1,001 Business Problems Solved with Microsoft Teams

So many organizations are not impressed with Teams chat and that's unfortunate. At the same time they claim to be overwhelmed by their email burden, they can't see the forest for the trees when trying to make the switch to Teams chat. When a workgroup effectively transitions fully to Teams chat and channel posts, nobody ever wants to return to the old ways. In this episode, Annie makes inarguable...

Finding repetitive work and automating it is perhaps the simplest way to explain low-hanging fruit. In this episode, Annie tells you one of the easiest things to improve and automate - meeting preparation. This is a short episode that is sure to be useful to nearly all organizations!

Today's low-hanging fruit episode is all about managing workgroup tasks. If you feel as though your workgroups don't have enough accountability for completing tasks, or if you don't think your workgroups' tasks are accessible enough (buried in separate files) this one is for you.  

The new year brings a Teams success revelation because of a LinkedIn comment made by everyone's favorite business consultant, Alan Weiss. This comment was so eureka (is eureka an adjective?) that we've even added a new fourth step to our long-standing Teams success formula. What is that revelation? It's simple, you can do it with little added personal investment, and it will transform your collabo...

In Part 4 of the Low-Hanging Fruit series, Annie tells you about one of our favorite low-hanging fruits - tracking spreadsheets. If you're like most businesses, you have many tracking spreadsheets, several of which suffer from clunkiness and errors caused by multiple employees using them. Tune in to this episode to learn how to bring those 1900s-era spreadsheets into this century and streamline on...

One of the first things you should look for when seeking low-hanging fruit in your business is third party apps. Many businesses are paying for duplicate technology. In other words, they're paying for third party apps such as Zoom or Calendly when they're already paying for Microsoft 365, which has the same functionality. In today's bonus episode, Annie gives you several ideas on how you can elimi...

In this second installment of the Low Hanging Fruit series, hostess Annie tells you one of the best places to look for opportunities in your business. There are huge low hanging fruits in every email inbox in your company. Streamlining these emails will save your company hours upon hours during the year. Don't miss this one!

Most businesses don't leverage Teams and Microsoft 365 strategically, or even tactically, because they see it as a tool for video meetings and instant messaging only. Boy, are they missing the boat! The root cause is business leaders - executives, owners, and managers - don't lead the charge. Implementation is left to the IT folks while the leaders busy themselves elsewhere. This is the first in a...

Perhaps you want to implement some, or all of the suggestions offered weekly on this podcast but just can't find the time or resources to implement them. The solutions sound great, but you just can't make it happen. The facilitated OMG System will help your small business or department achieve world-class operations and results within 60 days without a lot of time investment. If you have a larger...

Computers were supposed to make our lives easier, but when we click through shared drives, top level folders, secondary folders, and then scan file names, it doesn't seem like our lives are easier. In today's episode, Annie tells you why navigating to information is so old-fashioned and how to use the ultra-powerful Teams search engine to make the computer do the work for you.

Modern cell phones are modern-day marvels, but placing and receiving phone calls is a clunky way to communicate when employees are knee deep in their work. Today, Annie tells about the Microsoft Walkie-Talkie app that is included in your Microsoft 365 licensing. It is light-years better than the walkie-talkies of old and since it's included in your licenses already, it's obviously much cheaper tha...

We've learned that when Microsoft changes something in Teams, or any other app for that matter, we usually end up loving the change or at least understanding why they did it. This latest change has us scratching our heads, and if you are strategically using Teams, you'll want to go right in and change the default setting back to the way it used to be. We think Microsoft messed up on this one!

You've streamlined your information and collaboration processes with Teams, but your external contacts - vendors, clients, and others - still communicate via old-fashioned email and you know it's not efficient. While you can't force external people to use Teams, there is still a cool thing you can do to use Teams when addressing their emails. This one is a solution that's been hiding right under y...

You likely started your business because you wanted to be your own boss, because you have a passion for providing a product or service, or even because you had a get rich idea. Regardless what your reason for starting a business was, there's a good chance you're working too many hours. You most definitely don't enjoy doing much of the work you have to do on the computer. Today's episode is about r...

Most employees don't know the difference between OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint. Since you pay a lot of money for files to be created, collaborated upon, and retrieved from the place they are stored, not to mention the risk to your business when files are haphazardly handled, it's vital that you and your employees understand when to use what. This is an episode you'll want to pay close attention...

Do you cringe when you think about going into your organization's shared drive or SharePoint site and looking through folders and files to find a file? Is your file storage completely jumbled? If so, you're going to love this episode. You'll learn how to change your thinking about cleaning up your hopelessly out-of-control mess of files. You'll learn how to start fresh with Teams and not take mont...

So you want to be an open-door manager and ensure your employees know you will listen, but hate how those meetings disrupt you when you're "in the zone?" Today, hostess Annie Rynd tells you how to use the Microsoft 365 app Bookings to batch open door meetings and free up time to work on your most important managerial work. Bookings comes free with your 365 license, so it's high time you began usin...

If you're like most leaders in the business world, you like the meeting functionality of Teams, and perhaps the chat feature, but other than that you aren't very happy with the results. That's a shame, because Teams has transformed the inner workings of organizations where it has been properly deployed. In this episode, we tell you how to successfully re-launch your Teams site and take advantage o...

Let's face it. Very few business owners and managers are confident in the permissions of their most sensitive files, let alone the thousands of other files that have accumulated over many years. Thanks to Microsoft Teams, there is finally a way to get control of permissions, clean up your mess, and make sure new employees can't access salary information or other confidential business management in...

No matter if you are a manager in a mega-corporation or a solo freelancer, if the time spent in email bothers you, this is the episode for you. Annie tells you how you can replace email with Teams messaging and save hours per week while being much more organized. You'll want to share this episode with your employees as a part of your ongoing effort to streamline your organization's collaborative p...

AI has burst upon the scene after years of science fiction telling us it's coming. What's that mean for you? Just how in the world can you use it to improve your business? Can you? Annie Rynd tells you how to begin using Microsoft's AI offering, Copilot, to immediately save time on common business tasks. She also tells you how to make sure your information is protected, both externally and interna...

Are you or your employees new to Teams? Do you like Teams, but you're a bit disillusioned with how many distracting notifications you receive? Does the instant messaging vibe of Teams interrupt your workflow too much? Today, Annie Rynd gives some timely tips for reducing interruptions caused by Teams notifications. The solutions are simple, but the benefits are great. Be sure to share these tips w...

Do you roll your vision, mission, and goals out once a year, only to wonder why employees aren't working toward them? Are your employees so consumed by daily tasks that you wonder why you even bother to have a vision? Are you also losing sight of the plans you made last December? In this episode, host Annie Rynd tells you how to leverage Teams and Microsoft 365 to ensure your strategies are front...

This episode tackles an extremely important topic that is pivotal to the success of organizations venturing into the Microsoft Teams and 365 world. It's one of the first things that must be decided, and it is something that is time-consuming to undo if you get it wrong. In just five minutes, Annie Rynd tells you the answer to the common question, "What Teams sites do we need?" You won't get it wro...

If you or your employees are tired of minimizing and maximizing windows, clicking through nested folders, and looking for project documentation, this is a must-listen episode. Not only does such mouse clicking and searching cause too many clicks and wasted minutes, but it is a main cause of employees experiencing a mid-day energy crash. Their eyes and brains are tired! Eliminate nested project fol...