Stop the emails: Use Microsoft Teams for communication and collaboration

Even before the pandemic forced us to work from home, email use had been on the rise. The number of messages in our inboxes continues to climb, and daily email volume has increased dramatically due to the absence of informal communication that naturally resulted from being in the office. We need to put a control on this volume. This article that originally appeared in On Balance, the bimonthly magazine of the Wisconsin Institute of Certified Public Accountants (WICPA), will explain several ways to reduce the messages in your inbox, improve productivity and increase teamwork without increasing the volume of emails.

1.      Group emails should become Teams Channel posts. Think about how much digging you have to do to get a new person up to speed on a project. I have sent bunches of emails to that new person so they have everything they need — but there’s no context. And it’s a lot of work. If those conversations take place in the Teams Channel, when a new person is added to the team they automatically have access to the history and can review notes as needed. If an email happens to slip by out of habit, it can be forwarded to the channel and deleted from email. This approach keeps all the topical conversations in one place. And since Teams is searchable, you can find items easily when needed.

2.      File attachments should become shared files in Teams. If you have file names that include v.1, v.2, v.3, v.final, v.final final, v.no really it’s final — there’s a better way. Get everyone into the same file (even at the same time if you want). No more old versions floating around via email. All editing can happen on the most recent version. This approach leads to less confusion and reduced redundancy.

3.      Agendas and meeting notes belong in Teams OneNote. Once we kept a paper notepad for our meetings. We’d print the agenda and make notes on that as well. The online comparison to that approach is using OneNote in Teams. Create a notebook for the team. Create a section for all the meeting notes. Each new meeting gets its own page. All important meeting data can be captured in one place. This leads to more accountability and less frustration for those who may have to miss a meeting.

Bonus TIP - The Record Audio feature in OneNote is indexed. That means that if someone takes notes of key phrases in OneNote while recording, an index marker is added, and the replay can be set to that indexed area. Think of it like a bookmark — a way to track important conversations that may need to be referenced in the future.

4.      Use Chat to avoid overloading your inbox. Do you want to go to lunch? Did we get their signed agreement? These are quick questions that should not be clogging up your inbox. In fact, in the ideal world of Microsoft, the volume of emails sent internally should drop significantly. For messages like this, use the Chat feature in Teams. Whether it’s a 1:1 private message, a small group chat, a quick “Meet Now” call, a video call or even screen-share options, Teams Chat is the place to do this. Keep these conversations out of email — they will get quicker responses in Chat. Just need an acknowledgement that a message was received? Ask for a reaction like Thumbs Up once the message has been read.

5.      Enable Guest Access to add people from other companies. Working with external team members or want to communicate with customers/clients/vendors? If your organization has enabled Guest Access, you can add people from other organizations to your team. This continues to keep all information in one place for easy access by all stakeholders. “Externals” do have limited — but sufficient — rights to communicate, file-share and be assigned tasks. Need to get someone’s attention in a Teams Chat? Use the @mention feature to tag them in the message and trigger an alert. The good news is that Teams and the associated Microsoft 365 applications are updating monthly. If you’re curious about what’s coming for these tools, check out the M365 roadmap at www.microsoft.com/en-us/ microsoft-365/roadmap.

Additionally, the use of Virtual communication and collaboration are here to stay, no matter whether we’re back in the office or still working from home. Teams is the place to be. Whether you’re on a web browser or a desktop or mobile app, with Teams you can stay connected for all your communication and collaboration needs.

Implementing and transitioning to Teams requires some changes in habits, both personally and organizationally. If you have any questions about how to introduce your organization to Teams or how to better leverage the tool, don’t hesitate to reach out.

This article was first published in On Balance, the bimonthly magazine of the Wisconsin Institute of Certified Public Accountants (WICPA), and is used with WICPA permission. https://www.wicpa.org/publications/the-bottom-line