Teams is 5 years old: 5 features you may have missed

Mar 15

Micosoft Teams turned 5 this week! Back on March 14, 2017, Teams became generally available, and at that time I'm sure few imagined the journey tools like this would go on in the subsequent years, becoming a virtual place of work for office-based workers staying home during an ongoing global pandemic. With 270 million monthly active users, Teams or its equivalent has become a necessary and useful part of most of our lives.

To celebrate, here's a quick overview of five useful features in Teams that you may have missed during these first five years but may be invaluable to your success in the next.

Webinars

For small businesses that feel constrained by the cost or complication of setting up a separate dedicated webinar platform for occasional engagement with your audiences, Teams has got your back.

The Teams webinar capability provide a decent set of basic features for setting up and hosting a webinar, including the ability to create a custom registration form for your event accessible by internal and external audiences.

*Customize your webinar registration form*

Find out more: Get started with Teams webinars

Set-up your meeting space

A Teams meeting is not just an empty virtual room, it is a blank canvas. Just as you might set up a physical meeting in different ways, various room layouts, technology, and even refreshments; you can change and add value to your Teams meeting by taking time to set-up and arrange your meeting ahead of time.

Add information and apps to your meeting space ahead of time

When you create a new meeting, and prior to the meeting starting, you can enter the entry for the meeting from your Teams calendar and start customizing the workspace. What does this mean? You can add the files you wish to discuss, start a chat, add notes or an agenda to notes, or add additional apps that you are going to use during or ahead of the meeting.

Find out more: Add an app to Microsoft Teams

Guests in Teams

Your Teams aren't just for those who are in your organization, but can also be for your vendors, contractors, and other business partners outside your business.

Most Teams users are familiar with inviting outside parties into Teams meetings, and perhaps also sharing content with outside individuals, but did you know that you can give these external audiences a much more rich experience where it would add value?

A guest user can contribute to your team much like any internal member, but is limited to just those places where they have been given access. Imagine a team for a project you are undertaking with external suppliers - you can have channels and other Teams resources that are available to all contributors whether part of your organization or a third party.

Just add the guest user as you would add any other member to your team. Access to this capability can be limited through the Teams admin portal and Azure Active Directory settings by your admin.

Find out more: Team owner, member, and guest capabilities in Teams

Integrate with Power Automate

The future of productivity is automation. Power Automate is Microsoft's no-code automation platform which you can access directly from within Teams. Would you like to get a channel message each time someone uploads a file? Could it be useful to connect your Twitter feed to your social media team? Should you use Approvals to ensure your manager approves your documents before you send them out? You can do all of this and more with the Teams Power Automate app.

*Choose from a rich selection of Power Automate templates or create your own flows*

Find out more: Create flows in Microsoft Teams

Outlook to Teams

There are lots of really good reasons for Teams to be your go-to work communications platform - but one of the big challenges is in consistently making the leap from email into the more freeform and flexible communication offerings of Teams.

Your policies and processes can be the more important tool to bridge this gap for your internal communications as part of a Teams adoption plan, but there are technological tools too! One important one is the simple two-click process to push any email in Outlook into Teams.

Just click the button in Outlook, select a destination, and the gap between email and Teams communication just got a little smaller.

Find out more: Share an email to Teams from Outlook

Title image credit: Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

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Nick DeCourcy

Nick DeCourcy is the owner and principal consultant at the Bright Ideas Agency. He has worked extensively in the education and non-profit sectors in areas including operations, facilities, and technology. He is passionate about getting technology implementation right, first time, by fully understanding how it impacts the employee and customer experience.