Microsoft Teams is one of the most widely used communication tools among companies, organizations, and educational institutions worldwide. Its clean and simple UI is simple to use and maximizes productivity. As companies migrated to remote work, employees and managers began looking for collaboration tools. Companies quickly adopted Microsoft Teams online across industries as a tried and true collaboration platform.
While Microsoft Teams includes many features and collaboration tools for smooth communication with your teammates, you can enhance it using Microsoft Teams apps to get the most out of it. Teams offer a variety of apps for everything from attendance tracking and productivity to team building and event planning. These apps are purpose-built for specific tasks, allowing you to utilize the capabilities of Microsoft Teams for mac fully.
In this article, we will discuss some of the most popular download Microsoft Teams apps used by organizations worldwide.
Collaboration software’s importance
Collaboration tools are essential whether you work in an office or from home. Tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack make it easier for businesses and managers to manage and communicate with their whole staff. They make it possible to avoid lengthy email threads for each debate and organize all communication for the entire organization in one place.
When communication is accessible in an organization, ideas flow freely. That’s where ideas are born and developed:
- When you’re not afraid about CCing everyone on a mail thread.
- When you see a hilarious meme, send it to a colleague via the platform.
- When you don’t hesitate to talk to a colleague.
A collaboration platform accomplishes exactly that: it creates a location for teammates to communicate as if they were standing next to the water cooler.
A good collaboration also allows for creating a single workplace for each employee. No one wants to open 10 Chrome tabs or 15 programs to complete their tasks. Imagine opening track of your attendance in one app, checking your tickets in another, and opening your employee insurance policy is yet another. But what if you could use Teams to mark your attendance or request a service from the IT support desk? You’ll be far more productive as a result.
In what ways can Microsoft Teams help you work and collaborate more effectively?
Picture Microsoft Teams combines Google Meet, Calendar, and the business version of WhatsApp into a unified user experience. MS Teams is a collaboration app that makes it easier and more effective to make together. You can use Teams to chat with your colleagues, talk over the phone and video, have in-depth discussions, give presentations, and do anything else you need to communicate efficiently with your teammates.
The versatility of Microsoft Teams login can be used by HR organizations as well. Microsoft Teams download has a lot of potential in the HR world.
As previously stated, Teams comes with various built-in and third-party apps. These Microsoft Teams background images add-ons might help your company become more productive. If that isn’t enough, Teams also includes a set of app templates that you can use to build your apps and bots. For example, by integrating your service desk into your Teams app, you can quickly handle the massive requests that will strike your IT support teams as employees return to the office.
The Best Microsoft Teams Apps for Better Collaboration
Teams’ popularity stems in part from the fact that it is more than just a tool for making video chats. Employees may have the greatest possible workplace experience – wherever they are – thanks to the large variety of apps available through the programme. We’ve selected the ones you won’t want to miss in our guide.
These apps are amazing at what they do, whether they’re must-haves or nice-to-haves, and will make you and your organization work more efficiently and, in some circumstances, more fun.
1. Trello
Trello is one of the most popular free MS Teams apps. It’s a Kanban-style planner app that comes pre-installed on Teams. It’s made up of a series of boards and lists that you can use to plan events, assign tasks, create a content calendar, and keep track of your to-do list. When you want to check off tasks on the fly, Trello has its Android and iOS apps. The app is simple and has a quick and painless learning curve.
2. RememberThis
RememberThis Teams provides bookmark messages for you to use so that you can return to the website at a later time. However, the majority of the time, it does not work, and you end up forgetting to return to the message that you had bookmarked. Keep in mind that this not only helps you complete the assignment, but it also gives you the ability to add a timed reminder for the message. The only thing you need to do is indicate the date and time in the message and tag RememberThis.
Keep in mind that this is a helpful function, but the best results can only be achieved within a message thread. It would be helpful if you could set a reminder for the earlier message. Thanks in advance.
3. Zoom Meetings
It can be challenging to get everyone on board with Microsoft Teams if you outsource work to other firms. Using the Zoom Meetings app, you are able to invite people from outside the organization to participate in a straightforward video conference. In case you were unaware, Zoom is an application for hosting video conferences that gives you the ability to invite up to 100 people to participate in the video at no cost. It is not necessary for the attendees to sign up as well. In comparison to Slack, I found the Zoom app for Microsoft Teams to be superior because it provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for configuring and scheduling microsoft teams meetings rather than using commands.
4. AttendanceBot
AttendanceBot makes tracking attendance in your organization much easier. Employees may easily mark their attendance by typing in or out using the app, which is integrated into Microsoft Teams. You may set your team’s shifts, and the app will remind them to log in at the beginning of their shift in Teams. Using the AttendanceBot, your team may request time off from within Teams. Its powerful capabilities will ease your life no matter where your team is located or if they work remotely.
The app also provides a simple UI where you can view your team’s attendance data. The app also provides complete timesheets and reports.
AttendanceBot also connects with most calendar apps, allowing everyone on the team to see who works on any given day. The app is free for teams with fewer than five people; beyond that, you can choose between a regular or pro plan.
