Almost a month of social distancing, lockdowns and work-from-home due to the COVID-19 outbreak has thrown all of us into what everybody is calling ‘the new normal’. But the former 2 of these 3 things will not last long while the latter – ‘remote work (WFH)’ is here to stay.
Companies, small to large, across different industries have migrated their employees to the new remote-work environment and this has constructed a massive market for Chat, Meetings, Callings, and Collaboration tools as they have become a necessity to keep businesses running, employees safe, and productivity unaffected.
One such modern group collaboration platform that has seen a massive spike in its usage is Microsoft Teams. In early March 2020, driven by the coronavirus pandemic, Microsoft Teams witnessed a 500% spike as more and more companies began to embrace remote work and the number of daily active users of the software jumped from 32 Million to 44 Million (and counting).
Now, let’s see how Microsoft Teams assists remote work / work-from-home:
Microsoft teams work from home
Getting on-board Microsoft Teams:
As Covid-19 spread across the world, Microsoft made Microsoft Teams available to everyone by providing many of its premium features at zero cost. Organizations with a Microsoft Office 365 Subscription have access to Microsoft Teams already but what if you’re a newbie? You can download a freemium version of Microsoft Teams or can move to Office with us.
Microsoft Teams Features: Extending Support to Remote Employees
Microsoft Teams has amazing group collaboration features along with enormous cloud storage. To extend support to remote workers and assist them in staying productive while working from home, Microsoft offers the below package:
Unlimited chat
One-on-one audio, video calling
Group audio & video calling
10 GB Team file storage
2 GB of Personal file storage
Real-time collaboration with Office apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote
Microsoft Team Features & Capabilities to Support Work-From-Home:
Unlimited messaging
Resource sharing
Create Groups for relevant tasks, documents and communication
Calling on desktops and mobile phones
Virtual meetings
Video conferencing
High security to both internal and external devices
Fun feature:
You can turn yourself into a potato in a Microsoft Teams video conference. Learn how to be a potato, I mean, how to look like a potato.
Microsoft teams work from home
Microsoft Teams’ New Features to support Remote Work:
With extraordinary features already present such as Background blur, meeting scheduling and recording, Microsoft Teams is planning to roll out the below features by late 2020 for highly effective team collaboration:
Enhanced audio experience
‘Raise hand’ feature
Background noise suppression feature
Pop-out chats into a separate window feature
It is during the crisis like this that we realize how beneficial modern workplace solutions and productivity tools, like Office 365 and Microsoft Teams, are for a business’ continuity and employee productivity.
If you want to adopt Microsoft Teams, a Microsoft Partner and Service Provider like us, is ready to lead you out of the challenges of remote work your business and employees might be facing. Get in touch with us for Microsoft Teams consulting or if you’d like to migrate to Office 365, our consultants are here to help.
Top comments (1)
Thanks for sharing. Aside from Teams, using task management software can also keep work productive. Collaborate and manage tasks at the same time. I have yet to try many tools, but Tick Tick, Todoist, and Quire are great ones.