officeatwork provides productivity enablers for Microsoft/Office 365 users. The company began in 1975 in Switzerland and now works with companies across the globe to enhance productivity possibilities with Microsoft solutions. Some of its key areas of operations include proposals, contract management, email management, and presentation, aided by purpose-built apps. To date, officeatwork has developed and delivered 27 apps for various Microsoft platforms.
One of these apps is Template Chooser, helping users find the perfect template for any document on Teams, inside Microsoft Office solutions, or from SharePoint. It consolidates all the templates they can access into a single repository and can be used on virtually any device or web browser. Importantly, officeatwork’s Template Chooser app is Microsoft 365 certified, which means users can safely provide it with access to users documents and any internal data. As all templates (users’ own and third-party) will be hosted on the cloud, officeatwork has ensured compliance with cloud app security best practices.
officeatwork’s solution suite includes free and paid apps for small, mid-sized, and large businesses and private users. The company offers special licenses for non-profit organisations, governments, and academic institutions.
With this in mind, let us now review officeatwork’s Template Chooser app for Teams in more detail.
Inside officeatwork Template Chooser for Microsoft Teams
While it sounds simple, the ability to access multiple purpose-built and functional templates can significantly impact a user’s productivity. officeatwork enables this by introducing a consolidated template library for all their Microsoft tools.
Users will need a Microsoft Personal Account, School Account, or a Microsoft/Office 365 Work Account to start using the Teams integration. It is also advisable to subscribe to the Template Chooser app beforehand — choose from the Personal (free), Business (evaluation), and Business (subscription) options. Download the app from Microsoft AppSource to get started with the following features:
- Template libraries on Teams: The most crucial feature of the app is that it lets users create templates on Microsoft Teams, just like they would have a library of templates for Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. This is an essential capability if they use Teams for document creation and not just sharing or editing.
- Templates tab for pinning to channels: Users can pin the Template Chooser app as a tab on a track of their choice. For example, suppose they are working with their colleagues on a documentation project or a sales account. In that case, users can have the Template Chooser add-on ready to simplify document management.
- A variety of supported file formats: Template Chooser is compatible with various file formats across platforms. On Teams, it is compatible with DOCX, DOCM, XLSX, XLSM, PPTX, VSDM, VSDX, PDF, and MPP files, of which DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX are the most recommended.
- Optional connectivity with OneDrive libraries: In addition to creating their own Teams libraries, users can also have libraries on OneDrive. This optional feature is enabled by default, but users can configure their Template Chooser deployment to deactivate the OneDrive option when looking for template files. This could be helpful for security use cases where they might want to restrict access to OneDrive.
- Sample libraries: Template Chooser by officeatwork ships with a pre-built set of samples. While this can come in handy during the early stages, users may not want to use standardised sample templates from the company or even have them accessible to users. Template Chooser lets companies deactivate sample libraries once they have purchased a paid account.
- Document creation from templates: With Template Chooser, users can craft documents from scratch without leaving Teams. For instance, if a colleague has reminded users about a binding contract that needs to be sent, users can quickly look up the appropriate contact template and initiate the document inside Teams. Selecting a template opens the new document dialogue box. They can type in the document name and open a blank file per the template from the corresponding Microsoft/Office 365 app.
Why the officeatwork Template Chooser App Makes a Difference
A significant differentiator of the app is that it gives users plenty of options to choose their template library experience across Microsoft 365 tools instead of just providing a one-size-fits-all library integration.
What We Think
Users with document-heavy workflows, such as content creators, legal service providers, or even educators, can gain from the Template Chooser integration, which is available to download here.
