Collaboration tool Archives - CT Link Systems, Inc.

Microsoft Teams Turns One!

On March 12, 2018, Microsoft Teams celebrated its one year anniversary and what and eventful first year it was! According to Microsoft, around 200,000 organizations in 181 markets (in 39 languages) are using teams to date and we can expect it to rise throughout the year with Microsoft’s additional features and updates to Teams this coming year.

Teams for Intelligent Communications and Collaboration

Being part of Office 365, Teams has been able to take advantage of many of its strength by being able to integrate with many other Office 365 applications while also tapping its 120 million user base. Teams uniquely delivers on its many features, such as chat-based collaboration, meetings, calling (and soon, full enterprise voice features), at scale with enterprise-grade security and compliance standards to make sure that you are within global standards. However, to improve on their vision for Intelligent Communications within organizations, Microsoft has announced that they will be implementing the following features within this year:

Cloud recording—Will provide one-click meeting recordings with automatic transcription and timecoding, enabling all team members the ability to read captions, search within the conversation, and playback all or part of the meeting. In the future, it will also include facial recognition, so remarks can be attributed to specific meeting attendees.

Inline message translation—People who speak different languages will be able to fluidly communicate with one another by translating posts in channels and chat.

Cortana voice interactions for Teams-enabled devices—Will enable you to easily make a call, join a meeting, or add other people to a meeting in Teams using spoken, natural language. This functionality will extend to IP phones and conference room devices.

Background blur on video—The ability to blur your background during video calls will allow other meeting attendees to focus on you, not what’s behind you.

Proximity detection for Teams Meetings—This feature will make it easy for you to discover and add a nearby and available Skype Room System to any meeting.

Mobile sharing in meetings—Meeting attendees will be able to share a live video stream, photos, or the screen from their mobile device.

In addition to this, Microsoft will be adding new enterprise-grade calling features in Teams which will include consultative transfer and call delegation and federation. Another feature that will be introduced is Direct Routing which will allow you to use your existing telephony infrastructure with Teams for calling. To learn more about this you may read the original article here or you can contact us at 893-9515 to ask us directly!

Microsoft Teams: Improving an already good Collaboration tool

February 2, 2018April 20, 2023 Arby News and Events Collaboration, Collaboration tool, Microsoft, Microsoft Teams, SurveyMonkey, Teams, Trello, Wrike

It’s been close to 10 months since Microsoft has introduced Teams in an effort to help their customers improve their collaboration within the workspace. Through these months, Microsoft has been slowly improving Teams through their observations and user feedback. One example of this was the integration of third party applications such as Trello and SurveyMonkey. Even now they are still updating Teams, recently they have released a new update in which they have integrated exciting new features which will surely help your company’s collaboration efforts!

New ways to utilize your apps in Teams

Include information from an app in a conversation

Be able to discuss content from a different app directly in Teams with the latest update. Just like putting an emoji or GIF in the chat, you’ll be able to search and post integrated app information into chat and channels. Be able search for a specific task in Trello, a work item in Wrike, or even a weather forcast, and even integrate them it into an interactive card.

Access a personal view of your apps

With the update, you can now easily access apps you frequently use and even see all items on those apps such as tasks in planner, issues in Jira Cloud and even conveniently find items you recently used such notebooks from OneNote. This is made possible due to the addition of the personal apps space. In addition, you can also find a new app in this space called Who, a new app powered by Microsoft Graph, which enables you to search for people in your organization by name or topic.

Find apps for Teams in the new Store

To make discovering and finding apps simpler in Teams by allowing users to search for apps by name, category, and integration type (like bots, tabs, connectors) in their new store.

Command apps, take quick actions, and search—all from the command box

Command apps from the command box

In the latest patch, Microsoft has added the function to query or command an app from the command box. You are now able to search information in an app and easily place the results into a chat or channel in Teams. More functions will be added overtime, one function they are working on is to create a task in your project management app over the Teams command box.

