Turbocharging Teams - Kevin Kieller and Dino Caputo

Insights from Ignite 2020: Turbocharging Teams - Episode 8

25 Sep 2020
0

By Kevin Kieller and Dino Caputo

Turbocharging Teams focuses on tips and tricks to help you get the most out of using Microsoft Teams. In this episode of Turbocharging Teams we discuss some of the exciting Teams announcements from Ignite 2020 including Productivity Score, Personal Insights, Manager Insights, Leader Insights, Approvals, Breakout rooms, Meeting Recap and new and improved calling experience.

 

 

Microsoft Team transcript Microsoft Stream Generated Automatic Transcript

 

Welcome to this episode of Turbocharging Teams (with Kevin Kieller

And Dino Caputo). In this episode, we're going to talk about some of the newly

released or announced Teams features from Microsoft ignite, and I'm

going to say that this is going to be our most “insightful”

episode ever because I'm going to talk about some of the new

insight features that have been talked about. There's a

number of insights that are announced four teams and Office 365.

The first. I want to talk about is called the productivity score.

This has been in private preview for awhile. It goes GA in October and

up on the upper right. This kind of Microsoft's catch phrase. You

know, the idea is that the visibility to understand your

organization. Plus these reports. Insights help you can

identify some areas for improvement and therefore take

action. So near #1 you can see that it should show up.

I'm in your tenant when well for everybody, hopefully in October.

And the productivity score gives you some indication it's similar

to the security secure score which talked about security and

compliance. This looks at a number of different areas, and

I'm not going to do a deep dive here. I just wanted you to know

it's available and let me introduce a few of the things

that it speaks to, so it gives you some insights into meetings

and then some kind of ideas around best practices.

Now you know with all of these analytics insights, you have to kind of understand what

what, in this case Microsoft thinks is the best practice, you

know. So doing screen shares and turning on video is something

that you know they or their belief. Or sometimes they have

research backed suggestions.. They think that that makes the

meeting more engaging. So in this case it's saying.

Videos used in 35% of the meetings and you get graphs

overtime to show you what you're doing right according to best

practices so you can take a quick look at some of those

things and then as well outside of behavioral things.

One of the things that I like is that productivity score also looks at

some of the what they call the technology experience. If you

turn on the end point and endpoint manager, you get some

endpoint Analytics, but even without that you get some.

Comments on network connectivity that Gray bar represents the

recommended where you should be and you can see fluctuations

overtime and then in terms of app health that's really too,

you know, do your users and your users devices. Do they update on

one of the recommended update channels. So do they get regular

updates to the apps? Which is important both for features but

also for security. So that's productivity score insights.

The other thing that Microsoft announced at Microsoft ignite is

that they're bringing insights into teams, and I'm going to

talk about so there's some personal insights and manager

insights, and some leader insights, so this is powered by

my Analytics. You may be getting like a my analytics email and

giving you some tips around your

behavior. This now will be surfaced into teams and it does

things like #1 identify meeting conflicts an allow you to just

with one Button reschedule. I'm remind you of commitments, so

this is these are some of the. Cortana AI. So to look at your

emails and if I say Hey Dino,. I'll send you that tomorrow.

Kind of said. Just remind you hey, you made what looks like a

commitment and you can click done or not and then it also.

Prompts you to schedule focus time. Microsoft considers focus

time to be 2 hour blocks of time where you can kind of work on

something, so those are personal insights and those are coming to

teams, but you know, I think more exciting is like things

like manager insights.

So in this case you see for instance,

maybe I'm not being a good manager, so number wouldn't buy

number one. It says that 30% of.

Let's say my team has less than 15 minutes of one on one

time with managers each week, and you know if I look at my

team and where #2 it's like I am bad compared to other teams

in the organization because my team only expends you know .7

hours, whereas teams like mine and Microsoft is saying that

it's going to aggregate in a privacy neutral way.

Their teams, both statistics from inside your organization,

but also from outside your organization, but in the same

industry with the same kind of composition. Not sure how

they're going to do it, but it sounds awesome. And then with

number 3 you know we provides not only the insights, but then

you know the recommended action an other areas of insights for

managers include things like the amount of time your team is

spending an after hours collaboration. Do they have

focused? I'm meeting effectiveness, cross company

connections. Are you

collaborating widely?

