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Is Microsoft Teams Premium worth it?

Reviews |

Most organizations that use Microsoft 365 are familiar with Microsoft Teams. It’s Microsoft’s communication and collaboration program released in 2017 to compete with products like Slack, WebEx, Zoom, and Goto Meeting, but with the added benefit of integration across the Microsoft 365 suite of applications. Microsoft Teams is essentially a one-stop shop where you can communicate with a project team and can access your project data.

What Does Microsoft Teams Premium Include?

In 2023, Microsoft released Teams Premium as an add-on subscription service to Teams. You might be wondering what could warrant an additional cost for Teams. This new add-on service provides the following benefits:

Additional Meeting Types

  • Webinars – Webinars are different from a standard team meeting. Webinars allow the organizer to designate presenters and roles for participants. You can also create questionnaires for attendees, themed landing pages for registration, and view engagement reports. Lydon Solutions frequently uses Teams webinars for Microsoft 365 training and demonstrations of Construction Viz.
  • Town Hall – Town halls include all of the same features as webinars but provide the ability to deliver presentations for large-scale events with up to 20,000 attendees.
  • Virtual Appointment – Virtual appointments provide an all-in-one way to book and conduct virtual appointments. You can add a virtual appointment app to Teams to schedule and manage appointments using Microsoft Bookings. Teams Premium provides the additional benefit of SMS text reminders, waiting room branding, and analytics.
  • Controlled Content Meeting – CCM provides an additional layer of security for your meetings where you can add watermarks to audio, video, and shared content. You can also control who can record the meeting, utilize sensitivity labels, and prevent copying and pasting data from chats.
  • Live Event – Microsoft recommends upgrading to town hall events.

Other Premium Features

Immersive space (3D). While in a meeting, you can change the view to Immersive space (3D), which will render a Microsoft Mesh environment to interact with meeting attendees. You will need to have an avatar configured to make the most of this feature.

Branded meetings. You can create branded Teams meetings and backgrounds.

AI Meeting recap. AI-powered meetings and intelligent meeting recaps that automatically generates meeting notes, recommended tasks, and personalized highlights to help you get the information most important to you, even if you miss the meeting.

Final Thoughts on Microsoft Teams Premium

So, after reading about all of the Teams Premium features, you are thinking, “Get to the point—is it worth the additional cost?” As with my usual product reviews, the answer depends on the following:

  1. Do you want more robust meeting options such as webinars where attendees can register or present to large groups of people?
  2. Do you want to add another layer of security or custom branding to your meetings?
  3. Do you want AI to capture a summary of minutes and action items? It’s a neat feature that might save you time and frustration taking notes.

In Summary, Microsoft Teams Premium could be worth it to you and your organization if you would take advantage of its advanced features and extended meeting options.

Microsoft 365 is a powerful platform for managing all aspects of your business and operations. Due to its scale and breadth, it can be a little intimidating. You can reach out to Lydon Solutions for a free one-hour consultation where we can help you get on the right path for your organization.

If you want to learn more about using Microsoft Teams for construction project management, check out these Teams how-to articles:

The New Microsoft Planner: One Plan to Rule All Your Construction Projects!

Microsoft News |

The latest Microsoft Planner now includes Planner, To Do, and Project. The new version does not just bring these apps together into one task management solution. It allows you to see all of your tasks across every Team, which I think has been long overdue. Check out this post to find out more.

Microsoft Planner is the app that most people use, but oftentimes, they don’t know its name. Outside of Teams, rarely does anyone actually use the stand-alone Planner app. Most likely, the reason for that is that tasks can be created in many different applications, so which one do you go to in order to see all of your tasks?

Task Management in Microsoft 365

Tasks in Microsoft 365 is a pretty broad term and touches many different applications. If you think about all of the locations where tasks can get created in Microsoft 365, it’s a spaghetti network of related but independent applications.

For example, before this update, you could choose to create tasks in any of the following applications:

  • Excel – ☑Pro: Ultimate flexibility. ☒Con: Source/version management of tasks.
  • Planner – ☑Pro: Easy to use, assign, and schedule tasks. ☒Con: Planner specific. No tracking by project or ability to add custom fields.
  • To Do – ☑Pro: Easy to use. ☒Con: Person specific. No tracking by project and no ability to add custom fields.
  • Outlook Tasks – ☑Pro: Create tasks right inside Outlook. ☒Con: Tasks are localized to Outlook. No tracking by project or adding custom fields.
  • Lists – ☑Pro: Flexibility to create custom columns. ☒Con: Resides in a single SharePoint site (although you can also access with the Lists app).
  • MS Project – ☑Pro: Project-specific tracking and scheduling. ☒Con: Additional licensing and increased complexity.

