Microsoft Teams is incredibly useful for teams looking to stay on track as it collects your different work tools. It also comes with a wide selection of apps and integrations that can help serve different team needs. In this post we are taking a look at 7 different apps that not only enrich the experience for individual users, but also help improve team productivity and efficiency.
Trello is a project management tool that is famous for its sticky note style assignments and boards. While it is similar to Microsofts Teams own task planner, it’s very useful for teams that already are Trello users and don’t want to leave behind their previous boards. By integrating it to the platform, you can make sure that your boards and tasks are merged into the platform so that all the Trello users are up to date on tasks without having to leave the Teams.
Polly is an app that can be used to create surveys in your channels. Let’s say that you are planning an event for your team and you need to decide on the festive menu. You can use Polly to let colleagues vote for a specific menu. However, it can be used for much more complex matters as it also includes vote-counting analytics for you in real time as well as possibility to send your results. You may also add customization such as anonymity, scheduling, and commenting. The latter can be used to keep employees engaged by being able to add their input.
ScrumGenius is an app that can help streamline and automate your status meetings, retrospectives, and one-on-one meetings. You can schedule the app to ask your team members of their accomplishments during the previous day and what their current tasks are. Users can also add what obstacles they have encountered to get help to manage them. These results can then be sent via email as a summary to the team lead. Based on the statistics from the answers, the app will produce useful statistics to help navigate your planning.
For fellow graphic designers, we highly recommend integrating Adobe Creative Cloud into teams. Instead of simply sending a picture through a chat or an email, the app allows designers to easily access the creative cloud library so that they are able to share their work, get feedback and stay on track with their projects within the Teams environment. When you decide to share your work, you can pin it to the channel and you will get automatically get a notification when someone leaves a comment.
If you currently don’t have an attendance management system in place, look no further. AttendenceBot allows you to track hours, vacation, time off, shifts, sick days and remote work. It includes a clock in feature that is useful for remote workers that need to track work hours and subsequently export this data into timesheets. It is also possible to track time spent on different projects in a visual dashboard.
MailClark is a great app for the team that wants to streamline and centralize communication even further as it integrates your mail into the Teams environment. This means that you can integrate a smart shared inbox in your channel that allows you to manage your messages from various mail programs such as Outlook, Gmail and IMAP. It is also possible to connect your social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. With the app, you can send and receive external emails, and also assign team members to respond.
The app Workbot is a powerhouse of a productivity tool as it accesses and controls your other business apps within Microsoft Teams. It includes a smart workspace where you can for example chat, customize workflows, handle requests and orders, and get notifications of each action. The app grabs information form over 150 business apps and is able to create useful statistics with that information. Within your channel, ask the app for a performance report and it will send out a summary to your team to help track your performance.