Take quick actions with slash commands

A convenient new function added to Teams would be the addition of slash commands to help you execute shortcuts quickly.

Contact us at 893-9515 to learn more about Microsoft Teams and how it can help you collaborate better with your own Team!

CT Link Systems, Inc. Adopts Microsoft Teams!

November 10, 2017November 26, 2021 Arby News and Events Business application, Business Critical Application, Business Mobility, Collaboration tool, CT Link Systems Inc., Microsoft, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, Work Collaboration

Office collaboration is becoming key to success in businesses right now. Business mobility and workforce communication have become so important that it can lead to you losing a big sale to your competitors. CT Link Systems, Inc. in an effort to improve their collaboration has decided to adopt Microsoft Teams. Below are a few functions of Microsoft Teams that we are enjoying and helping us collaborate easier:

Chat

Chatting using Microsoft Teams is an improved experience if you are coming from other Microsoft Instant messengers like Skype for business. One big difference is that unlike Skype you have an archive for your chat history. You don’t have to worry that your chat between you and your superiors will disappear, you can always go back and check what was noted and even favorite a message for faster identification. Files are not immediately deleted as well once your chat is finished, it saves itself on your OneDrive and you will have a tab where all your files from that particular contact will be saved to make it easier for you to find your files! One feature missing from Teams so far is the capability to do video calls, however Microsoft has stated that they are working on it!

Teams

This is the main feature of Microsoft teams in which you can create a group, which serves as something similar to group chat but with more functions. Within each group, there are different tabs which have different functions, the default would be the wiki and files. The wiki tab would be the page where you can place your glossary for the group so that everyone has a reference area during conversations. The files tab is where you can view all the files shared in the group and even real time edit the file such as word and excel. You may also place more tabs per group if needed, any app available in Office 365 can be placed on it such as planner (a favorite in our office) to help remember deadlines and keep yourself on track.

These are just examples of ways teams helped our organization, however teams is still constantly being improved for better user experience so keep a watch out for it! If you’d like to learn more, please visit our Microsoft page or contact us at 893-9515!

Microsoft Teams Now Available in Office 365

March 16, 2017January 6, 2022 Arby News and Events Collaboration tool, Microsoft, Micrososft Teams, Office 365, Teams

On March 14, 2017, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Teams, its collaboration app as its answer to Slack, would now be available in their productivity suite, Office 365. Being available in 181 markets and in 19 different languages, Microsoft Teams is already being adopted in major companies such as Accenture, Alaska Airlines and Walter Thompson in their operations.

With over 85 million active users, Office 365 empowers the individual or the groups in your organization with its broad set of tools for collaboration. Designed to meet the unique workstyle of every group in different organizations — Outlook for its enterprise-grade email; SharePoint for intelligent content management; Yammer for networking across the organization; Skype for Business as the backbone for enterprise voice and video; and now, Microsoft Teams, the new chat-based workspace in Office 365.

Chat for today’s teams

Providing modern conversation experience, Microsoft Teams will keep everyone engaged with its threaded and persistent chat. New communication features such as audio calling from mobile devices and video call on android, soon to be released on iOS and Windows phones as well, were added to improve on collaboration. Microsoft Teams has also added the ability to email a channel, include attachments, send messages with markdown-based formatting and receive notifications about all posts in a channel.

Hub for Teamwork

With Office 365, applications and services such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and SharePoint are readily provided to Microsoft Teams users to be sure that they will have the tools and information needed to collaborate better. To improve user experience, Microsoft Teams has recently added support for open, public teams within your organization and enhanced user meeting experience by adding scheduling capabilities, integrating calendar availability(free/busy) and more.

Customizable for every team

Knowing every team is unique, Microsoft Teams has made it easy to customize your workspace with Tabs, Connectors and Bots. With over 150 integrations available and more coming soon such as bots from hipmunk, SAP SuccessFactors to help employees and managers track goals and performance and Trello to help empower teams to easily get projects done with boards, lists and cards.

To learn more about Microsoft Teams and Office 365, contact us at 893 9515.