Duke has offered productivity tools over the years, but never a fully integrated suite of programs designed to do it all. Until now …
Microsoft Teams is available for all Duke faculty, staff and students. It has great team and project management tools, all integrated with your Duke email and calendar. Interested?
Here’s what you need to know …
But first, here’s our Tech Tip of the Week –
Remember last week when you got an email from Pam Clark inviting you to a team lunch? Many of you were suspicious and you were right. That was a DHTS phishing exercise. Here’s how we did as a school:
| August | September | ||
| Click Rate: | 9.0% | 3.1% | (Lower is better) |
| Report Rate: | 19.2% | 19.7% | (Higher is better) |
We’re doing great at spotting phishing attempts – keep it up! Remember, when in doubt, don’t click!
October is cyber-security month – watch Tech Tuesday throughout the month for tech security tips!
So, what is MS Teams?
MS Teams is a collaboration tool that is fully integrated with your Duke Office 365 account. It’s designed to help teams work more efficiently. Here is a short list of the most popular features:
- File sharing
- Secure group chats
- Full integration with Office 365
- Your Duke email/calendar
- OneDrive
- Planner
- OneNote
- Securely share files with simultaneous editing (like Google Docs)
- Plus, for small groups (< 6), it’s an easy Zoom alternative.
If you’d like to learn more about what MS Teams offers, here’s a link to Duke’s application page.
Want to take a closer look?
Here’s how to give MS Teams a try …
- First, login to duke.edu using your NetID
- This opens your Duke Office 365 The opening screen will be your email account.
- Click the square made of nine dots in the upper left corner of the window (beside the word Outlook). This is the Duke Office 365 menu
- You’ll see the menu at the left. Select Teams.
- Next, you’ll see the familiar Office 365 interface with options to set up your own MS Teams team, review your activity, and other team-based options.
Take a look around. If you like MS Teams, there is an option to download the full application to your computer. That’s the easiest way to use it.
Once installed, check out the nav bar on the left for the tools that are pre-installed in MS Teams:
- Activity – this is the main page that shows all open team conversations in reverse date order. Click on a conversation to see the entire thread.
- Chat – similar to Jabber chat, use this to have private or group chats with other MS Teams
- Teams – select this option to view a tile for each team to which you belong.
- Assignments – useful for classes, this is where any assignments are listed.
- Calendar – the calendar option is fully integrated with your Duke calendar.
- Calls – useful to make video phone calls to any MS Teams
- Files – select this option to see your files – in MS Teams, downloaded and your complete OneDrive file storage.
The core MS Teams application is useful for team management, particularly now with your team scattered due to COVID restrictions in place. It can replace Zoom for team meetings and makes sharing documents and screens much easier during meetings – including an option that allows attendees to securely edit a document simultaneously. Lots of options for collaboration, both as a team and with individual team members.
If you’d like to learn more about how to use the core functionality of MS Teams, start here for some good resources. Fair warning, though. In order to be successful with MS Teams, you’ll need to devote some time in learning how to use it. Practice and use some of these training resources before writing it off as too complex!
Project Management with MS Teams
But wait … There’s more.
Scroll to the bottom of the left nav bar and click Apps. Here you will see a variety of applications available to MS Teams users to simplify workflows, share data and find new ways to work smarter together. Some of the key project management tools are:
- Planner – ideal tool for project management. Allows you to assign tasks and keep track of your team’s progress.
- Shifts – use this tool for creating and sharing work schedules for your team members.
- Forms – allows you to easily create surveys, quizzes and polls. NOTE: Not approved for sensitive data.
- Azure Boards – provides you a way to plan, track and discuss work across your teams.
- Flow – this app provides the ability to automate repetitive tasks, integrating with many of your favorite aps and services.
- Bookings – provides an innovative way to schedule meetings – great for office hours.
- MindMeister – useful for free-flow capture of ideas and project requirements.
- Smartsheet Integration – Use Smartsheet? Integrate with Teams as an add-in for your project management.
Each of these tools will enhance your DUSON project management. We recommend starting with Planner. To learn more about project management with MS Teams, login to Duke’s LinkedIn Learning (Duke’s free training platform), then do a search on “Microsoft Teams”. Start with Microsoft Teams Essential Training, then move to Managing Projects with Microsoft Teams. These are great, free training resources for MS Teams (and many other business & tech topics).
Extra Credit …
MS Teams is a feature rich tool provided at no charge to all Duke faculty, staff and students.
Have a student study group? Set up a team and see how easy it is to share ideas, simultaneously update a shared notes doc, or have a Teams meeting. Faculty group? Try Bookings to allow students to reserve your office hours or use Shifts to create work schedules for your research support. For staff, try using Planner to manage your projects or schedule a MindMeister brainstorming meeting.
As I mentioned earlier, you’ll need to take some time with the available training resources to get the most of MS Teams.
