Gone are the days of being chained to a particular desk or office space; the world has been accelerated into an era of flexible and remote working due to COVID-19.

For many, remote and flexible working will remain the new norm after COVID-19 and ‘on-the-move’ productivity solutions will be essential, and for those in certain lines of work, like retail, healthcare, or many service industries, their mobiles phone is likely the only device they have on them for most of the day! As such, the Microsoft Teams mobile experience is becoming even more important than that on a desktop. Rated as the #1 productivity app on both the App store and Google Play, there are many reasons to love the Teams app… here’s our top 9: 

Remote working can mean working more or unsociable hours; especially if you have colleagues in different time zones. Although it’s sometimes tempting to work longer, it is important to set boundaries and take time to disconnect. On Teams mobile, you can set ‘Quiet Hours’ (for example, 7pm to 7am) and ‘Quiet Days’ (like the weekend) This feature helps you take control of your personal time and can help relieve stress.

If you’re away from your desk, but still need to share something quickly, this feature is a lifesaver! Teams mobile allows you to share PowerPoint slides, videos, photos, or even your phone screen.

Have you ever had to drop off an important conference call in order to rush to an appointment, or make sure you would be home at a specific time? Teams offers the seamless experience of transferring a call from your desktop to your phone without interrupting the flow of your meeting, so you can finish your work while on the move. 

Audio messages can enhance collaboration and offer personality, tone and context to a message that chat or text can’t. The feature is perfect for when you are away from your desk; walking the dog, picking up the children or even cooking.

Just like the ‘dark mode’ on Teams for desktop, the Teams mobile app now also has the much-loved function. Dark mode is perfect for low light environments and night-time working (like checking your messages before bed!), reduces strain on some people’s eyes, and is a great battery saver.

The Office Lens in the Teams mobile app recognises when you are taking a photo of a whiteboard or document and then optimises the picture – even straightening out the document or improving the clarity of the writing. You can also annotate images with text or drawing.

For many, their mobile phones are their lives – or at least have their lives stored on them. As such, the ability to customise the way it’s set up to suit you is crucial. You can customise your bottom navigation bar in the app with the tools that matter most to you.

The Teams mobile app enables you to organise your messages and notifications before you sit down at your desktop, so you can get a jumpstart on your day. With a single swipe, you can mark messages and notifications as read/unread and prioritise them for efficiency.

As a frontline, on-the-go worker, sometimes even weekly schedule management can be a headache. Instead of going through the faff of having paper schedules, manually adding shifts into a calendar or calling up your colleague to swap, you can use Shifts in Teams to manage your schedule seamlessly and keep in touch with your team!

Speak with us to find out more about integrating Teams into your business strategy with our 6 month trial. Learn more here

For more information speak with our experts by calling 0333 344 2204 or emailing us on hello@itsb.co.uk

Remote working is now more prominent than ever, and Microsoft Teams is the ultimate tool for keeping employees connected and engaged as they work from home.

2020 has already been quite a year for the collaboration platform, with heaps of new features introduced to improve the remote working experience. We’ve put together a list of the updates that we think have made the biggest positive impact on working from home…

Keep the focus on you! Participants in Teams meetings can customise their backgrounds using a pre-selected list of images, or even upload their own background image if they wish (check out some of our own custom backgrounds below) This feature improves the experience of remote working and enables employees to keep their homes private. 

In April, Teams rolled out a much-anticipated update; you can now see up to 9 participants video feeds simultaneously during a Teams meeting. The new feature is designed to improve collaboration during meetings and enable more face to face conversations while we all work virtually.

The new ‘raise hand’ feature in Teams meetings lets participants indicate when they’d like to speak, enabling large meetings to run more smoothly and reduce the amount of talking over each other.

The hugely popular background blur has gone mobile. iOS users can now keep the focus on them when they are on the move; you could be out walking the dog and still maintain a professional presence on your virtual meetings.

Hard of hearing? Connecting from a loud location? Participants can follow along and read what is being said during Teams meetings by turning on live captions on their PC and mobile devices. Captions are currently only available in English.

The popular business social platform can now be accessed as an app in Teams, helping you stay connected to what’s happening across your business without having to switch platforms. Easily share announcements and pin conversations just as you normally would on Yammer.

Gone are the days of awkwardly trying to multi-task while in a Teams meeting! Users can now pop-out chat windows instead of having to move back and forth between the different Teams functions and potentially miss something important being shared in a meeting.

Teams now keeps media and video streaming within the boundaries of corporate networks, improving both performance in Teams meetings and calling as well as security.

Microsoft has worked closely with device partners recently to bring a variety of certified devices to the market. The devices are all designed to support remote working and offer enhanced reliability and comfortability while on calls or in meetings.

Using targeted communications in Teams, you can communicate with recipients based on their role and shift pattern; perfect for frontline organisations. Microsoft has also made major upgrades to the ‘Shifts’ function; schedule filtering makes it easier to manage large shift schedules, and the ‘your shifts’ view makes it easier for team members to quickly access their information without needing to scroll through the entire team schedule. Microsoft are also introducing a new frontline worker SKU for M365, designed to meet the unique productivity and security needs of workers at the forefront of the battle against COVID-19.

The updates made so far in 2020 definitely address a number of needs for SMBs and larger frontline organisations in these trying times. With many companies relying on remote working solutions to survive right now, Teams has stepped up to make virtual collaboration simple and seamless.

Stay tuned for the next batch of updates in Microsoft Teams and talk to us today to find out more about integrating the platform into your business strategy with our 6 month trial. Learn more here

For more information speak with our experts by calling 0333 344 2204 or emailing us on hello@itsb.co.uk