COVID-19 has changed the way that many businesses operate. This includes the realization that they need cloud applications that can keep people connected to their work and each other, no matter what.
During stay-at-home restrictions in the Treasure Valley area and the rest of the country, companies have pivoted to a remote workforce. This means embracing platforms like Microsoft Teams to keep everyone on the same page.
In just one week, MS Teams added 12 million daily active users due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Beyond just collaboration, Teams in Office 365 also provides another important feature that is especially helpful when employees are working from different locations. The platform is a powerful way to secure documents and communications.
Using Teams to Stay on Top of Company Communications
There are multiple data disaster scenarios that can happen when employees are either traveling or working remotely from home.
Here are two examples:
- Tim is working from home due to COVID-19 and using his personal laptop to save company files and emails. His hard drive crashes, and all those communications and documents are gone.
- Mary has been coordinating orders for a multi-national company. She often uses text, email, or WhatsApp to gather information, depending upon where she is. She unexpectedly leaves the company and no one else has a copy of the client’s project specifications that need to be filled.
Communications can easily get away from a company. Trails can be scattered across different devices and apps. Compliance can also become an issue if two departments that have a potential conflict of interest discuss a client file
Microsoft teams helps companies secure those communications across devices, no matter where their employees are working from. Here’s how!
Never Lose a Communication Trail
Microsoft Teams is designed to be a communication interface. That means it not only facilitates different types of communication, it also captures them all within the secure platform.
They’re also organized according to the chat channel you use and easily searchable by keyword.
Within the Teams interface, you can capture:
- Chats
- Files that are shared
- Emails
- Audio calls
- Video calls
Teams can be used from any device. So, whether your employees are at home or on the road, they can easily communicate through Teams. This allows all communication trails to stay together and be accessed by those that need them.
Keep Group Information Protected
Microsoft is currently rolling out sensitivity labels for Teams sites. This new feature allows you to put specific protections on newly created Team sites and SharePoint online sites.
For example, you could set up one of your teams to be connected to your HR Department. Since they discuss sensitive information, you could have the Team site’s sensitivity label automatically set to “private” and only those users invited could access the content.
A setting to disallow the guest user feature can also be set via a Team container sensitivity label. This would mean that thoat in the group can’t invite a guest to access group assets.
Prevent Conflicts of Interest
While connecting everyone is a great thing, there are some circumstances when communication between groups or individuals needs to be restricted.
A few examples would be:
- A financial advisor being restricted from sharing content with an investment banker division of the same company to prevent a conflict of interest.
- Ensuring that lawyers at the same firm that are representing opposing clients can’t connect through Teams.
- Keeping your R&D team siloed to maintain corporate security, and only allow them to communicate in Teams with the HR department.
- Ensuring that a client or vendor you invite to Teams as a guest user, can only connect with the specific department that invited them.
This type of restriction can be done using information barriers in Microsoft Teams.
An organization can restrict interactions between individuals and groups, such as:
- Seeing another user or group in Teams
- Screensharing
- Video conferencing
- Audio calls
Connect with Office 365 to Prevent Multiple File Versions
When two different people are working on the same file, then emailing it back and forth with updates, it can become a document mess.
You can end up with multiple versions of the same file, and if it’s a sensitive document, that means the content is more vulnerable.
Using Teams with Office 365 allows users to collaborate in real time on the same document. They can easily chat or video conference while doing this to keep each other informed about edits.
One main version of the file is kept in the company’s OneDrive or SharePoint storage. This ensures more efficient and secure document handling.
Keep Calls Accessible
When employees use their personal cell phones for business calls, this can lead to a couple of issues:
- Important conversations being lost
- Employees getting work calls on their person cell during off hours
Teams has a powerful VoIP feature that can ensure all calls are cataloged in a single place. Employees can easily use Teams from their smartphone, but the VoIP number is used rather than their personal mobile number.
Using Teams for calls ensures a company number is always being used to reach clients or vendors.
Optimize Your Cloud with Connect2Geek!
We can help you ensure that you’re getting the full benefits of your cloud subscriptions.
Schedule a free Office 365 consultation today! Call 208-468-4323 or reach out online.