Microsoft Teams is a workplace collaboration platform that integrates with a company's Office 365 subscription productivity suite, including Office and Skype, and extensions that integrate with third-party products.
While there are over two billion frontline workers globally, segment of workers with less attention than knowledge workers, with access to digital tools that support workplace communications, according to Microsoft.
The company in a bid to attract these segment of workers has added a bevy of features to the Teams collaboration tool, and also to win over the so-called “first-line” staffers such as healthcare and service workers.
Among the new features to the Teams app, are: the ability to record and share audio messages, coupled with location sharing and camera module for image annotation; additionally, there is the integration with third-party scheduling apps and employee “praise” tool.
Also, the mobile app is customizable with role-based templates, which IT admins can enable to restrict functions such as calling or private chats, and the workers can equally customize the app with the ability to pin frequently used modules to the navigation bar.
The integration with workforce management systems builds on the Shifts feature, a lightweight schedule management in Teams announced at the company's Ignite in September. Albeit, the API for Shifts connects Teams with enterprise scheduling systems like Kronos, enabling information around attendance or payroll and benefits to be viewed within the app.
All the features are available to Teams users, in all SKUs, with the exception of Teams Free, and the new “praise” tool will allow managers to recognize the exceptional jobs carried out by staffers, and perhaps serve as factor to induce high rates of staff churn out.
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