Information Technology Services

by Curt Price

Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform available to SIUE Faculty, Staff and Students that can help you and your department improve communication, productivity, and more. 

Since its launch, Microsoft Teams has become the fastest growing app in Microsoft’s history with more than 330,000 companies worldwide using it.

Collaboration

Teams allows users to share files, work on them simultaneously, and collaborate in real time. It also integrates with other Office apps like OneNote, OneDrive, and Skype for Business, so users don't need to switch apps to collaborate on documents.

Meetings

Teams offers online meeting suites (similar to Zoom, but also better in many ways as far as being part of a collaborative suite goes) where users can host meetings, presentations, and work sessions. They can also organize meetings from their calendar and use features like colored flags to prevent overlapping edits.

Communication

Teams includes a chat window for quick conversations, and users can set up naming conventions and notifications. Chat is a wonderful tool that you can use to instantly send text messages to any faculty or staff member at SIUE who is also using Teams. You can also create group chats and larger groups called Teams to effecitively communicate and collaborate.

You can also set up your office phone to be used through the Teams desktop application or through your phone using the Teams app on your phone (yes, your mobile phone can ring when someone calls your office phone, but it's going through your Teams app). And the previously mentioned Chat can also be used on your phone, just like a texting app. This is an invaluable resource, especially for those who spend some time working from home or away from the office.

Productivity

Teams can help reduce email and keep users connected and reachable, even when they're on the go. 

Because Teams was built as an all-in-one tool, it has a really robust set of features to help with productivity. Think of it like Zoom, Slack, and Google Docs all rolled into one—and then some.

For example, there's a Teams chat feature called loop components that allows you to create meeting action item lists in the chat window while you're in a meeting. You can add due dates and trigger notifications to the relevant people in the team chat, so everyone involved can see progress through the tasks.

Teams offers video recording and transcripts (basic features for a video conferencing app), but once again, Teams has some built-in productivity features that take it up a level when compared to, Zoom, for example. Such as, in Teams, the recording is emailed out to all invitees and is saved in the meeting chat window, so it's easily traceable without you having to do anything. With Zoom recording, you need to go out of your way to send the recording to whoever needs it (or chase down the host if you're a guest).

Since SIUE uses Microsoft 365, collaborating live on documents through Teams is totally seamless. Because (unsurprisingly) Teams integrates with programs like Word, Excel Live, and PowerPoint Live, multiple people can collaborate on a spreadsheet or document live on a call, and it will update in real-time for everyone. You could do something similar in Zoom using Google Sheets or Google Docs, but it won't be as streamlined and using Google Docs for some university work is frowned upon due to it not being hosted here at SIUE.

In short, Microsoft Teams is a fantastic resource provided by SIUE for faculty and staff to seamlessly collaborate and increase productivity. From chat, to video conferencing (meetings), to Team groups, to your Outlook Calendar, to your office phone, do One Drive file storage, assignments, planning, to Word/Excel/Powerpoint, etc, etc... Teams is your all-in-one seamless application suite that could replace many other applications and make your job a little easier.