Geoff Prior's Blog on Why Conversations in MS Teams can be More Efficient than Email

Late last year, my colleague Geoff Prior posted a blog about ‘Why Conversations in Microsoft Teams can be More Efficient than Email’. Below is a snippet of Geoff’s blog along with a link to his full article. If you like this blog and would like to learn more about using Microsoft Teams, there is a link at the bottom of the page to sign up for the Digital Productivity Program (Outlook, Team and OneNote).

Geoff writes:

By now, almost everyone who works in the Microsoft universe knows about Microsoft Teams. Since COVID-19 and the need to work from home, many organisations have turned to Teams as the ‘go-to’ platform for video meetings. Many organisations chose Teams as an alternative to Zoom after the latter’s initial security problems. Plus Teams was already part of the Microsoft 365 package anyway.

If you don’t know much about Microsoft Teams, you can read a little about it here. But briefly, Microsoft Teams is a digital workspace or hub that allows a group of colleagues to interact at a central online ‘location’. It’s a bit like the digital equivalent of an open-plan office in which everyone can easily stay in the loop, even if they’re not directly involved in a conversation – only with a lot better organisation.

Teams makes communication and collaboration amongst a group much easier than using a combination of email and other online and/or offline tools. Better still, your ‘team’ can include people outside your organisation as well as inside, so it’s ideal for project work.

If you’ve used the collaboration tools in SharePoint in the past, you’ll have some sense of what Microsoft Teams is like. Other apps such as Slack and WhatsApp have some similar functionality, so if you’ve used either of those, especially Slack, you’ll have some sense of what Teams is like.

What I’ve noticed lately is that many organisations are using only a fraction of the power of Microsoft Teams. This is understandable since many organisations have had to enable Microsoft Teams at very short notice. However, most are using it just as a Zoom alternative, that is, just for video meetings. That is a pity, because it can be so much more!

Click here to read Geoff’s full blog

To learn more about the Digital Productivity Training package (choose from any or all of Microsoft Teams, One Note or Triage Your Inbox programs) click here.