Microsoft Teams App Collection in Microsoft Teams
By | Published On: 2 September 2021 |

To wrap up our insight into Microsoft Teams apps series (Click here to see part 1 and part 2), this article shines the spotlight our favourite apps for helping teams stay focused.

With so much going on in the world at the moment, keeping focus on tasks can be hard. These Microsoft Teams apps help us to prioritise and work out what’s important.

And remember to visit the Microsoft Teams Apps section to discover more – new apps are being added all the time!

App 1: Checklist 

Microsoft Teams Apps: Checklist

Checklists are helpful for people in nearly every role and industry to keep focused, organised and on track. Let’s face it, there is nothing more satisfying than checking off a task when it’s complete!

While you can create a checklist by using Trello, Asana or Microsoft Tasks but, as with most things in life, it’s often the simplest solution that makes the biggest impact. And it doesn’t get any simpler than the Teams Checklist app.

Checklist is an app that enables you to collaborate with your team by creating a shared checklist in a Teams chat or channel. As many as 100 items can be added to a checklist. As people in your group or channel mark items as completed, you will see updates on the checklist card, including the time of completion.

On a day-to-day basis, the Checklist app is a sure-fire way to keep you focused on what needs to be done, and keep you working towards getting that next task ticked off.

App 2: Goal Tracker

Microsoft Teams Apps: Goal Tracker

We all know the importance of setting goals. They hold us accountable, tell us what we want to achieve, and help move us forward. Although many of us are good at setting goals, we’re guilty of failing to set deadlines and track our progress towards achieving them.

That’s where the Goal Tracker app comes in. As a team member, you can use the app to set, track and update personal goals against a start and finish date. You can also align personal goals to team goals, and save Teams chat messages, such as praises received for your work, as notes. These notes can be used to record progress or milestones, and are useful to support one-to-ones and performance reviews.

As a team member, you also receive timely reminders and a progress summary to help remain focused and stay on track.

As a manager, you can create your personal and team’s goals and view the completion status. Team goal progress is automatically updated according to the updates made to personal goals by your team members. The app also notifies your entire team to update progress as per the frequency selected, and maintains the history of your goals up to one year.

App 3: Scrums for Channels

Microsoft Teams Apps: Scrums for Channels

If you’re not familiar with the term Scrum in the workplace, it’s a common project management framework used by many organisations. The framework is designed to maximise a team’s ability to deliver quickly, respond to emerging requirements, and adapt to changes in market conditions.

A key factor towards achieving what a Scrum project sets out to do is holding a Daily Scrum/ Stand-up meeting. This is a 15-minute daily meeting where each Scrum Team member shares what they worked on the previous day, will work on that day, and identify any blockers to progress.

If your organisation follows the Scrum framework, then the Scrums for Channels app is for you. It’s a scrum assistant app that enables all members added to a Scrum Team to easily participate in daily scrum meetings within a Teams channel. The app is ideal for teams that have members participating remotely from different locations and time zones.

The app automatically starts the scrum meeting at the specified time. A card is then posted on the channel with buttons to share status updates, flag blockers, and view details entered by other scrum team members. The card also displays the status of the scrum (active or closed), the number of participants who have contributed to the scrum or have marked their status as blocked.

The daily reinforcement of sharing individual updates, plans and blockers keeps everyone focused on the team’s overall contribution.

App 4: Scrums for Group Chat

Microsoft Teams Apps: Scrum for Group Chat

If you need to conduct a scrum meeting in a Teams group chat instead of a channel, then the Scrums for Group Chat app is for you.

Like Scrums for Channels, it’s a simple scrum assistant app that allows all members of the group chat to contribute to the scrum, by sharing their daily updates and viewing the updates made by others.

The difference from Scrums for Channels is that it enables group chat members to run asynchronous daily scrum meetings. This means information can be shared without having to receive an immediate response, so can be useful for people who are not working in the same time zone or geography.

If you want to know more about how Microsoft 365 tools can help you stay focused, please contact us so we can talk you through our solutions.

Changing Social is a certified Microsoft Adoption and Change Management Partner. We specialise in Microsoft Adoption and Change to help our clients adopt Microsoft 365 in days, not months. If you would like to adopt Microsoft 365 in your organisation and find out more about our services, including Microsoft 365 training, please contact us via the form below or email us at [email protected]

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