What's New in Microsoft Teams? Collaboration Tips and Tricks

By Amanda Daly | Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021

As we approach the one-year mark of the pivot to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned a lot about collaboration. At Eze Castle Integration, we partner with Microsoft to offer our clients the option to utilize Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint; collaboration tools that can dramatically enhance collaboration and streamline processes for businesses, increasing efficiency for everyone. In this article, we will share updates on what is new with Microsoft Office 365.

Back in May 2020, Gartner, Inc. released a survey showing "that 88% of organizations have encouraged or required employees to work from home, regardless of whether or not they showed coronavirus-related symptoms."

Whether encouraging or mandating remote working, firms must resonate with employees to keep the following two factors for successful remote collaboration continuous:

Communication
Knowledge sharing

This is where Microsoft Teams comes in. Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform combining workplace chat, video meetings, file storage, and application integration all in one place.

This month, Microsoft introduced a few new features in Teams:

In meetings, you are now able to "react". Choose from like, love, applause, and laugh.
Use the shortcut of Ctrl+Shift+K to raise your hand in a meeting and find out who else has theirs raised.
Presenters can pick up where they left off. Stop presenting and need to share again? When you go to share your screen in a meeting, choose the PowerPoint file you want to present. The next time it's shared in that meeting, you'll have the option to resume the presentation or start over.
Quickly revisit previous areas you've been to in Teams with the Back arrow at the top of the app. When you hover over the arrow, a history of conversations, channels, apps, activities, tabs, and files will appear.
Another newer feature in the Teams App is the "Five Minutes Left" banner that pops up when you reach the last five minutes of your scheduled meeting reminding everyone to wrap things up.

Teams now gives you the option to have smaller group discussions with breakout rooms. Organizers can learn how to set up breakout rooms via the Windows or Mac desktop app. You can learn how to use breakout rooms in Teams meetings here.

What's New In Yammer?

Yammer is a social networking tool to openly connect and engage across your organization.

Favorite communities you love most
A single feed - you can now see conversations from people you follow, trending topics, and discover new content... all in one feed!
Search, notifications and settings are now at the top of the screen and easier to find.
Quickly find new conversation, unanswered questions, and more with the filter.

Overall, Microsoft Teams and Yammer are easy to use applications to leverage to maintain a virtual work environment of productivity, collaboration and transparency amongst employees.