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I L T A N E T . O R G
What is Microsoft Teams?
MS Teams ("Teams") is a chat and collaboration platform
for Microsoft 365 customers designed to simplify group
work for people who work closely together on a common
goal. You may create teams for projects (e.g., product
launch, deployment), by a department or functional area
within a department (e.g., PMO, HR, IT), or to address any
cross-collaboration needs.
Teams is also Microsoft's answer to competing
platforms such as Slack and Zoom. Teams' integration
with other Microsoft services allows users to share files
and calendars, work collaboratively, and easily switch
between voice, video, and text chat.
Benefits of Teams: Allows all project site members to
have:
• Document collaboration and co-authoring
• Conversation posts which allow for visibility among
the team
• Reduced email traffic
• Real-time chat during meetings, as well as continued
meeting chat afterwards
• Easy on-the-go connection with Teams phone app
How is Teams set-up for collaboration?
Public vs. Private Teams
Refer to the ILTA blog Vendor Governance to Integrate
Teams and Document Management Systems that
explains this.
Standard vs. Private channel within a Team
Within a Team, you have the option to create a standard
or private channel. Every Team will automatically have a
standard channel, General. The owner(s) of the Team can
add additional standard or private channels; however, your
organization's Microsoft admin will ultimately control the
policies of who can create Teams and channels within your
tenet.
A standard channel is a space within the team.
Channels are often named by topic, project, or team and
inherit the full membership list from the team.
There is also an option of having a private channel.
This is a focused private collaboration space within the
team. The Team owner(s) can create a private channel
and will have the ability to add a subset of the members
from the team. If external users or guests are added to the
general channel, you may want to create a private channel
for your internal team to keep internal sensitive data
secure. The padlock next to the channel name indicates a
private channel.
Boost Project Engagement and
Productivity via Teams
Teams is integrated with Microsoft 365, which means it is
tied to other Microsoft Office services, such as Word and
Excel, as well as its cloud storage and sharing services such
as SharePoint, PowerPoint, OneNote, Tasks by Planner
and To do (formerly referred to as Planner), and Power BI.
Since we have started using Teams, the amount
of email traffic within our departments has decreased
significantly. Here are some ways we were able to achieve
this outcome:
