How to use Microsoft Teams for collaboration and crisis communications

Microsoft (MS) Teams has rapidly become the preferred communication and collaboration tool for organisations using Office 365.

But did you know that it can also be a fantastic resource in times of crisis?

MS Teams can help employees collaborate remotely with ease. You can use it to target the right people, with the right information, at the right time. You can also use MS Teams to meet business requirements while your company is working across multiple locations.

Here’s 6 quick steps to using MS Teams in the most effective way possible.

1. To target specific communications to specific groups, you need to have accurate and updated employee profiles. This requires an effective Active Directory set up to target the right users in the right roles, departments and locations. Automated employee profiling can be a very efficient, rapid deployment option to meet this requirement.

2. Once employee profiling and directories are accurate, it’s a good idea to set up dedicated MS Teams ‘rooms’ for each target audience that are fully managed (or governed) centrally. These rooms can be defined by location, department, function, project, or any other relevant criteria.

3. To ensure that communications flow freely, (either under controlled circumstances, such as employee handbooks and guidelines, or in a more open and collaborative communication channel), you can deploy unique features like Wizdom, PowerPanel and Noticeboard to an unlimited number of users.

4. Assign a Team Lead on each MS Teams room and make sure this role gets the notifications and information they need to facilitate streamlined communications as the communication between teams members increases.

5. Provide a MS Teams room portal, so new members can quickly look at the pre-existing rooms and join the one appropriate to their needs.

6. Ensure an end-to-end lifecycle management of these MS Teams rooms so they can be properly archived once a crisis has passed.

Please get in touch, we’d be delighted to walk you through a solution that best suits you.