5 Reasons to Use Microsoft Teams for an Elevated Experience  

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Your organization has probably heard about or is using Microsoft Teams as one of its main platforms for communication and collaboration. With its deep integration with Microsoft 365, Teams has become one of the fastest-growing apps to dominate and fill the division gap brought about by the pandemic. Currently, it is estimated to have 145 million daily active users, which is a notable increase from 75 million users in 2020.  

Personal and business meetings have never been the same. In fact, they are better than ever.  Microsoft Teams provides you with an easier, flexible, and more effective space to engage. It has become the epitome of the modern workplace – ensuring that your organization adapts to the demands of a digital and fast-moving work environment  

While this is significant and reflects the need for extensive collaboration, productivity, and connection, it also calls for greater engagement guidance on how to best optimize and get the best experience out of your daily meetings our extensive experience, proven expertise and a Meetings and Meeting Rooms Advanced Specialization, as well our Teamwork Deployment Advanced Specialization accreditation, here are some of the reasons we at Mint Group vouch for the use of Microsoft Teams.  

1 – Building Support 

Above everything, Teams remind an organization that they are in fact a team. One of the challenges that have come with the pandemic is a great disconnection. Microsoft Teams fosters cohesiveness by providing you with significant features, that bring you closer together. Microsoft Viva Connections helps you stay connected through relevant and targeted news, conversations, and resources within your frequently used applications.  

In addition to Viva Connections, the ‘Together Mode’ feature uses AI segmentation technology to digitally place participants in a shared background, making it feel like you’re sitting in the same room.  

The Praise app in Microsoft Teams helps your organization let team members know how valuable and appreciated they are. You can select badges of honour in recognition of your employee’s hard work and efforts.  

Another exciting engagement feature that allows you to generate sentiment in your organization is the Polly app, which enables you to create and participate in instant polls, with live results.  

Overall, Teams make you feel like you are part of an organizational process, from end to end. It allows you to ask, confirm, create, learn, and improve – allowing each individual role to best develop in their organization. How to work in a team, how to manage a team and align to its objectives, what improvements can be made, and how to achieve success together will often be answered as you work and learn on Teams.  

2 – Connecting With External Participants  

Like with traditional face-to-face meetings, you can still have external partners as part of your meetings. Because they are not part of the organization, your external partners can join as ‘guests’, without having to plugin to or download Teams.  

You can also have them access your shared documents. However, to protect your organization’s crucial information, you will need to determine what it is that you would like them to do with your documents. Can they edit and co-author with your team? How long can they access this information? These are some of the questions that your organization will have to consider, to ensure that you are safe and protected from any data leaks.  

Closely related to connecting with external participants is how they can connect. One of the intelligent ways that Teams offer connection, is through ‘dial-in’ capabilities. This feature is inclusive and meant for those who are on the go. When a user schedules a meeting, and they have the necessary licensing to enable Audio Conferencing, the meeting participants will automatically see dial-in instructions added to their Teams meeting invitations.  Clicking on the dial-in number from a cell phone will automatically launch the phone dialler. You can simply dial the number and connect.  

3 – Staying Informed, Even When You Missed Meeting  

Our day does not always go according to plan. There will be several inconveniences and emergencies that we are not expecting. Before you know it, you have missed a meeting. Thankfully, Microsoft Teams allows for you to record and transcribe, keeping you in the know of critical discussions and any important next steps that need to be taken.   

The recorded meeting is stored in the cloud, providing you with a link for easy access in the meeting chat. You no longer have to have a separate catch-up call, try to figure any action items against your name, or worry that you may have missed something important.  

Another way you can stay informed is by using a digital link to access the whiteboard that may have been created during the meeting. A whiteboard is created to brainstorm and compile all ideas from each team member on a single page. You too can add to these ideas or give feedback, by accessing the link.  

Lastly, Microsoft Planner gives you a more defined integration around roles and responsibilities. You can organize tasks within a Teams channel by creating, assigning, and monitoring progress as your project or campaign develops.  

4 – Participate in Live Captions  

You can follow along with live captions during a meeting. This enhances your meeting experience by letting you know what is discussed, in cases where you have a bad connection, and the poor quality hinders the experience. As part of Microsoft’s Diversity and Inclusion drive, this feature has also proven to be crucial, for those who are deaf. 

With translatable live captions enabled in the Microsoft Teams app, text appears as real-time captions or transcripts of participants speaking during a video or audio call. You won’t have to distract the meeting by asking anyone to repeat themselves, as this will appear only on your screen and not extended to other meeting participants.  

This intelligent feature has kept teams up to date with all line and agenda items while keeping the meeting period in the set time frame. To enable or disable the live captions on your Teams, you can click the three dots that appear when a meeting is in progress. Go to ‘more actions and simply press ‘turn on live captions’ or ‘turn off live captions’.  

5 – Staying in Control  

The meeting organizer has the power to steer the meeting using the capability of up to 50 Breakout Rooms. These are more intimate sub-meetings within a larger Teams meeting. An organizer has various options around the roles and permissions for all invited participants in a discussion.  

Not just anyone can join a meeting. Teams offer you an admission feature, which enables you to admit people waiting in the meeting lobby. You can also appoint who you want to present and share something with and whether you would like a meeting to be recorded or not. 

Having control of your meeting places order and structure while giving you the power of choice. This gives you the benefit of restricting distractions and ensuring that participants have a good and effective meeting experience.   

Conclusion  

Our Meeting and Meeting Rooms Advanced Specialization acknowledges Mint Group’s extensive capabilities, experience and proven success, in delivering meetings and meeting rooms solutions that optimize and provide customer value through Microsoft teams.   

You can ensure that your organization looks, presents and sounds its best with high-quality meetings. Mint Group UK’s Modern Meeting and Teams Voice solutions offer you the best intelligent built-in features that enable you to have effective and meaningful conferences.  You can streamline meeting administration through recordings, automatic transcription, instant chat, and live captions, using a high threshold of audio, visual quality, and background noise elimination that combine to deliver communication and collaboration intelligence.