In the last area of insights that

Microsoft is bringing to teams is what they call leader

insight. So these are for people who manage teams, teams of

teams, and really it's designed to help answer questions like

are your employees overall at risk for burnout, or people

maintaining strong internal connections and our

relationships with customers being maintained. So certainly

things that leaders are

interested in. As we move into more of a distributed work

environment, there's a lot of information, but once again, we

wanted to make you aware that this is coming, so you can kind

of go to do your homework.

The last thing that's pretty interesting is this concept of a virtual commute

and it's like I think one of the benefits for working from home as people

don't have to commute. So why would you want to virtual

commute? Some research that. Microsoft did suggested that

having an end of day experience at the beginning of day

experience. To transition from kind of home, focus to to work.

Focus was actually helpful and people were missing that. So

where the red A is? You see this concept of a virtual commute.

You can have different types of activities to kind of close out

your day. So number one, some suggestions that maybe you

praise your team. Do you know you're doing a fantastic job

there? You go then in #2 if

there's. Some one on ones or other activities that you

haven't undertaken the suggestion there to do that,

something that they're calling reflection, which is to think

about your day and just to record. OK, well, you know how

did you feel that it went and they're talking about harvesting

some of those emotional trends to see both you personally, but

also then an aggregate, you know, be aware of maybe some

some issues that that.

You know people are having and. Lastly through a new partnership

with headspace, the details of which is not exactly 100% clear,

but headspace is one of the leading meditation apps, and so

they're building that in so that you can, as opposed to drive.

Maybe you draw would drive home or whatever. However, take

transit and listen to a podcast or music. I'm here. You can do a

short kind of meditation as part of your winding down, so that's

the insights and.

End of day experience coming to teams you know.

But when and how do you get some of this goodness? Here's road

map and number of these more basic things are starting to roll out

in October, so pretty soon and then some of the things like all

the components of the virtual commute. I would say you know

these are coming, but they are more some some aspirational and

one thing to note is that while the the individual insights

are available. The basically the manager, so the team and leader

insights do require that your workplace analytics customer and

that ends up being an add-on license. That list price is $6

per user per month, but exciting things in the whole kind of

Wellness area that Microsoft announced at ignite. And with

that Dino over to you.

Thanks Kevin, that was very insightful.

So I'm going to just talk a little bit more about like

what's new in the actual teams client. I mean, there was a sort

of a bunch of different announcements that you can key,

and I think there was at least a dozen areas where Microsoft's

going to be adding new functionality to teams client.

So I'm gonna start off with approvals when this will be

generally available in October, so this would be this scenario

where you. Looking to do a simple approval flow process.

You might have an expense to submit to your manager, or

perhaps you're working on a document that you would like to

have approval before you proceed with publishing it, for example.

So approvals is us, new functionality is coming out and

what I'm showing here is just buy at mentioning the approvals

bot you can bring up the approvals app and I'm doing it

here in line.

In a channel conversation, so. I'm just asking approvals to

create and approvals. In this case I'm asking Kevin do approve

the final deck for turbocharging teams episode. So I've created a

doc. I've attached it into this approval. Kevin then gets a

notification and can either approve or reject it so you know

they've made it really simple to do. These simple approval flows

and I think it's going to be quite useful for a lot of people

just to be able to move things around. Previously you would

have had a props.

Gone with the third party app.. Maybe used outlook to move

documents back and forth. I think this makes it a little

bit simpler and then you can see all of your approvals all

within your activity feed, which is quite convenient.

Next up, we're going to be talking about breakout rooms,

which again coming in October.. This was another sort of well

thought out, well talked about concept and idea. A lot of

people. I think it was one of the number one items and user

forums for teams and this again is the concept of you're in a

meeting and then within that meeting you often need to be

able to break out into small groups to work on different

tasks. So that was a concept that was familiar to you.

When you were an actual live meetings when you were in a room

with other people and you might go off and break away and work

on some things. So the notion of virtually be able to do that was

something well sought after and

the teams space. So Microsoft is introducing breakout rooms. You

can see here there's a meeting taking place, the author or the

meeting organizers created four different breakout rooms for

people to go in, and they pretty big. They pre assign the users

to be into those rooms. So then the users within that meeting we

just enter into that meeting breakout room work on their

content. Maybe they're whiteboarding, maybe they're

working on a document and then the organizer can bring them all

back into the main meeting and

all of their. Content is captured and Review Rible.

In the body of the main meeting as well so.

This is something I look forward to looking at and testing a lot

and a lot of my customers are asking for this feature so it'll

be exciting to see it in action.

