Productivity boosting features of 365 – Meetings

Productivity boosting features of 365 – Meetings

Problem: Organising meetings can prove to be problematic

Microsoft Teams, released in 2017, has rapidly become one of the most popular applications of its kind. Covid-19 accentuated this rapid climb to popularity with workforces making the transition to an at least partially remote team. The universal appeal of Teams amongst business owners is its functionality, ease of use, and extensive range of features designed to enhance levels of productivity, communication, and collaboration.

A particularly popular feature of Teams is its Audio/video conferencing tool, which allows you to hold a meeting with up to 300 participants, and ‘live events’ with up to 20,000! Teams gives you the ability to manage a workforce no matter their location in the world.

 

Solution: Microsoft Teams ‘Meetings’ tool

As Meetings has been designed as an intuitive platform, we will skip the basics and look more at the intricate features of Meetings that may not be universally known and help you to discover tools with the ability to improve the way you work forever.

 

Meeting Scheduling and the Scheduling assistant – How to

Scheduling meetings can be a challenge no matter the size of your workforce. Teams has a solution in the form of its easy-to-use scheduling assistant that can be accessed through the ‘new meeting’ tool in the calendar tab.

  1. To arrange a meeting in advance, click the ‘calendar’ tab on the left.
  2. Select ‘new meeting,’ located below your user icon in the top right. After having clicked it, you will be presented with a form into which you can enter all your meeting requirements.
  3. Enter the names of those you wish to attend, include a start and end time, link the meeting to a channel, or set the meeting to recur (if required).
  4. Once having entered the name(s) of participants to the meeting, you are presented with suggested times (just below the date and time section of the form). Amazingly, Teams can offer times that suit everyone invited to the meeting by analysing their schedules (which will save you the time that would have been wasted by doing it yourself).

 A particularly good feature in Meetings is the ability to converse within a meeting with ‘In-Meeting chat’.

 

In-Meeting chat – what is it and how to use it

If whilst in a meeting an employee needs to ask a question or communicate something to another participant of the meeting, it can be very disruptive and can sometimes ruin the concentration of others in the meeting. In-Meeting instant messaging makes this possible without causing unnecessary distractions.

  1. To display the chat interface, select ‘show conversation’ from the menu of actions at the top right of the meeting window.

 Similar to In-Meeting chat is the ‘raise your hand’ tool.

 

Raise your hand – what is it and how to use it

‘Raise your hand’ also allows you to make yourself known within a meeting without interrupting.

  1. Select the hand icon from the menu of actions, select ‘this action’, then * (star).
  2. This action will then appear as a notification in the ‘show participants’ tab. Any attendee who raises their hand will have an icon displayed beside their name.

Take some time to delve deeper into the depths of Microsoft Teams and have a play with its different features – you will soon discover that it has a lot more to offer than what is on the surface. Using Teams’ tools effectively will guarantee you a good standard of productivity within your business.

Want to get the most from 365 and Teams?

Is tech causing your business problems?

 

How can we help?  

Here at VaraTech, we offer a broad range of IT support and consultancy services that aim to help small businesses extract maximum value from their IT.  From proactive network monitoring/maintenance and hardware leasing to Cloud services, VoIP telephony and much more, we help our clients identify and roll-out the best-fit solutions for their businesses.    

We’re cloud computing experts!  We can help your business leverage the potential of some of the most empowering Cloud services, such as Microsoft 365.  Why not get in touch today, to discover how the flexibility, scalability cost-efficiency, convenience and security of Cloud services can help your business realise its potential.