How to Use Microsoft Teams for Project Management - A Quick Guide

Microsoft Teams for project management is a great collaborative and communication tool for project managers because they can create channels, chats, and hold video meetings with their team members and stakeholders.

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a business communication platform developed by the Microsoft 365 family and launched in early 2017. This comprehensive tool helps managers to collaborate, communicate, hold meetings, file and app sharing, and more.

The following are the essential features offered by the Microsoft Teams.

Real-time messaging and chats
Meeting and video conferencing
Live events
Document storage
Cloud calling
Integration with apps and connectors
Search
Tasks management with calendar
Security and privacy

How to use Microsoft Teams for project management?

Typically, project managers use types of project management tools, including scheduling and work management software, productivity, and collaboration tools. These tools help project managers manage and reach their goals effectively and efficiently. However, before introducing new tools to the project team members, you should ensure their ability to adapt to them.

Microsoft Teams is a popular collaboration tool among project managers, which helps to work closely with the team members.

This article will guide you on how to use Microsoft Teams for project management.

Getting started with Microsoft teams

To create Microsoft Teams, you can download the software to your desktop or use the web app.

💡 However, the desktop app includes more features than the web app.

After creating Microsoft Teams, follow these steps to complete your team,

Adding team members
Creating channels
Creating or uploading new files
Adding tabs ( planner and SharePoint)
Connecting third-party apps

So, by using Microsoft Teams in project management, project managers can easily collaborate and share information with their team members throughout the project life cycle.

Create and manage a new channel in Teams.

As a project manager, creating and managing a new channel in Microsoft Teams will help you communicate crucial project details with your team members.

Furthermore, after setting up a channel, you can ensure all your right team members are part of it. For example, Claudia is a project manager who works with the team on a new product launch. So, she decided to use Microsoft Teams to collaborate and communicate with her team members. Therefore, she creates a few channels that will help her stay organized.

Each channel has different members. So, project managers can ensure only the right people are in each conversation.

Steps for creating a new channel

To create a new channel, click your team name and select Add channel.

Give the channel a name, add a description, and select the type of channel you want. It includes standard and private.

💡If you select the standard type, everyone on the team will be part of your channel. However, private is best to use for more sensitive topics such as budget discussions. If you choose the private type, only certain team members can see the conversation because budget discussion can be sensitive.

After selecting the channel type, invite all relevant team members and stakeholders. From the info panel, you can see all the channel members. Furthermore, you can add or remove people as needed.

For example, the finance manager isn’t a channel member, but you want to request to add him to the channel. If you request to add the finance manager, your request goes to the team owner, who has permission to add new members. However, if you are the team admin, you can add or remove channel members yourself without needing to wait for a approval.

Now, you can start the conversation. However, this week, you’ll need to reach out to your procurement team a lot rather than tagging each member individually in every conversation. So, set up tags for the procurement team.

💡Move the mouse to the team name and right-click → a menu opens → click on manage the team and go to the tags tab → click on create a tag → add name, description, and people.

Creating tags will help project managers see who is in your channel or invite external stakeholders when needed.

So, Microsoft Teams in project management helps project managers collaborate and communicate with their team members effectively and efficiently without any delay.

Chat in Microsoft teams

There are three types of chat within teams for project managers. Those are,

Small groups and one-to-one chats
Conversations
Channel post

Small groups and one-to-one chats

Project managers can use chat to discuss any aspects of their project, such as daily project tasks, ask questions, or give feedback to the team members. So, you can use Microsoft Teams for management to chat with a group or individuals.

Step to chat in Microsoft Teams

Click the new chat icon.
Add the relevant team members by entering a name, email, phone number, or group tag.
Assign a name to the group – This will help project managers track multiple conversations regarding projects and tasks.

In your chat pane, you can use these features when needed.

Start a video or audio call with the team members
Pin a chat
Mute a chat
Leave a chat
Add or remove people when necessary, and more features are available in your chat pane.

Furthermore, you can create similar groups to discuss details about the project with relevant individuals.

How to improve team chat

The following are some steps to improving chats in teams.

Formatting
Groups tags
Manage tags and post notifications
Search
Delivery options

Formatting

Using formatting options during the chat will help team members easily understand project details.

Groups tags

Typically, project managers need to collaborate frequently with the project team, such as the procurement team, finance team, etc. So, using Microsoft Teams, create a custom tag for these groups in the settings of the channel.

Manage tags and post notifications

Project managers can hide, pin, or mute a chat by using Microsoft Teams. If you don’t have enough time to reply to a message, you can mark the message as unread or turn off the notification. As well as you can also save a message. Those messages will stored in your profile.

Search

You can use a few ways to search through chats for essential content.

Search for the relevant members in the search bar to view one-to-one messages
Use ‘CTRL+F’ – But this option also applies within channels
Use the filter option in the chat pane, including unread messages, meeting chats, muted chats, and posts. Furthermore, you can use keywords in the message

Delivery options

When sending a chat to an individual or group, project managers can use three delivery options. Those are,

Standard
Important
Urgent

So, Microsoft Teams in project management is the best collaboration tool for use effectively and efficiently.

Video meetings in Microsoft teams

Video meeting is another crucial aspect of Microsoft Teams because its provide a powerful way to collaborate with project team members and stakeholders.

Scheduling a project meeting in Microsoft Teams

There are three options available for scheduling a project meeting.