Microsoft Teams White Paper

Your guide to Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams White PaperCommunication and collaboration are key to success in any organisation, especially those undergoing a digital transformation. Intelligent communications can provide a business with the edge and advantage needed to compete in the modern world of business.

Globally, 75% of companies have a flexible working policy which has increased the need for employees to be more and more mobile. Remote workers need to work on multiple tasks whilst gathering instant responses from their co-workers, suppliers and managers. This new way of working has been spurred on by the millennial generation and their quest for empowering technology to improve their personal lives and drive communication and innovation in the workplace.

It is estimated that by 2020, millennials will make up 50% of the global workforce which means it’s imperative to form a workplace which will appeal to the technology generation. Millennials expect workplace technology to incorporate social networking and instant messaging, with video-on-demand and blogs which will allow them to instantly connect to their peers and lead to increased productivity.

Intelligent communications, such as Microsoft Teams, enables employees to more efficiently complete tasks, productively participate in meetings, better manage workloads and reduce costs for the company.

Microsoft Teams is an integral part of Microsoft’s vision for a future of intelligent communication. Teams offers comprehensive calling and meeting capabilities which bring together meetings, conversations, Office apps, files and third-party integrations all in one single hub to aid with teamwork.

ContentsChapter One - Page 2The Workplace of Today

Chapter Two - Page 3From Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams

Chapter Three - Page 4Teams - When & Why

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Microsoft Teams is part of the modern workplace aiming to integrate leading productivity with collaboration software suites including Office 365, Enterprise, Mobility and Security (EM+S), and Microsoft 365.

Having a single, seamless suite of tools like Office 365 allows for more effective productivity than an assortment of tools, with Teams bringing together the full breadth and depth of Office 365 to provide a one-stop shop for teamwork.

Many teams report their biggest waste of time for employees being search – for content, tools, contacts and conversation threads. With Office 365, employees have instant access to everything they need in one single place. This could save around 30 minutes of lost productivity per day according to Forrester.

By using Microsoft Teams, users can find what they’re looking for quickly and easily through the powerful,

unified search capabilities and integrated access to SharePoint, OneNote and Planner. A number of other programmes are also built into Teams including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Delve and Power BI. Additionally, Microsoft Graph connects all productivity data such as mail, calendar, directory, documents and devices.

All documents shared in Teams are also saved to the cloud which means that all users’ work is based on the most recent version. Team members can also start voice and video meetings, with threaded chat to keep everyone informed and engaged.

Incorporating Microsoft Teams into your Office 365 is a no-brainer. By using a suite of collaboration tools which seamlessly work together means that employees will be more productive, and managers will have a sense of confidence in knowing that every tool being used is supported and secure.

It is estimated that by 2020, millennials will make up 50% of the global workforce.

The Workplace of TodayChapter One

White Paper Your Guide to Microsoft Teams

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Microsoft Teams will take the capabilities found in Skype for Business in the cloud and deliver them through Microsoft Teams. This will allow them to offer a single teamwork hub with built-in, fully integrated voice and video.

Microsoft aims to transform meeting and calling experiences by merging communications into the apps employees already use to collaborate every day. Some of the features for Teams across meeting, calling and messaging are:

• Enterprise meeting improvements with anonymous join and lobby, presenter controls, application and PowerPoint sharing, dial-in audio conferencing, cloud recording, and transcription

• Inbound and outbound calls to PSTN numbers, as well as basic calling features (hold, call transfer, speed dial, and voicemail)

• Greater interoperability for Teams/Skype for Business with support for external users, universal presence across Office 365 and federated chat and calling.

Calling Plans With Calling Plans, employees have the ability to use Microsoft Teams to make and receive phone calls to or from both landlines and mobile phones via the public switched telephone network (PSTN calling). This therefore allows a business to move away from expensive telephony hardware and move to a more centralised phone system.

Teams calling plans offer full dialling capabilities including basic functions such as call history, hold/resume, transfer, speed dial, forwarding, caller-ID masking, multi-call handling, extension dialling, voicemail, simultaneous ringing and text telephone (TTY) support.

To integrate the system, users only need Phone System (formerly Cloud PBX) which is included with Office 365 or available as an add-on to other 365 plans. Business owners can subscribe to a calling plan for any number of users within their company, giving each user a primary phone number and the ability to make and receive calls to and from outside the business.

From Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams

Chapter Two

Business owners can subscribe to a calling plan for any number of users within their company.

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White Paper Your Guide to Microsoft Teams

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Teams - How & WhyChapter Three

How?With the vast range of productivity and communication tools out there today, it can be difficult to know which tools to use for what and how they should be used. For example, how should you communicate a company bulletin? Email or team chat?

Although there are a number of other basic collaboration tools on the market, none have the full range of productivity-boosting features that Teams does, nor do they have the same enterprise scale capabilities or full integration with Microsoft and third-party applications.

Many alternative tools are primarily designed for chat style conversations and are therefore limited in their messaging archive capabilities, apps, storage size and restrictions on other features. They also often require businesses to upgrade to more expensive versions when the tool is outgrown which can add a significant cost to their investment.

Teams can also be seen as an alternative to some Microsoft applications such as Outlook, Skype for Business and Yammer, but each

of these still has a place in the Office suite with differing functionalities for the task at hand. Here are some examples of how you might use different tools:

• Speaking to a large audience - Yammer

• Communicating something quickly - Teams or Skype for Business

• Communicating informally - Teams, Skype for Busiess or Yammer

• Communicating something formally - Outlook

• Easy knowledge transfer - Teams or Yammer

Why?There are a number of benefits to Microsoft Teams which can help all teams within a business. Here are some of the productivity benefits to different departments:

Marketing Team – Having a shared workspace allows for the creation, collaboration and results sharing with people both inside and outside of the business.

Sales Team – Proposals can be built easily and quickly whilst incorporating input from other stakeholders remotely. This can also make it easier to manage long terms projects such as planning and training.

Finance Team – By having a hub in which all files, data, conversations and meetings happen securely, there is an ability to easily consolidate and report on data whilst conducting business reviews on a regular basis.

HR Team – A shared workspace offers the ability to manage recruitment and employee onboarding seamlessly, with the added options to share CVs and interview notes, keep track of applicant information, communicate hiring decisions and share new employee documents.

Engineers – By working together, ideas, development and deployment of new concepts can be delivered quickly and easily.

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