Time to turbocharge your Microsoft Teams productivity?
For many companies today, Teams is more than just a collaboration app; it's a dynamic work hub capable of synchronizing employees, improving interactions, and streamlining tasks. Of course, like any platform or app, you can't just download Teams and expect an instant productivity boost.
To get the most out of this platform, you need to know which features you should use in your day-to-day workflows. As Microsoft continues to invest in making its platform more powerful, intuitive, and impressive, businesses (like us) are discovering new ways to use the Teams toolkit.
Today, we're sharing our insights into the top Microsoft Teams productivity features you should be using in 2024.
How to Measure Microsoft Teams Productivity
Before we dive into our list of the top Microsoft Teams productivity features, it might be worth benchmarking where your business currently stands. One option is to check out the "Productivity Score" dashboard in the Microsoft 365 admin center to get a basic view of how people use Microsoft Teams in your business.
However, we'd recommend using the full Microsoft Teams admin center for more granular insights. Within the admin center, you can access various reports measuring everything from active users on Teams to Teams live event usage.
If you're running events and webinars, you can gather advanced insights into user engagement by visiting your Teams admin center and leveraging the "Engagement" report options. Currently, this is only available for Teams Premium license owners.
Alternatively, you could always consider sourcing feedback straight from your staff. Surveys and polls can be a great way to gain insights into how your teams are actually using the Teams platform.
The Top 17 Features for Microsoft Teams Productivity
Virtually every feature on Microsoft Teams can have a positive impact on productivity. Tools like Microsoft Lists are great for keeping track of to-do lists and organizing workers. Even simple solutions like "group tagging" on channels can help keep everyone on the same page.
Still, we think some features impact our productivity more than others. Here are our top picks for the best Microsoft Teams productivity features this year.
1. Microsoft Teams Copilot
Now generally available as part of the Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription ($30 per month), Copilot for Teams is an incredible tool for productivity. Compatible with Microsoft Teams Phone and Chat, Copilot can summarize your channel messages and meetings, highlight action items and topics, and provide real-time insights on calls.
During meetings, Copilot can transcribe conversations and capture information automatically. Plus, it can help you craft clearer messages when talking to your colleagues. You can ask Copilot to suggest a response to a message, then modify and adjust it according to your needs.
Plus, Copilot can rapidly highlight critical information from channel posts, such as discussion points and chat lists, and help you catch up on anything you've missed in a meeting. You can ask it to recap the meeting so far, suggest follow-up questions, and generate meeting notes.
Copilot in Teams Phone uses generative AI to capture task owners, key points, and next steps and can even provide tips and suggestions on what to say next. Moreover, the new Copilot Studio allows business leaders to create and customize their own Copilot apps for Teams users.
2. The Microsoft Teams Meet App
Conducting meetings on Microsoft Teams is nothing new. However, Microsoft's research suggests most of us aren't using our meeting calendars as efficiently as we should. If you're looking to boost Microsoft Teams productivity, the new "Meet" service could be worthwhile.
This is a new area in Teams where users can manage their meetings, plan and prepare for upcoming conversations, and catch up on missed discussions. There's an "Up Next" section where you can see your impending meetings and their details.
You can even prepare for these meetings by reviewing and sharing relevant materials beforehand attaching content from SharePoint, Word, and more. Meet also helps users manage and view the meetings they've organized. You can send reminder messages, reschedule conversations, and review past meetings with recordings and transcripts.
There's even an option to send a "running late" message to people in your meetings so they know if you're not going to arrive on time.
3. Microsoft Teams Productivity Integrations
Many of the best Microsoft Teams productivity features are native to the platform. However, we recommend taking advantage of some of the productivity apps available to integrate with the Teams hub. Already, Teams integrates natively with the whole Microsoft 365 experience.
This means employees can access Outlook, SharePoint Online, Calendar tools, and Office apps, all while using the Teams platform. However, you can take your productivity to the next level by pulling the apps you use daily into your Teams space.
