There’s SO MUCH going on in Microsoft Teams as a product, how do you even start to talk about it?! In this blog series I’m going to attempt to work my way through the letters of the alphabet, talking about as many features as I can think of in turn.

If you’re new to Teams, hopefully this helps you find your way around. If you’re not new to Teams, maybe you’ll still get some new ideas. Here we go…

A is for…(Part 2) Apps

I know, I know – I’ve already done ‘A’ but there was another A that I didn’t want to miss! So this is A Part 2; Apps.

You might have noticed an Apps button on the left hand side of your Teams screen – you’ll only see this if Apps are enabled within your organisation. (Someone with Teams Admin access controls your access to Apps.)

If you click on it, you’ll see a whole host of apps that are available for use within Microsoft Teams:

As you can see there are multiple collections and categories of Apps, designed to help with all sorts of things from surveys to workflow management, to mind-mapping.

Some of the apps are Microsoft ones, like Forms, but lots of them are third-party apps; maybe you recognise some that you’re using already, like Trello.  

A word of caution if you’re going to have a browse around at the different apps on offer – do set yourself a timer or some kind of alarm to bring you back to reality because before you know it, it’s tea-time and instead of actually completing any work you’ll find you’ve just looked at lots of apps that might help you do some work. (Note to previous employers… I have never done this, obviously.)

Apps in Microsoft Teams are great because:

You can pin an app to a particular team and channel, or to a group chat. Do this by clicking the plus + button at the top of the channel or chat:

Then everyone in the channel or chat has access to the app as well, and it keeps everything neatly in teams without having to break out to different browsers etc.

For example, lets say that you are on a small team working on a Kanban board. If you pin your third-party Kanban board app to the channel or chat, everyone in the team has it right there to see and interact with it.

Or, if you need to send a survey to your org-wide Team, you can use a survey or polling app within the channel – reaching people where they are anyway (Teams) and getting the survey results right where you are (Teams!).

Also – there are SO MANY apps to choose from for all sorts of use cases. If you’re struggling with a process or a feature within teams, it’s worth checking the app store because there’s likely to be something that will help with anything from booking and tracking annual leave, to document e-signatures, to whole ticketing systems for support teams.

Apps in Microsoft Teams can be tricky because:

Sometimes for third-party apps you still need a separate login to use them. For example, if I wanted to share a Trello board with my Team to manage our workflow, all of my team members would still need to sign up for a Trello account to be able to use the Trello app within Teams. Worth considering if streamlining is the name of your game, and can be a bit of a governance headache.

Also – sometimes you need to pay for a subscription to use the third-party app, and that’s not always clear from the start.

If you missed last week’s A for Activity Feed – you can check it out here.

Next week will be B for Beyonce (just kidding, although I could write a whole blog about her). B will be for Backgrounds.

Have you got a favourite app that you use within Teams? Let me know!