With a phenomenal 270 million monthly active users and a rising number of committed fans in the world of hybrid work, Microsoft Teams has taken the world by storm. On its own, the technology offers a fantastic ecosystem of collaborative and communication tools. Users can share files, set up video conferences, and chat in real-time.
However, as the workplace continues to evolve, companies are discovering each of their employees has their own unique needs when it comes to collaboration tool functionality. As a result, Microsoft has introduced a host of apps and add-on tools brands can use to customise their Teams experience.
Of course, with over 700 apps to download, Microsoft Teams app users might struggle to figure out where they should start. Fortunately, we’ve got some top picks to set you on the right track.
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Decisions
In an age of hybrid work, meetings and conferences are more important than ever before. Unfortunately, as many companies noticed during the pandemic, poorly-managed meetings can also cause confusion between employees, and waste essential time.
Decisions is a Microsoft-awarded app that helps strengthen the quality of your meetings with an agenda builder located in Teams. You can get staff prepared for the meeting by sharing your agenda in a Teams channel, tracking time in the meeting, and even running polls and votes mid-conversation. There’s also the option to create tasks to assign to employees post-meeting.
Features include:
- Meeting agenda builder
- One-click meeting minutes for OneNote and Word
- Custom templates
- Time tracking
- Secure voting
- Tasks and decision syncing to To Do and Planner
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Polly
One of the more popular apps to download, Microsoft Teams users love the functionality Polly offers for running surveys, polls, and quizzes in meetings. In a distributed workplace, it can be difficult to keep your employees aligned and engaged, even with regular video conferences.
Polly is a tool designed to boost interactions between staff members with live Q&A capabilities, quizzes, and support for collecting instant feedback. You can check the pulse of team engagement in your workplace and enhance the quality of meeting agendas too. Polly also comes with real-time analytics built-in too.
Features include:
- Remote team check-ins and engagement tracking
- Microsoft Teams deployment follow-up
- Engagement pulse checking
- Quizzes and instant feedback
- Trivia rounds
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Trello
Successful collaborative work requires more than just video meetings and chat. You’ll also need to ensure your employees are staying on track with their tasks. Trello is an excellent tool for this purpose, helping teams to organize their projects in a more convenient, flexible way.
Trello is a service for workflow management, which allows companies to build boards with lists of tasks they can assign among their team members. Projects can be assigned to each individual with different due dates for completion. There’s even the option to set up notifications and reminders to keep people posted of upcoming deadlines within Teams.
Features include:
- Tracking tasks and important projects
- Assigning tasks to individual users
- Notifications and reminders
- Deadlines and calendar synchronisation
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Clickup
Another valuable tool for productivity, Clickup can help keep your team on track and focused when you’re entering the age of hybrid work. The solution for Microsoft Teams includes everything from reminders and goal setting to calendar syncing, scheduling, and notes.