Well, and this is one thing that you know already exists in

zoom, so I think a perfect example of how you know. I

think Microsoft is being very responsive, but it's good for

everybody that there are some competing prod 100%. Yeah Yep,

for sure it's healthy competition.

Next up also coming later this year, is the meeting recap

functionality and so this is an interesting idea, because often

you'll have a meeting and there's documents taken. Maybe

if there was some notes transcription was on, there was

recorded and it, even though teams makes it a lot better than

say that Skype for business days, it was still difficult

sometimes to find content all in one place so.

What they're doing here is being able to take all that

content and leave it in the meeting, so you can just

quickly go back to the meeting chat and find it all in the

details tab. So here you can see the details tab. You can

access the recording, the meeting transcript, any notes

that were taken from that meeting.

There was a deck, a PowerPoint deck that was presented so you

can see what the original meeting details were below and

who actually accepted the meeting and who was in the

meeting. Who declined it, and then the optional people, what

rooms the meeting was in so.

I like this a lot because it makes it super simple for you to

go and find all your contact again. Content details for any

meetings. I believe the Recaps also going to be available

through the outlook app as well, so if you are in your calendar

view and you want to be able to see this this detail, they're

going to be able to expose it that way as well, so that's

going to be interesting to see

so. I really like this feature. Kevin. I don't know your

thoughts on it, but I think I think it will just make it much

simpler for everyone to find the details of the medium. Make

things a little bit more alot.. Quite a quite a bit more

efficient in terms of tasks that may have come out of a meeting

and. Just saving saving time throughout your day.

Yeah no, no I I think it is too.. I mean this is. This is the kind

of the broader aspirational goals. You know Microsoft talks

about. You know, helping people before meetings and during the

meeting and then now this after the meeting and you know. And

then with that automatic transcription and you know I

mean like it's a little bit of pie in the Sky. But some of that

like Jeep 3 AI model. It's like being, you know, having similar

to how Cortana looks at your emails and provides those

insights. I talked about saying, hey, it looks like you promised

to get Dino something by the end of the week or.

However, you know, pointing that too, then this the transcription

and you see I mean Microsoft is.. You know, maybe people think

it's slow, but it's certainly month over month or bringing all

these pieces together. You know, then when you have transcription

with speaker Attribution, you know who said what and you can

use some AI to pull that out and automatically do stuff. And you

know that's so, no. I think that this is movement and you know,

in a necessary direction,

especially because. A lot of those insights are showing the

people are spending more time in meetings. So what you need

is you don't wanna take them.. You have more meetings and more

time with more time finding stuff. But yeah, taking the

notes or you know I know we took notes. I don't know where

they are. I know something shared, I promise. Do you know

a lot of things? And how question is going to just? So

now there's certainly a failing you didn't do anything you said

you're going to know so I think yeah, absolutely.

It's it's exciting and I hope to see all these things. I hope

it's coming this year, Yep.

Will still keep keep tabs on

him. And last up for me.

The newly redesigned calling up again, coming later this year,

and this is a complete redesign of the calling app, which

basically simplifies things that makes it easier for you to see

all your. Your calls your missed calls and incoming calls. Your

voice mails all on a single screen like that. They have the

device controls in the lower left, so I can quickly forward

calls if I need to. Or I can change devices before had a

fumble around in the gear menu to get to that item. I have some

of my speed dials on the right hand rail if I wanted to I could

click on voice mails and view all my voicemails all in one

spot. So that's kind of nice. I like what they're doing here.

I like that I can access my. Contacts so it's a really. I

think a nice improvement and once it hits the mainstream,

I believe people will agree that it's it's a nice

refresh to the calling app.

Yeah, because it was kind of wonky before where voicemail is

like I missed the call, but then define the voicemail. I gotta go

to another tab and find other tablet list right? So yeah, yeah

this is this is neat and I think this shows off like you know I

was thinking what that approvals bought and then this kind of

calling app. I mean you can pin any app to the to the left rail.

I mean it really kind of shows off the modularity of teams

because although they are like even Microsoft is doing this so

it's a first party extension which is great but.

You know, increasingly third party can do things. Oh

absolutely, you know, you know an extended in a similar way, so

I think that modularity is starting to pay dividends.

And with that, that brings us to the end of this episode of

turbocharging teams, thanks for tuning in and.

Please keep the feedback coming in.

You can reach us at at Dino Caputo or at KKieller on Twitter, and we hope to hear from you.

And until then, we'll talk to you in the next episode. See you later. Bye bye.

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