5. Polly
Polly makes completing surveys a breeze. This is a Microsoft Teams app that allows you to run surveys and gather feedback from your colleagues. It’s not easy to create a survey in Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, send it to your team, and wait for their responses. You may send surveys directly to your teammates’ conversations or channels using Polly without disturbing their work.
You can utilize the app’s templates for a variety of events, or you can create your bespoke surveys. The app covers all sorts of surveys (optional, anonymous, etc.) and questions (multiple-choice, open-ended, etc.). The app may automate your work using custom triggers and integrates with tools like Jira and Zapier. You can also use real-time visualizations to track the results of your surveys and segregate them based on the demographics of the respondents.
As you might expect, if you send queries to Polly in the chat, you’ll get quicker responses than if you ask them on other platforms.
6. Power BI
Microsoft’s Power BI is a sophisticated app for connecting and combining data from many sources and visualising it for business insights. Power BI is used for various reasons, from creating interactive reports to creating custom visualisations for apps.
By integrating Power BI into your Teams app, you can add interactive reports to your channels for your colleagues to view and debate. You can find your Power BI reports using the Teams search box, and you can get notifications about the current Power BI event in your Teams activity stream. When you open a Power BI report in Teams, the ‘Chat in Teams’ option appears in the Power BI app. In a Teams channel, you can talk the report or even a specific visual in the information.
While Power BI Desktop is a free application for connecting to data sources, creating reports, and analysing data, Power BI Pro is a subscription service for interacting with other people in the organisation.
7. MeisterTask
One of the best MS Teams management apps is MeisterTask. It’s a popular project and task management application that can be added to Teams as a tab. You may collaborate with your team and keep track of their activity through work boards and lists. MeisterTask offers a central dashboard where you can see everything at once, a board showing all tasks and a personal board for each user. You can view only the tasks that require your attention on your board (Agenda).
You can utilise the app’s simple yet effective automation capabilities to make your work more productive. For example, once you’ve moved a task to the “Review” list, you can set up an automatic to assign it to your supervisor. If you find yourself doing the same weekly task, such as sending a client an invoice, you can make it a recurring task. Simple automation that create comparable tasks at a predetermined frequency is known as recurring tasks.
8. Mural
Mural is a Microsoft Teams visual collaboration tool. The app functions similarly to a virtual whiteboard, allowing your team to doodle, add comments and post sticky notes. The app interacts seamlessly with your Teams channels and lets you easily communicate ideas and thoughts using diagrams, flowcharts, sticky notes, and more. The mural may help you make your virtual meetings, seminars, brainstorming sessions, and presentations more colorful and engaging. Mural lets your teammates actively participate in a project and contribute their ideas while working remotely, rather than just making comments.
Without leaving the Teams app, your team may access more than 150 templates. You’ll be able to see all of Mural’s updates in your Teams Activity stream once you’ve added the app to your Teams. When you want to collaborate on the go or use the touchscreen for easy drawings, Mural includes distinct apps for Android, iPad, and iOS.
9. Wiki
When you create a channel in Microsoft Teams, the Wiki app is included as a default app. Within Microsoft Teams, this productivity app may be used as a dedicated workspace for keeping notes for your team members. It’s a smart-text editor that allows you to write, edit, and chat all in the same spot. You can keep an easy how-to guide on Wiki so everyone can follow fundamental guidelines and stay current.
It provides a central, easily accessible spot for frequently asked questions. By writing down standards and best practices, you may make the team’s collaboration more productive. It’s easily accessible, so you won’t have to dig deeper into your documents to search for an article to share with your colleagues. Find a creative way to use this default app instead of removing it.
10. SoapBox
The SoapBox app assists you in developing a habit of holding high-efficiency meetings in which you and your coworkers may have meaningful discussions. It’s based on the premise that the finest collaboration occurs when everyone is in the same area at the same time. The primary goal of this app is to eliminate any meeting join microsoft teams meeting barriers that waste time.
The app allows you to add items to your meeting agenda and check them off as you go, which means you’ll be less likely to get off track. You can now receive suggestions for meeting topics, be reminded to add items to the agenda, and monitor everyone’s impending actions. It is possible to archive resolved articles, while unresolved issues may be brought forward to the next meeting. SoapBox improves the structure, efficiency, and quality of meetings.
Microsoft Teams Apps Best Practices
Apps for Microsoft Teams may drastically improve the way your team collaborates and help you get the most out of what is microsoft teams Teams. On the other hand, apps are only as good as those who use them. While most apps are meant to fit into your team’s workflow seamlessly, they may go underused if there isn’t enough awareness or motivation.
It’s ideal to have an introductory session every time you add a new app to the organization to ensure optimal usage. Make these workshops a part of the onboarding phase for new employees so that everyone in the organization is familiar with all the tools.
Avoiding too many apps for the same task is another good approach. There are many apps in Microsoft Teams that perform the same thing but with minor variances. Using multiple applications for the same task can result in dispersed information and documents, which is counterproductive. And teaching everyone on the team how to utilize all of these apps will be difficult.
If you’re creating apps for your team, you can use incentives to encourage them to use them effectively. By gamifying your service desk, you can, for example, reward your support team for resolving 50 or more tickets, thereby increasing their productivity.
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