Success story
“Because of Microsoft Teams we now have a community,” Careers Manager Julieanne O’Hara says. Julieanne and her team have discovered that Teams is a people-oriented app.
Julieanne noticed that often meetings would end when the conversation was still in full swing, but there wasn’t a space where those who wanted to share information, or simply talk more, could go. ”We had email lists that were out of date,” she says, “no one really knew who was on the email list. It wasn’t a community.” Now, with Teams, Julieanne has found that “most days, people are talking to each other.”
This increased interaction has been helped along by one of Teams’ key features: the @Who bot. This bot searches the employee directory and pulls up information on staff members to answer questions like who they are and who they work with. Putting a face (and a title) to a name can help people feel more confident with who they are talking to.
Julieanne explains that the @Who bot can do much more than that. “I asked ‘who knows about internships’ and the right people came up,” she says. For those who have been using Teams for a while, or are members of lots of Teams and chats, the @Who bot can also search your Teams history and remind you who you have spoken to about a particular topic – no need to dig through your chat history manually!
Teams puts you in touch with the people you work with, and helps keep you all on the same page. Julieanne agrees enthusiastically that Teams forms part of the UTS strategy to streamline the complex technological terrain of the university. “It’s been really successful,” she adds, “it fits our needs.”
Tips & tricks
- Planner – Overwhelmed by Planner tasks? Want to check what’s due next, or only see the tasks that have the same label? Just use the filter feature! Click ‘filter’ in the top right corner, next to the Planner member icons to access this feature. The filter works by due date, label, assignment, bucket, and keyword.
- Sway – Want to give your Sway presentation some extra colour, but don’t know what photos are ok to use? Sway automatically searches platforms like Flickr for photos with the creative commons tag. It also generates a link back to the original artist so you can respect copyright and still get those stunning pictures for your Sway!
- Teams – Not getting any interaction on your post in Teams? Remember to tag people so they get a notification and can see your post right away – otherwise they might miss it! You can tag a specific person by typing @ and their name, or tag the whole Teams by typing @ and the Teams name. Thanks to Julieanne for this tip!
Want to be featured in the next success story? Discovered a cool O365 tip or trick you want to share in an upcoming newsletter? Email David.Herbert@uts.edu.au!
Want more success stories, tips and tricks? Check out the Microsoft Office 365 Newsletter archive.
Training sessions
- Online Training – There’s plenty of training material available from Microsoft or Lynda.com on how best to use O365 apps. Check out this short article about what the @Who bot can (and can’t) do to get started.
- Face to face training - Prefer face to face training? We run O365 training sessions. If you’re interested in attending a session, please email David.Herbert@uts.edu.au.
What’s new?
Office 365 is constantly being updated with new features to increase its functionality, making it easier to collaborate between apps and between people. Have you heard about this new feature?
Collaborating has never been easier! If you’re collaborating on documents in popular apps like Word and Excel, you can now chat directly in the app. No more switching between windows or tabs!
But be careful! These in-app chat transcripts are not saved! If you close the document, your chat is gone for good. That means this feature is best for quick collaboration only. Use comments for long-term collaboration, or jump into Teams if you want an app that will save your collaboration chat transcripts. Learn more here.