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Microsoft Teams has emerged as one of the most successful collaborative platforms to have helped organizations survive the pandemic. The platform helped millions of users work remotely and several organizations across the world to operate virtually. 

MS Teams allows professionals to collaborate and communicate with their peers, whether working remotely or on-premise. Essentially, it is a virtual representation of your organization with a range of features that help you and your team streamline your business processes. 

Key Features Of Microsoft Teams

1. Seamless Communication Through Channels
   
   MS Teams Channels help users interact with their peers and team leaders on a centralized platform. They are communication boards for users where they can view or add new members to the channel with the click of a button.
   
   
2. Audio And Video Calls
   
   Microsoft Teams allows users to stay connected with their team members through audio and video calls. A single click allows users to make an individual or a group call while taking notes on the same platform. The collaborative platform also allows users to record the calls for reference purposes.
   
   
3. Online Meetings
   
   Working remotely is incomplete without regular online meetings. Whether professionals are working from their homes or the company needs to connect with overseas employees, online meetings bring everyone together. MS Teams allows users to conduct exclusive meetings by adding up to 10,000 people in one session. This feature comes in handy for conducting webinars or training sessions for a large audience.
   
   
4. Immersive Reader
   
   This Microsoft Teams feature provides users with an immersive reading experience. It facilitates seamless viewing, reading, hearing, and translating messages inside Microsoft Teams. The feature helps differently-abled users to have a smooth and efficient reading experience without facing any hassles.
   
   
5. Whiteboard
   
   This is a virtual representation of the physical whiteboard present in almost every meeting room. It allows users to explain their messages clearly and demonstrate plans and strategies visually.
   
   
6. Group Chat
   
   Group Chat allows users to interact with each other in real-time. This prevents professionals from creating a long thread of emails and allows them to de-clutter their inboxes.
   
   

Top Productivity Boosters For Microsoft Teams

Along with all the features and benefits offered by Microsoft Teams, users can install specific add-ons that help them leverage the functionality of the collaborative platform.

Here are some of the top productivity boosters for Microsoft Teams that should be implemented to make your work easier: 

1. Polly
   
   Polly is a simple add-on that allows Microsoft Teams users to create and send surveys in their respective channels or group chats. This helps users obtain valuable insights and opinions from their team members and analyze the same to derive meaningful conclusions.
   
   Once the questions are answered, and the response recorded, Polly shows the analytics of the surveys in real-time. To start using Polly, all you need to do is install Polly for MS Teams and add “@polly” in your channel or group chat. Along with its primary offerings, Polly provides users with advanced features like anonymity, displaying/hiding results, poll scheduling, and the option of casting multiple votes.
   
   
2. Trello
   
   Trello is a tool that helps users manage their projects and keep track of the same in real-time. It is a popular project management tool that can be added to Microsoft Teams for enhancing productivity. Trello provides users with “tasks”, “boards”, and “lists” to keep track of specific projects undertaken by the organization.
   
   By installing this add-on for MS Teams, users can view their Trello boards directly from their Teams accounts. It also allows users to view their tasks, edit them, view notifications, and discuss the tasks with their team members. This prevents them from switching between two platforms while working, helping users save valuable time and effort.
   
   
3. Karma
   
   As the name rightly suggests, Karma is a simple tool to reward the positive behavior of your employees. In simple words, it is a tool that allows employees, managers, and team leaders to say “kudos!” to their team members for their productive and constructive behavior.
   
   Through Karma, MS Teams users can give each other Karma points and go up in the leaderboards. The leaderboards show users with their respective Karma points, thereby denoting their workplace behavior. With Karma, you can reinforce positive work ethics in your team members and persuade them to behave in a cordial manner. The tool also allows managers to create real-life perks and awards for users ranking high on the leaderboards.
   
   
4. Wiki
   
   This is a tool that is integrated with Microsoft Teams by default. It allows users to create a shared knowledge repository. This repository can be used for creating notes and referring to learning materials as and when required. Wiki serves as an essential tool when you need your employees to get trained in specific skills and provide them with dedicated training resources. Wiki for Microsoft Teams allows you to create and store-specific guidelines and rules for all your employees to follow. Moreover, it helps you in adding FAQs for the resources stored in the repository for reference purposes.
   
   
5. Rezolve.ai
   
   Rezolve.ai is an AI service desk that can be integrated with Microsoft Teams. It makes use of AI chatbots for providing personalized support to your employees. It provides you with a single unified platform that can be used as an IT service desk and an HR help desk.
   
   As an automated HR help desk, Rezolve.ai allows your HR managers to keep track of the activities undertaken by your employees and ensure their well-being. It helps you onboard remote employees, by providing them with all relevant resources via personalized emails. The modern HR help desk can also be used for getting your employees trained through microlearning, seamless harassment reporting, conveying employee benefits, and providing integrated HR support to your employees.
   
   Rezolve.ai allows you to automate the primary IT support provided to your employees via chatbots as an IT service desk. Whenever your employees ask questions or raise issues, these chatbots understand the context, scan your knowledge base, and return with a personalized solution. Moreover, the automated IT support desk can automate the ticketing system, relieving your employees from all the trouble.
   
   
6. AttendanceBot
   
   As the name suggests, AttendanceBot is a simple tool to track your employees’ attendance on Microsoft Teams. It provides users with an easy clock-in and clock-out function that helps them monitor the hours of work done by an employee and mark their attendance. With AttendanceBot, you can keep track of paid leaves, paid time off, vacations, sick days, remote working hours, and employee shifts. The tool helps users manage their work hours through dedicated timesheets. These timesheets can be exported from within the MS Teams application for ease of operation.
   
   To use the time management tool, all you need to do is mention “@attendancebot” in your messages along with specific keywords as required. The bot will then send your request, obtain approval, and immediately make relevant changes in your calendar.
   
   
7. Mural
   
   Mural is a tool that facilitates visual collaboration between remote employees. It allows users to create digital diagrams, share them with their peers, and discuss them with seamless real-time collaboration. When a user invites you for visual collaboration through Mural, the tool will send you a private message on MS Teams with a link. You can use the link to collaborate with the concerned users and invite more users by sharing the link.
   
   
8. SoapBox
   
   SoapBox is a tool that helps you leverage your meetings on Microsoft Teams. It helps users track the progress of a meeting and make sure that everyone is on the same page. The tool helps users add and modify plans to be discussed in a meeting and check them off as they are dealt with in real-time. Also, SoapBox encourages you to focus on the core agenda of your meeting and provides you with suggestions for topics that can be discussed in the concerned meeting.
   
   
9. Adobe Creative Cloud
   
   Adobe Creative Cloud is one of the most trusted tools for designers to share and collaborate visually using graphic resources. This tool allows MS Teams Users to co-share graphic assets, maintain consistency in designs, and add comments on the designs shared by other users.
   
   With Adobe Creative Cloud, users can access all graphical assets linked to their Adobe ID from their respective Microsoft Teams accounts. This makes it easier for users (especially designers) to collaborate with their team members without switching platforms.
   
   Moreover, integrating Adobe Creative Cloud with MS Teams helps users keep track of their actions on the graphic designing tool and obtain notifications on their MS Teams accounts in real-time.
   
   

The Final Word 

These were some of the most beneficial and vital productivity boosters that can be added to Microsoft Teams to boost your productivity. Based on the tasks you want to focus on, the objectives you want to achieve, and the users who need them, you can choose from a range of different add-ons and tools to make your MS Teams experience even better!