The good news is that Microsoft has been hard at work trying to integrate these applications together and even changing the new Planner logo. They recently replaced Outlook tasks with To Do, and now they have consolidated Planner, To-do, and Project into one solution.

New Microsoft Planner Plans

New Microsoft Planner Features

The new Microsoft Planner comes in two flavors:

  • Planner Basic for Microsoft 365 is included in most Microsoft 365 subscriptions at no additional cost.
  • Premium Planner is a different license, which is essentially a Project Plan 1 or 3 license with Plan 3 including a future Copilot feature.
Microsoft Planner Features by License

So, what else can this new Planner do?

New Planner templates – Microsoft is providing new templates to help you create the perfect plan. The plans indicate Basic vs. Premium, so you know which ones will require additional licensing. I tried the new Premium Commercial Construction template, and it automatically built out a Plan and a schedule with durations and logic in MS Project as well.

Planner Commercial Construction Project
Microsoft Project Commercial Construction Project

Pin a plan – You can pin a plan, so you don’t have to hunt and peck to try and find amongst all of your other plans.

Source of task – You can see where the task was created (e.g., To Do). Also, if a high-priority task is assigned to an Outlook email, a task will automatically be created and will be filtered in the Flagged Emails view.

My Day – Displays all of the tasks that are assigned to you and due today across all plans. Also includes new filters for finding tasks by keyword, due date, and priority.

Manage Your Project Tasks Your Way

Construction Viz Task Managers lets you manage your project tasks the way you want with scheduling, labor tracking, links to other construction applications, and more. Learn More >

My Tasks – Displays all of the tasks that are assigned to you across all plans. You can also filter by Private Tasks that you created, Assigned to Me tasks, and Flagged Emails. Also included are new filters for finding tasks by keyword, due dates, and priority.

Planner_5

The new Planner app brings together several task management applications in a single location and offers many new features. Microsoft is rolling out the updated Planner in early 2024. What are your thoughts on the new Planner app? What features are you looking for?

If you are looking for help implementing Planner, Microsoft Project, or any Microsoft 365 features, you can request a free one-hour consultation using the contact form below.

If you need a turnkey construction management solution for your Microsoft 365 that is customizable to your unique needs, you can request a demo of Construction Viz.

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Microsoft 365 Loop will change your work day. Are you ready?

Microsoft News |

You might be wondering what Microsoft 365 Loop is. Microsoft Loop is a little difficult to define, so let’s use a typical office work scenario. You start your work day by opening Outlook to check your email and Teams so that you can chat with your coworkers. Next, you select a file to work on, such as updating your cost report in Excel, finishing a PowerPoint presentation for senior management, or maybe creating a status report in Word.

All of the above files reside in separate applications with their own file extensions. Wouldn’t it be easier if you started your day in a freeform workspace where you could include all of those applications, and more, without needing to go anywhere else?

Microsoft Loop is the one ring to rule them all. Loop organizes your work into workspaces like books. A workspace could be a project or re-occurring meeting like a monthly status update. The app further divides Workspaces into pages (like pages within the book).

Where Loop gets interesting is the ability to turn parts of the pages into shareable components, letting you share your workspaces, pages, and components with others to get their real-time feedback. Suddenly your work day is organized like a diary with real-time interactions without the need to switch applications.

How is Microsoft Loop different than One Note?

In theory, Loop could be the next evolution of One Note. Loop adds live integrations with Office and the ability to create shareable components.

Is there something similar to Microsoft Loop on the market?

Yes, there is a software product called Notion:

"Notion is a single space where you can think, write, and plan. Capture thoughts, manage projects, or even run an entire company — and do it exactly the way you want."

The difference between Notion and Loop is the ability to integrate with the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite.

Where does Microsoft Loop save data?

You would think Loop would save data in the Dataverse, but it actually saves to SharePoint. Here’s an article explaining the details - The SharePoint storage platform supports the Loop app - Components, pages, and workspaces (microsoft.com). This is great news for our Construction Viz product which deploys to SharePoint Lists and Libraries. I can see a day where we embed Loop components into Construction Viz, potentially even bi-directionally.😊

Microsoft Loop sounds great. When can I use it?

As of March 2023, Loop is still in preview and a little underwhelming since it only integrates with Outlook for the web and Teams. Still, Microsoft has done the heavy lifting, and you can see the potential of this cross-application tool.

We’ll monitor Microsoft Loop and provide updates on how construction project teams can use it in their daily workflows. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter in the footer below not to miss future updates about Loop and other technologies essential for the construction industry.

You can also schedule a no-obligation consultation to learn more about using Microsoft 365 to manage your construction projects.

