Start working better together with Microsoft Teams

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a chat-based workspace within Microsoft Office 365. Microsoft Teams enables users to create threaded chat groups that can be available to everyone to take part in or can, of course, be closed to selected members in the team for a private discussion. Everyone in teams can participate through text-based chat, voice, or video conferences.

Collaborating using Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams allows you to give your team access to the information they need right within the platform. You can manage your conversations, files, and tools within the team workspace. The platform gives you instant access to Sharepoint, OneNote, PowerBI, and Planner as well as Office 365 documents such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint. You can use Microsoft Teams to collaborate on projects, documents and to gain feedback from other team members.

Fran McKee, Marketing Director, Pinnacle:

"Pinnacle’s marketing team operates from offices in Belfast, Newcastle and Hull. Some of our teams are already enabled to work from home however at short notice, due to Covid-19, we had to mobilize everyone into this mode of working and the whole experience was made seamless through Microsoft Teams.

I would describe what Microsoft Teams does to support Pinnacle’s marketing team in one word, "collaboration". From all locations, we can easily interact through the chat function and keep it engaging with some humoured memes and gifs. You can like and love comments with familiar emojis.

A powerful feature that enables us to collaborate is the ability to make video conference calls which in recent weeks we have done as a team, sub-teams, one to one and externally with our suppliers and customers. We also have the ability to share documents which has made it very easy to get input into design work or proof campaigns. Importantly, what Teams has done for us is to make everyone feel included!

My favourite feature of Microsoft Teams is “blurring your background”, a simple feature but one which has enabled everyone to embrace video meetings as they can retain their home privacy when inviting people in to meet virtually. Customizable backgrounds are now available, so don’t be too surprised if I’m calling you from a glorious beach setting".

Chat, calls, and meetings within Microsoft Teams

Teams allow everyone to stay in the know and up to date. Stay connected with colleagues via chat, calls, and meetings within your team or a private chat conversation. Microsoft Teams allows you the functionality to schedule and join online meetings with HD video, VoIP, and dial-in audio conferencing options. During the meeting share your files, apps, or desktop and review the important moments later with transcriptions or recorded content.

David Whitcroft, Business Development Director, Pinnacle:

"Our Sage 200cloud Account Management team looks after our customers throughout the UK and Ireland to ensure they are getting the most from their Sage 200cloud solution.

We use Microsoft Teams to share files and information to collaborate on customer projects, we also keep everyone in the team in the loop with customer developments through the chat and meeting functionality. Our account managers go out on-site to conduct account review meetings with our customers, however, we also have the option to offer our customers remote meetings using Microsoft Teams video conferencing if they don’t have immediate availability for us to come out to them.

Microsoft Teams has made it easy for our team to get information quickly and consistently through the hub and have found it incredibly easy to use."

Security, compliance and manageability

Microsoft Teams provides the enterprise-level security, compliance, and management features you would expect from Microsoft Office 365. Teams always encrypts data and includes multi-factor authentication to enhance identity protection.

Gavin Brown, IT Services Director, Pinnacle:

“Across Pinnacle we have ensured all of our staff have set-up multi-factor authentication within Microsoft Office 365 and Teams. This ensures the security of information and protection of our networks regardless of where our teams are working. We also have backups in place for O365 to ensure we always have access to this data should anything go down or get lost.”