Enhance your Teams calls with these 4 apps

Meetings are a familiar and important part of our daily duties in the workplace. Almost everyone at some point in their life has had to hold or attend a meeting for work. In the current climate especially, regular meetings via online calling or video conferencing are keeping people connected, whether they choose to work from home or from their office.

Microsoft Teams is a business communication platform that offers workspace chat, video conferencing, file storage and application integration.

Teams has seen a rise in users due to the pandemic, and has many advantages such as:

• Saving time and money
• No travelling required (especially great if you have a contact overseas)
• Brings remote workers and telecommuters together
• More personal and engaging than phone conferencing alone
• Increased efficiency and productivity
• Cuts down on carbon emissions
• Improves relationships

To improve your Teams experience, Microsoft have released 20 apps that can be utilised during meetings. To use these apps all you need to do is edit the meetings you have scheduled within Teams and select the + button at the top to access and add whichever apps you need during that call.

Most of the apps have a preparation feature where you can set up an agenda, design a poll and much more! This means that whilst you are in your meeting you can select tools as and when you need them. Here are our top 4 apps that we think will greatly transform your Teams experience.

Decisions

We all have those meetings that just flow over the scheduled time and when they run on for so long, and so many people are involved, it’s hard to keep track!

With the Decisions app, your meetings will be more structured and more productive with the ability to keep track of actionable outcomes and next steps. The app allows you to create an easy-to-edit agenda that you can tag and organise into expected timelines. Using the meetings pane, you can see and interact with the agenda alongside your colleagues in real time during a meeting. You can also add notes, tasks and ask people to take votes!

Teamflect

With Teamflect you can easily organise 1-on-1 meetings and make the most out of them with talking points, actionable items and private notes. It can also help you to shape your relationships with other members of staff and keep on top of their status reviews, yearly plans, mentoring relationships, and more.

It evaluates your connections with other colleagues and makes it easy to record follow-up notes and feedback from your management conversations with your teammates. The app allows managers to help their employees by giving constructive feedback and gives employees the opportunity to get recognised for their hard work.

Plus, with the tasks module you can track direct reports, ensuring you are always on the same page, no matter where you are!

Slido

Keep your audience engaged with Slido, a simple yet flexible polling tool that allows you to ask your listeners questions to encourage conversations or tailor your presentation or meeting to the mood.

The app supports a few different types of questions such as word clouds, multiple choice, quizzes and ratings. There is also the option to pause during your meeting to ask for audience participation, during which you can quickly create a new poll.

Breakthru

With the rise in digital meetings over face-to-face, it’s important that you stay on top of your individual workload. Working from home may be going great for you, but it’s sometimes very easy to forget to take a break!

With Breakthru you can ensure that you get time in-between meetings and other work to take a break. Taking this time to relax, eat, have a coffee, and shift your focus can make a big impact to your overall sense of wellbeing, and help you stay refreshed for the remainder of your work day.

The app helps you to take 2 minute mini-breaks with meditative exercises that can help you and your team re-energize. Whether within a meeting with colleagues, or just by yourself, you can enhance your overall well-being with these helpful restorative pauses that can help clear your mind for what comes next.

Having these four apps in your toolbox, you will be able to run engaged and meaningful meetings – ensuring that you and your team stay productive!

Microsoft Teams is brought to you by Challenger within our Office 365 Packages. For more information visit Office 365 or contact our team today on 0330 002 2111 info@cmc.uk.net.