The Great Metadata Convergence with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive

How-To |

Microsoft is unifying metadata handling between Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Here is what you need to know.

What is metadata?

First, let’s start with a definition. Metadata is “data that provides information about other data.” In the case of SharePoint, metadata can include using the term store or adding unique columns to lists and libraries. The advantage of metadata over folders is that you gain more robust search and reporting capabilities.

What’s the issue with folders?

Organizing by folders is popular because it builds on the familiar. File folders are similar to how we store paper documents in file cabinets. Folders also mirror a standard shared drive. So, users find this approach intuitive and easy.

Metadata_1

One downside of folders is upkeep. Documents have to be moved from one folder to another to be re-classified. The organization scheme of several levels of folders can be confusing. Documents can get misfiled in incorrect or redundant folders over time.

Here’s an article that further explains the topic - 3 Ways to Organize Your Documents in SharePoint - Lydon Solutions

How does metadata currently work with Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint?

Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint are three applications in Microsoft 365 where you can effectively manage documents. Until recently, each application has its strengths and weaknesses regarding file organization:

  • The Teams application is great for collaborating and has a files tab in a channel where you can upload files into folders. However, you could not add metadata.
  • OneDrive has a local client that allows for working with files offline. It is also easy to use and navigate since it has an explorer-like view that we all know from a PC, but it also lacks metadata.
  • SharePoint is an enterprise content management system (ECMS) that provides the ultimate flexibility to use metadata and folders for lists and document libraries.

What has changed with metadata in Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint?

With this recent Microsoft 365 update, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint can share metadata, not just folders. If I add columns in the files tab of a Teams channel, those columns will appear in SharePoint and OneDrive. If I add columns in the SharePoint Documents library, they will be available in Teams and OneDrive. At this point, you cannot add columns (metadata) in OneDrive, but you can view them. Also, you can now create views in Teams using metadata linked to SharePoint, keeping both systems in sync. Let’s get into why this update is important.

Teams adding columns to a files tab for a channel
SharePoint adding columns in the Documents library
OneDrive viewing columns from a Documents library

What’s the big deal with this metadata change?

Metadata is critical to organizing files more consistently. Until now, metadata was only useful in SharePoint since you couldn’t add or view it in Teams or OneDrive. This update keeps all three applications in sync with both folders and metadata when you use the Documents library. You are not restricted to just using folders!

Also, you don’t need to manually sync the Documents library across Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint for this to work; Microsoft does this for you automatically. If you check out one of our recent posts, Microsoft 365 OneDrive and Teams for Your Construction PMIS (lydonsolutions.com), you will see how Microsoft has done this behind the scenes.

Great news, but there is a catch

Unfortunately, you currently cannot see the metadata if you are using the mobile apps for SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.

Also, this metadata feature is related to the SharePoint Documents library created when you create a new Team. To use other SharePoint libraries to manage metadata, you must manually link to that SharePoint site from Teams or OneDrive.

Take away

In summary, by making metadata available across Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, Microsoft has brought all three applications closer together for document management with fewer trade-offs. So, deciding where you want to manage your project documents is not an either-or application decision. You could start in Teams and use SharePoint or OneDrive at a later date based on the use case without having to give up search and reporting.

Microsoft 365 is a powerful platform for managing all aspects of your business and operations. Due to its scale and breadth, it can be a little intimidating. You can reach out to Lydon solutions for a free one-hour consultation where we can help you on the right path for your organization.

What Microsoft 365 @mentions Mean for Construction Communications

How-To |

@Mentions are frequently used on social media platforms to share content. You can type @ and select a username from a list of available users to notify them of your post. Mentions provide an efficient way to identify a user while writing so that you don't have to jump into another application, such as email, to notify them. Mentions are heavily used in most social media platforms, and rightly so, for their ease of use.

As with many social media innovations, @mentions have made their way to Microsoft 365. Read on to find out what mentions can do in Microsoft 365 for construction projects and where Microsoft might take this feature.

How @mentions work in Microsoft 365

Microsoft has added @mentions across Teams and Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. You can even add mentions to SharePoint lists and libraries. While this is great news for Microsoft 365 users, there are some differences and disconnects with mentions between Teams and the rest of the Microsoft 365 applications.

How mentions work in Teams

Teams is a modern application in Microsoft 365, so Microsoft seamlessly integrated @mentions across the application. You can mention a team member in a chat, and a notification will show in their activity feed. In the same chat, you can even use a mention to call on a bot which could add in an application or a workflow if needed.

Mentions_1

You can mention a channel member, team, or channel in a channel post, which is handy if you want to notify everyone in a team or channel.

