One thing I hear a lot from customers when accessing and working with office documents in SharePoint and Teams (Excel, PowerPoint, Word etc.), is that documents always open in the browser by default. Whilst opening in the browser is quick and easy, it doesn’t give you the full functionality of the apps, especially when it comes to formatting features and additional Excel functionality.

However, there are a couple of ways to change the default way files open!

In today’s world, we all want more flexible remote work options, and meaningful in-person collaboration. Empowering people to thrive in a more flexible work world requires rethinking everything—from how you empower people to be their best, to how you create culture, to how to ensure proper work/life balance.

Let’s consider that someone in your organisation wants to create a new SharePoint site or Team.

Can they do it themselves? If not, who should do it? Is there an approval process? Does it need to follow a consistent look and feel? Does it need to follow a naming convention? Does it need to be communicated?

As you can see, without these questions answered there are lots of potential routes. That’s why setting governance around these tools is crucial.

With so many tools at our fingertips in the Microsoft 365 suite, you might have found yourself asking “what tool should I be using for what purpose?”

Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive all enable users to manage and collaborate on documents, however their subtle differences and unique features make them ideal for different purposes.

When you hear about the new “Chat with Self” feature in Microsoft Teams, you may be thinking “Why would I want to talk to myself!?” However, it’s a pretty cool way to make quick notes, work on drafts or send yourself a reminder.

With Teams being such a fantastic collaboration tool with so many features, your users are probably working in it most of the time. But what then becomes of your beautiful intranet where news and announcements are posted, employee birthdays are shared and all your forms and policies can be accessed?

Over the past couple of years, I’ve come across a number of shortcuts and not-so-obvious features in Microsoft Teams that save time and help to maximise the Teams experience.

Take a look at my top tips and tricks that you can start incorporating today!

If you’ve been working with Teams for a while, you may already be familiar with the ability to share files with your colleagues, either in a channel or in private chat.

However, you may be surprised to learn that no documents are stored within the Microsoft Teams application itself. Teams utilises document storage tools that already exist within the Microsoft 365 suite. These are OneDrive and SharePoint.

With many of us drowning in notifications from our email, collaboration tools and social media on a daily basis, it’s increasingly difficult to make sure you haven’t missed anything important. Luckily, Microsoft Teams enables you to control notification overload through managing notifications in a few different ways.

Many of us by now are familiar with Microsoft Teams, which is a fantastic tool for collaboration and communication. However as we increasingly aim to maximise our productivity during the working day, there may be one feature you’ve missed that can help boost your efficiency.

As covered in a previous post, Teams is a fantastic tool for chat and collaboration and a great hub for working on projects and in teams. At some point however, it’s extremely likely that you will need to invite externals into your Team.

Microsoft Teams is the fastest growing business app in Microsoft history with over 100 million daily users and has quickly become the gold standard of collaboration tools.

As more and more companies embrace a modern workplace, moving their daily operations to the cloud, they will inevitably face two of the biggest collaboration tools – SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.