set up dedicated channels inside each team. This will separate discussions by topic and make them easier to follow.
• Users can pin frequently used teams and channels to the top of their list for quick access.
• Control guest access to channels and files to limit security exposure.

Master chat and conversations – Teams includes tools for organizing communications so everyone can stay focused. By mastering these tips, users can collaborate and share information efficiently:

• Use @mentions strategically to tag specific individuals (@John) or channels (@channel) so the right people see the right messages.
• Save critical information by clicking on the three dots next to a message and selecting “Save this Message.”
• Users should make it a practice to reply within message threads instead of starting new messages in channels in order to keep conversations focused.

Maximize efficiency – With Teams you can automate tasks and workflows using built-in tools. You can also integrate project management platforms so they become an extension of Teams.

• Use Power Automate to set up workflows for approvals, notifications, and data collection.
• Enable bots for quick assistance like ‘Who’ to find colleagues or ‘Approvals’ for tracking pending tasks.
• Integrate project management tools like Trello, Asana, or Planner into Teams for a seamless workflow.

Optimize meetings – We’ve come a long way since video meetings became standard practice in every office. Not surprisingly, people still complain about too many unproductive meetings. Here’s how Teams can help participants feel like they’re getting the most out of remote collaboration:

• Use the Teams calendar feature to set clear agendas and keep meetings on-task.
• Users can reduce distractions by using virtual backgrounds or blurring the background.
• Record meetings for those who couldn’t attend or to review later and extract first-hand information.

Calm annoying pings – Humans are hard-wired to respond to disruption. Digital notifications can take many small bites out of your day if they’re not properly configured.

• Customize notifications by going to Settings > Notifications. There, you can set preferences for messages, mentions, and reactions.
• Use ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode to mute distractions when you’re focusing on deep work.
• Reduce noise by muting or hiding channels that aren’t critical.

Create Enthusiasm, Not Resistance

Migrating to a new collaboration platform – especially one as powerful as Microsoft Teams, can be met with resistance if users aren’t adequately prepared. Communication and education will help them embrace Teams and connect its features to their day-to-day work lives. We’ve been hard at work expanding the Teams Chats migration capabilities of MigrationWiz, to learn more about these updates check out this blog post. If you have any additional questions about migrating Teams, or to get started on a project, contact us today.