Mentions_2

Unfortunately, mentions in Teams do not integrate with mentions in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and even SharePoint. Mentions are their own communication island in Teams unless you incorporate a custom Power Automate workflow or the Graph API to send mentions into Teams from the office apps.

How mentions work in Excel, Word, PowerPoint,Outlook, and SharePoint

To add a mention to Outlook just type @ and select the team member.

Mentions_3

To add a mention to Excel, Word, or PowerPoint files online, click the comments button to insert an @mention into the document.

Mentions_4

You can add mentions to SharePoint list and document library records by editing a record and scrolling down to the More Details section of the fly out panel:

Mentions_5

Mentions made in  Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and SharePoint will show in the notifications bell of the person assigned for both the online and desktop versions of Outlook.

Mentions_6
Mentions_7

Once again, these mentions do not link to the mentions in Teams.

For more information, refer to these Microsoft support articles:

What could be Microsoft's plan for mentions?

Email is still the preferred method of communication. With Teams, users can minimize emails by using chat with mentions. At some point, Microsoft could bridge the gap across all its Microsoft 365 applications so they can use a universal @mentions feature to notify users. An integrated @mentions approach could centralize the communication stream so that if I create a Teams chat, Microsoft 365 automatically sends off email notifications from Outlook. Or, if I was in Outlook, I could mention a person in an email, and that email would then show in a chat, team, or channel. No more bouncing around between mentions in Teams and the rest of Microsoft 365. No more trying to decide if I should use Teams or Outlook.

So how can mentions help me with construction communication?

As discussed above, mentions are still a fragmented solution across Microsoft 365, but @mentions can still be part of your communications strategy, depending on the stakeholders. For internal correspondence, you could use Teams chats and posts. For external communications, you could continue to use Outlook email. Also, until Microsoft delivers a mentions solution across Microsoft 365, you can leverage a Power Automate workflow to capture project-specific external emails and store them into teams and channel chats by referencing the mentions in the workflow.

Finally, if your team actively collaborates in Excel, Word,  PowerPoint, and SharePoint online, you might find it valuable to take advantage of @mentions to alert users when they are assigned to review an entry or a file. Check out this article for more information:  New Notifications pane in Outlook helps you stay on task (office.com).

Learn how to use Microsoft 365 to manage your construction projects

If you need help implementing Microsoft 365 for your construction organization or you are just looking to implement a communication solution, you can request a free one-hour consultation with our Microsoft 365 specialists here.

If a turnkey Microsoft 365 construction PMIS solution might be a better fit, you can request a demo of Construction Viz here. Also, you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter to keep up with the latest Microsoft 365 news, tips and tricks, and Construction Viz; you can do so in the footer below.

Tips from the Field: Adding Images to a Power BI Report

Tips from the Field |

Microsoft 365 Power BI is an incredibly powerful reporting tool and is fast becoming the go-to reporting solution in construction. While creating connections to different data sources and building cool reports is relatively straightforward, adding dynamic images is not as simple.

Read on to learn how to add images to your Power BI report.

Two options when adding images to Power BI reports

There are two paths to adding images to a report.

Option 1

Your first option is to insert images directly into the report. This approach is useful if you want to embed a static image into your report, like adding a logo to a project-specific report.

Unfortunately, you need to open Power BI, update the report, and re-publish it to add or edit images.

Note: These embedded images will display when you print a report.

Option 2

Your second option is to link images dynamically from another file location. This approach allows you to connect to images from another file location and display them dynamically in your report.

A good example of this would be a set of project progress photos that are dropped off in a SharePoint image library every month. You could then connect these photos to your report and use a project and time period slicer to display only the images you would like to see in the report.

While this approach provides the most flexibility, since images are read from the image library, the setup in Power BI of the connection is more difficult.

Also, there are a few considerations to be aware of:

  • Viewers must have permission for both the image library and the Power BI report to view the images.
  • Images will not display in Power BI Desktop until you publish the report to Power BI Online.
  • The connected images will not display when you print a report.
Power BI Desktop with both options
  • When images initially display in Power BI, they will appear as small thumbnails, and you will not have many options to format them. You will most likely need to “Get more visuals” and find a third-party image display visual. See the screenshots below for how to do this.

Step 1: Click the three dots and select “Get more visuals” 

Step 2: And then search on images and click on one to add 

So, you might wonder how actually to create a dynamic image connection in your report from SharePoint? There are a bunch of steps to doing this, but I found a great video to get you most of the way there: A little trick for SharePoint Online Images in Power BI.

We hope this blog helps you build out your project status report. If you need a complete reporting solution from building a Power App to collect period data or structuring a Power BI Report that can filter by project and period, you can submit a consultation request here.