Office 365 Collaboration Tools Part-1

Office 365 platform is a Software as a solution platform that provides an extensive set of software tools and services that eases office documentation, management, and communication tasks. It allows people all around the world to work collaboratively and keep track of their assignments and projects regardless of their workplace. 

Due to the ongoing pandemic around the world, enormous changes have become the major reason for paving the way for remote working. It further resulted in technology being presential as an essential factor responsible for shifting and maintenance of higher productivity level of employees. Thus, Office 365 integrated platform is undoubtedly one of the most valuable tools that have enabled individuals all over the world in collaborating effortlessly with their co-workers, keep track of their assignments and projects regardless of location, and make the most of increasingly challenging situations. Let’s have a closer look at the most popular tools and services provided by Office 365 and discover how to get most of them: 

Teams

Microsoft Teams is a chat-based collaboration platform that includes document sharing, online meetings, and other business-friendly capabilities. As per the recent survey by Statista.com, the usage of Microsoft teams has seen tremendous growth from 75 million users in April 2020 to 145 million as of April 2021. Teams are integrated with Office 365 products and a range of Microsoft apps and others enabling more efficient individual work and seamless collaboration with others. 

It’s highly recommendable to use Teams to maintain strong collaboration among your co-workers. followed by creation of Multiple Channels. Upon the successful creation of the Team, you’ll get a default General Channel that can be used for miscellaneous topics, team announcements, or the addition of various channels based on the specific project teams such as Marketing, Project development, etc., and so on. Individuals can also create separate private channels at a later stage without any necessary permission from the team owner. 

There exists a camera icon at the upper right of the channel which enables users to arrange the video meetings within a channel followed by the information icon and the three dots icon. 

The Files section is located in the upper-middle menu and contains all of the files that channel members have uploaded to the channel (The size of each file must be 100GB). Although it appears to be another part of the Teams chat window it is an inclusive part of the SharePoint document library where the files are stored and can be opened directly in SharePoint. 

The left vertical menu below Chats and Teams consists of a Calendar synced with Outlook where one can schedule meetings, webinars, send invitations to attendees, categorization of meetings, etc. One can also find their call details, all files shared in Team chats below the Calendar option. The categorization of various apps in Teams is done based on their popularity and purpose to ensure smooth navigation across sections from project management, mind maps, chatbots to quizzes, and so on. Teams also enable cross-communication among users using different apps. Follow the below image to get the step-by-step instructions: 

There are several useful options when it comes messaging option in Teams which are worthy enough to catch your attention. You can utilise the @mention option to call a channel member's attention to your message in case of and the user doesn't have alerts switched on. If you have an urgent message that needs to be responded to right away, there's an exclamation mark symbol in the menu below the text bar that you may use to prioritize the message. 

OneDrive

OneDrive is the cloud storage of Microsoft which enables users to access files from their respective devices. Files can be categorized based on size, name, date or type whose actions can be further tracked respectively. One can easily access the files from OneDrive directly through File Explorer and can be opened locally if synced with local computer. It also offers easy access to SharePoint sites and can be integrated with Power Automate where one can you can establish a flow using a selected OneDrive file and use it to automate a business process of your choice. 

SharePoint

SharePoint is a web-based cloud service that allows companies to collaborate, share, and manage content. The content is shared with a specific audience for the sole purpose of broadcasting a message, showcasing services, sharing news, listing forthcoming events, and so on. Team sites, on the other hand, provide members of a group with a place to collaborate on a project, plan an event, share ideas, create and modify content, and so on. It also allows site members with limited control and site owners with full control to edit and modify the site based on the requirement of the team.

Document libraries and lists are two of the most popular sections you can develop on a team site. Document libraries are specialized lists that contain documents and let users examine, collaborate on, and see information whenever required whereas Regular lists, on the other hand, can be built from scratch either from Excel, from an existing list, or any of SharePoint's template.

One can create columns of different sorts depending on the need followed by the date and time column. You can also use Spaces to develop 3D web parts, add audio files, and experience a mixed reality environment in addition to lists and document libraries. News items, links, applications, and other Office tools like Planner are some of the common choices to add to your site to make teamwork a streamlined experience for everyone involved. 

Please feel free to check out another part of this article to know more about Office 365 Collaboration Tools.