Microsoft Teams has been steadily emerging among the top virtual collaboration platforms, with 270 million monthly active users in the December 2021 quarter, up from 250 million that Microsoft reported six months ago in July 2021. Indeed, the platform is a go-to communication tool for enhancing the employee experience, helping the staff talk to colleagues, host video conferences, and exchange updates.
But that’s not all. Employees need to get a host of other tasks done routinely — fetch relevant information, get a plethora of IT and HR queries resolved, manage shifts, and access learning resources.
While organizations have already tapped into the basic functionalities of Microsoft Teams, the platform also offers several solutions and third-party integrations that expand its scope beyond a mere virtual communication tool. Moreover, as the above numbers indicate, employees are virtually living in Teams; hence, it makes sense for organizations to make everything employees need within Teams, thus eliminating the need to switch between apps constantly.
Whether it’s solutions for business process automation or apps that create customized workflows, Microsoft offers several Teams apps that will level up your employee experience and take your organization to the next stage in the Microsoft Teams journey.
Let’s look at 4 unique Microsoft Teams Apps use cases for organizations that provide exceptional support for some of the most common, day-to-day business challenges.
4 Unique Microsoft Teams Apps Use Cases for Organizations
Microsoft Teams offers several features that enhance individual and team productivity. But, are you aware of the apps and third-party integrations it supports to push efficiency and communication to new heights and provide exceptional employee experience (EX)?
While the list isn’t exhaustive, below, we present to you 4 unique Microsoft Teams apps use cases for organizations that can upgrade employee experience and keep your remote employees engaged and on track.
1. Making onboarding a breeze
The first step in an employee’s journey in the organization is onboarding. While entering a new organization can be intimidating for a new employee, especially in a remote setup, it can be equally challenging and time-consuming for the organization to plan, implement, and manage an onboarding experience and acquaint new hires with the organization’s vision, structure, and people. Gartner’s research indicates that when employees understand and feel connected to the organization’s culture and mission, their performance improves up to 22%.
The shift to remote work has made onboarding an isolating experience, replacing in-person training with pre-recorded virtual sessions. In such a scenario, having an employee onboarding app to guide employees through a curated journey and ensure consistent onboarding experiences has become the need of the hour.
Since Microsoft customers spend most of their time on Teams, companies can build an employee onboarding app on Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Lists.
Such apps offer the following functionalities
- A highly customizable and configurable Teams apps template that nudges employees across pre-defined onboarding steps, allowing them to connect easily with managers and colleagues.
- Separate sites for pre-onboarding, corporate onboarding, and departmental onboarding bring together the web design, user interface, web architecture, and web parts to ease employees’ onboarding journey.
- Easily accessible dashboards that give insight into onboarding plans for every new hire.
- Mobile-first experience with the Teams app, helping new hires continue their onboarding journey anytime and anywhere.
2. Bringing learning to the daily “to-do” list
The LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2021 shows that 63% of professionals agree that learning and development (L&D) has a seat at the executive table. With the acceleration in AI and automation and a tightening labor market, C-suite executives have understood that investing in training employees is essential for rebuilding and reshaping organizations and gaining a competitive edge. According to a World Economic Forum Report, a shift in the division of labor between humans and machines is expected in the coming years, with 85 million jobs to be displaced and 97 million new ones to be created by 2025.
Recognizing this need and the growing popularity of Microsoft Teams as the “go-to” collaboration tool, organizations can build a Learning Management System app for Microsoft 365 and Teams.
Such an app will provide robust training and learning digital workspace that incorporates advanced collaboration tools through the Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft’s trusted data security features with a native Azure AD platform.
Organizations who deploy a learning management system in Teams enjoy the following features —
- A free, fully integrated platform built into Teams, SharePoint, and Power BI, to train and develop your team and scale your organization.
- Rich content management features to create and manage content leveraging the M365 platform.
- Personalized dashboards, certificates, and leaderboards make learning more engaging and interactive for employees.
- Compliance with corporate and regulatory requirements with comprehensive Power BI dashboards on learners’ training data and certification management.
3. Ensuring effective management of employee roster/shifts
For frontline managers, planning, scheduling, and managing workers’ shifts are the most tedious yet crucial tasks. Effective shift management can save employees valuable time and energy, ensure higher productivity, and keep employees in sync with the fluctuating needs of the organization.
For Teams users, organizations can develop a schedule management tool that helps create, manage, and update rosters within Teams. Whether it’s creating or updating new shifts, a last-minute schedule change, or a shift swap, such apps within Microsoft Teams have got your organization covered with the following capabilities —
- An intuitive, easy-to-use interface consisting of team members, shifts scheduled, and assigned shifts in the calendar.
- Easy integrations with a host of employee roster management and shift scheduling tols you already use.
- Group employees by job type or location to make roster management simple.
- Mobile-first interface to help employees use the “Time Clock” feature and easily clock in and out of their shifts.
- Easy sharing of schedules and reviewing of requests for time-off and shift swaps.
4. Managing projects like a “pro”
With hybrid work having become the “new normal” of the business world, it has become tricky for managers to stay on top of the latest updates on essential projects, especially when team members are distributed across various locations.
Microsoft customers can access a plethora of excellent built-in tools, external apps, and add-ons within Teams or build their own project management apps to ensure projects are a smooth sail.
Project management tools within Teams include the following —
- A “to-do” list app available for personal task management
- Helps assign tasks, chat about foreseeable work, and review team progress charts.
- Features like “Board” for Kanban-style planning and “Timeline” for Gantt chart views.
- Brings together tasks from Outlook and other project management apps into a single interface, helping users keep track of more projects from a single pane of view.
Such apps also allow users to create channels for different projects teams, add stakeholders, upload relevant project documents, set up connectors (for example, bots) for process automation, and schedule meetings with team leads.
How can Acuvate help?
Acuvate Software is a global player in next-generation digital services and consulting with 15+ years of experience in improving business efficiencies and revenue for numerous enterprises worldwide. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we leverage all things Microsoft to build enterprise apps that support intelligent analysis, collaboration, and orchestration of information.
Over the past few years, we have helped several enterprises across industries build, deploy, and manage custom apps within SharePoint and Teams to meet the needs of their employees, customers, and vendors.
To know more about how Acuvate can solve your business’ unique challenges and provide a superior edge in innovation, please feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our experts.
