“We’re figuring out how technology will be able to help us with the pain points in our work,” Steven Sommer, Digital and Social Media Officer for FEIT, explains. “Rather than spending an hour on a repetitive task, why don’t I spend some time thinking about how I can make it easier in the future.”
Steven noticed a common pain point: managing requests for access to Social Studio, the University’s new Salesforce platform for managing UTS social media channels (Learn about social media at UTS). Steven is one of five Social Studio super users and he wanted a way to “work together and collaborate” with the other super users “without having to rely on email. We wanted to be able to see the requests, action those tasks, and keep a track record all in one place.”
Steven solved the problem using Forms, Flow, and Teams—three Office 365 apps. The requestee fills out a Form, which triggers Flow to collect the information and push it to Teams, along with a button that links directly to Social Studio so that the super users can create a new profile. “Everyone has access to the record at the same time,” Steven explains, and because it’s automated the record is always up to date.
Importantly, the Flow that Steven has built includes some innovative security features that ensure only the correct people are able to gain access to Social Studio. Before the data from Forms is pushed to Teams, Flow “parses” the information and checks the identity of the requestee against the staff database. Flow benefits from Microsoft’s agile product development and can cope with increasingly complex tasks.
Steven is hopeful that this solution can be expanded to other areas. “We’re looking at doing something similar for things like budget requests within the team. It can be used for anything, really. The possibilities are huge.”
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!
Tips and tricks
Planner – Do you have a lot of recurring tasks? It’s a pain to have to re-enter all the details into your to-do list. Thankfully, Planner has you covered. You can copy a task within your Planner board. You can even copy a task from one Planner board to another. Learn more about this handy feature here.
Word – Did you know you can edit a PDF in Word? Word can copy a PDF file (so you still retain the original PDF) and convert it into a editable word document. Watch this short video to learn how.
Teams – Sick of playing email tennis? Want to move the discussion to Teams? Good news, you can forward emails to Teams and continue the conversation there. You can forward attachments, too. Click here to learn more.
Want more tips and tricks? Check out the newsletter archive here.
Training
Online training – There’s plenty of training material available from Microsoft or Lynda.com on how best to use O365 apps. Check out this video on how Flow can help manage approvals:
Face to face training – Prefer face to face training? There’s an upcoming session on November 20 at 3pm. To register, or to request a training session on Teams, Planner, OneDrive, or all three, 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?
You can share a window, presentation, or your whole desktop with another Teams user. In chat, click on the video call icon in the top right corner. Once the call has started, an icon to share screens will appear.
Soon you will be able to share your screen without having to start a video chat. Microsoft have recently announced that this feature is complete and, once testing has finished, it will be rolled out to Teams users worldwide.