1,001 Business Problems Solved with Microsoft Teams

Well-seasoned Teams users and site owners likely already know the value of tabs in channels because tabs have been around since Teams was released in 2017. We discovered in a recent workshop however, that the value isn't always obvious to newcomers. In this episode, Annie Rynd explains how tabs can simplify your employees' computing work while simultaneously helping your unique business processes. For more resources and our free, 30-minute Teams Quick Start video course, visit countyquest.com

SharePoint Lists have been around for more than twenty years, but now there is the Microsoft Lists app and newcomers are often confused. Perhaps you've learned what Lists can do for your business, but just getting started is confusing. In today's episode, you'll learn the difference and which to use when. If you're wondering why in the world you'd even use Lists in your business, you may want to listen to two of our most popular episodes - 56 & 57 - prior to listening to this one. As always, you can find more resources and even get help if you need it, over at countyquest.com.

You know that punch-in-the-gut feeling you get when you realize your sensitive document has been accidentally made available to the wrong employees? How about that seemingly constant toil that occurs when employees legitimately need access to documents? While the permissions setting features in Teams and SharePoint are robust, most employees do other work for their roles and permissions setting is not their expertise. Today's episode tells you how to not only ensure the correct people always have access while the rest are denied entry, it also tells you how to eliminate that churn you experience when somebody needs access legitimately. Using these best practices, you'll eliminate much of the work involved with permissions. If you need hands-on assistance, be sure to sign up for a complimentary one-hour consultation at countyquest.com

After last week's Part One episode, you know how to strategically store your policies and procedures in a way that protects them from unintended edits and deletions, but still keeps them in front of employees. In this Part Two episode, Annie tells you how to eliminate most of the work it takes to manage those documents without having dozens of outdated revisions cluttering your space. She also tells you how to eliminate the tedious work of saving them as PDFs and then moving them from the draft location to the final location. This is an episode you'll want to pass along to your HR department or other employee charged with maintaining policies and procedures. To learn more, go to www.countyquest.com  

Teams is a great method to save and share workgroup files, but what about policies and procedures? Well, not so much...not out-of-the-box, anyway. Teams sites are designed to give all team members equal access for everything contained within, so that isn't a good solution for policies and procedures because you don't want everyone on the team being able to edit and delete such important documents. Never fear, because in this episode, you'll learn how to quickly ensure these documents are protected from undesired changes and deletions while also putting them right in front of employees where they work every day.

We usually give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt when they change things up on us. Even though change is never fun, we usually end up liking their changes once we get used to them. This latest change has us more than scratching our heads, however. Millions of Teams users are being blindsided by their Teams buttons disappearing from the left app panel in the Teams interface. In today's episode, Annie tells you how to get it back. You'll want to share this episode with other business acquaintances who rely on Teams to run an effective business!

If your Teams site is more than a few months old, you likely still have a channel named "General." If you leverage channels, as you should, this channel may serve no obvious purpose yet. Or, if you don't leverage channels, this channel may have become a dumping ground for everything. Regardless, the General channel has been a source of clutter and uncertainty for a lot of Teams users and site owners. In this episode, Annie Rynd tells you a great best practice that gives the General channel a purpose. And, if your Teams site is only a couple months old and you do not have a General channel, you'll probably want to build one after listening to this best practice. Want to learn more about Teams and how to improve your business? Go to teamsquickstart.com for more resources.

You paid an excellent trainer to give your employees Teams training. Perhaps you gave them all the best online Teams courses. But...Teams still hasn't taken hold and the results are underwhelming. You're very disappointed. Maybe Teams isn't all it's cracked up to be. The truth of the matter is that the problem is not the quality of the training, nor is it that your employees just don't get it. There are three common causes for the failure of Teams training to deliver the results you're wanting and in this six-minute episode, host Annie Rynd tells you what those root causes are and how to avoid them (or recover if you've already been down that road). Register for our free, 30-minute Teams Quick Start training course!

What if you have successfully moved your employees to Teams, getting them to always send Teams chat messages and channel posts rather than emails, but their customers, vendors, and other external people continue using email? Isn't that confusing? Well, not really. In today's episode, Annie explains why and also tells you how to begin converting your external contacts to also move to Teams if they're open to it. At County Quest Consulting, we always communicate with our clients via Teams rather than email, and it saves everyone involved a lot of clutter and work.

SharePoint Lists are our favorite Microsoft 365 app to add to Microsoft Teams. As a business owner or leader, you'll love how Lists can streamline and standardize many things you currently keep in spreadsheets or email. From building your own CRM to tracking the status of complex projects or office processes, there is no doubt you'll find many efficient uses for Lists around your business.