You'll find apps for tools like Workday, Trello, ClickUp, and Mural, all on the Microsoft AppSource marketplace. Connecting these tools with Teams means you and your employees can spend less time jumping between tabs and screens. If you need inspiration, check out our list of the top Microsoft Teams productivity apps here.
4. Automation with Power Automate
We all know how valuable automation can be when boosting workplace performance. If you want to unlock the power of automation for Microsoft Teams productivity, the best option is to take advantage of Microsoft's Power Automate tools.
In Teams, you can use Power Automate to trigger flows from Teams messages. Whenever someone selects a Teams message, they can initiate a range of actions. You can also use flows with adaptive cards and create flows within the Power Apps app in Teams.
Users can create flows that automate specific alerts, notifications, and more. They can trigger scheduled flows with bots and even streamline approval processes.
Microsoft even offers templates to get users started. For instance, there are templates for creating a task in Planner from Microsoft Forms and then posting a message about the job straight to Teams.
5. Customizable Teams Channels
Channels are one of the core features of Teams, and they're fantastic for boosting employee productivity. They not only unify your employees, but they also make it easy to track relevant content. Any files you share in a channel are stored in the Files tab and SharePoint.
Plus, channels are highly customizable. You can open them to all team members, selected team members, or even people outside your organization with shared channels. Plus, users can add unique functionality and apps to channels with Tabs.
Tabs are Teams-aware web pages that bring various forms of content into the Teams environment. You can create a tab where you can take notes and track information or design configurable tabs where people can communicate and collaborate in real time. You can even create tabs for tools like Microsoft Dynamics 365 to support customer service teams with personal information.
6. Viva on Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Viva, the employee engagement platform from Microsoft, integrates directly with Teams. It offers a range of features that can help boost Microsoft Teams' productivity. For instance, Viva Engage brings people together to create more active communities. Viva Topics uses AI to organize content and provide valuable resources to employees automatically.
One of Viva's best Microsoft Teams productivity features is "Viva Insights." This tool uses AI and data to deliver powerful insights and recommendations to employees. It can help streamline workflows and eliminate workplace roadblocks.
Another great solution is Viva Goals. This solution helps business leaders align teams and employees around the same targets and priorities. Viva is also an open and extensible platform, so you can leverage integrations to help enhance the flow of work for everyone in Teams.
We recommend using Microsoft Viva Pulse to monitor productivity and engagement levels in your workplace.
7. Calling Features for Microsoft Teams Productivity
Thanks to Teams Phone, Microsoft Teams isn't just a place for messaging and video meetings. It's also somewhere you can have in-depth business phone conversations. Microsoft has consistently improved the calling experience over the last couple of years with new features.
For instance, call delegates can now switch between tabs and see call records instantly. Companies can also program Microsoft Teams Phone certified devices to dial a specific phone number or contact directly, with "hotline" features. These are great for saving employees time on dialing.
You can even set up protected voicemail notifications, and store your voicemails and other phone data within your SharePoint ecosystem, connected to Teams.
8. Personalized Microsoft Notifications
Customizable notifications are another central feature of Teams that's great for boosting Microsoft Teams' productivity. Microsoft automatically sends users messages about the activity in their Teams channels. However, users can choose exactly which messages and notifications they want to receive and how they want to see them.
You can configure activity feed, menu, desktop notifications, and email alerts to ensure you're only getting the information that's relevant to you. This is crucial if you find that often, an overwhelming number of notifications distract you from your work.
All users need to do to customize their notifications is visit the "Settings and More" sections on Teams and click "Notifications."
9. Microsoft Loop in Teams
Technically, Microsoft Loop is a separate solution to Teams. However, it's designed to work alongside the collaboration app and other Microsoft 365 tools. With Loop, companies can enhance Microsoft Teams productivity with components embedded directly into Teams chat.
