For April, Microsoft decided to put a focus on helping small businesses easily transition to remote work by covering topics that help them get started with Microsoft Teams, take part in training to stay connected with clients, and learn about the new Microsoft 365 Business Voice plan.
Let’s take an in-depth look at some of the April 2020 updates:
How to Roll out Teams
Since there has been an increasing demand for remote work, Microsoft decided to offer resources to help businesses roll out Microsoft Teams step by step to their employees.
Step 1 - Create Your Ffirst Teams and Channels
A team is a group of employees that focus on getting larger tasks done, for example, Marketing.
Teams include channels where users have conversations about specific topics or tasks.
Step 2 - Invite Members to the Channels
Now you can invite members to your teams and channels to join conversations about specific topics and projects.
Step 3 - Monitoring Usage and Feedback
Teams includes an admin centre with usage reports that provide admin members with insight on how users are using the Teams app.
Reports include:
- Teams user activity
- Teams device usage
- Teams usage
- Teams live event usage
Admin members can view reports for the last 7-, 30-, or 90 days.
How to View Reports?
Step 1: Go to the admin centre in Microsoft 365
Step 2: Click on Reports > Usage
Step 3: Under Select a Report, click on Microsoft Teams
Step 4: Choose report you want to view and the date range
Step 5: Click on Run report
Step 4 - Resources to Plan Company Rollout
After setting up your teams and channels and onboarded a few users, it’s time to roll out Teams to the rest of your company.
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Turn on Guest Access
To have a better collaboration experience with clients, freelancers, etc. you can turn on the guest access feature in Teams. This will allow users to chat or share files with external guests.
How to turn on guest access
- Sign in to the admin centre in Microsoft Teams
- Select Org-wide settings > Guest access
- Toggle the switch On for Allow guest access in Teams
- Navigate to Calling, Meeting, and Messaging and select On or Off for the capabilities mentioned below:
- Make private calls
- Allow IP video Screen sharing mode (Disabled, Single application, or Entire screen)
- Allow Meet Now
- Edit sent messages
- Guests can delete sent messages
- Chat
- Use Giphys in conversations
- Giphy content rating (Allow all content, Moderate, or Strict)
- Use memes in conversations
- Use Stickers in conversations
- Save your settings
Please note
- The guest access feature is disabled by default.
- It will take two to 24 hours for the guest access feature to take effect.
Resources for Working Remotely
For companies that need help adjusting to remote working, Microsoft provided additional resources to help with the transition.
Employee Training with Videos
If you’d like to share tips and other resources to help your employees get started with Microsoft Teams, help them get started with Microsoft Teams video training.
These training videos include:
- Quick Start
- Intro to Microsoft Teams
- Set up and customise your team
- Collaborate in teams and channels
- Work with posts and messages
- Upload and find files
- Start chats and calls
- Manage meetings
- Set up and attend live events
- Explore apps and tools
- Manage team schedules with Shifts
- Manage your activity feed
- Teams on the go
- Get started with Teams (free)
Small Business Scenario Training
If you’re looking for more scenario-based video walk-throughs, Microsoft also provides small business scenario training videos.
Microsoft 365 Business Voice
Microsoft 365 Business Voice is a new plan from Microsoft to help small to medium-size businesses that allow them to make phone calls to any device including phones, computers, laptops, etc. via the Teams app.
The plan adds a cloud-based phone system in Microsoft Teams creating an all-in-one communication solution including chats, calls, and meetings.
If you need help getting started with Teams but you prefer a one-on-one discussion, get in touch with one of our Microsoft 365 consultants. Call us on 021 448 5759 or visit our Microsoft Teams page.