Master Microsoft Teams for effective Project Management

Introduction if you need somewhere to store all your files and correspondence in a project Microsoft teams is a great place to do that and in this video I'm going to be showing you how to create an amazing project workspace that you can bring your colleagues into that has the ability to track and manage a plan it also will have the ability to send notifications when new issues or risks arrays on your project an area for you to file email using Outlook integration with teams and showing you how to do exactly that and also build out those channels and file structures that can help you and your team share content and make sure it's securely stored as well and alongside that I'm going to also be showing you how you can add and remove people in your project into that Microsoft team ensuring all of your data is secure and only visible to the right people so let's dig into it and show you how to create this an amazing workspace in Microsoft teams so let's get started by creating our Create a new Microsoft Team project team using Microsoft teams all we need to do firstly is access a teams app or go via the web and once you've done that head down and select create or join a team once you're in that dialog as you can see here on my screen we can then select on create team and select this button we'll then be prompted to either create a team from scratch which is entirely blank and this comes with a general Channel and we can customize as much as we would like after that or you can choose from pre-defined Microsoft templates be manager project and event and so forth they effectively come with some predefined channels and apps and tabs to save you some of the headache of getting your team set up and of course you can select from one of these but in our tutorial today we're focusing on creating it from scratch so I'm going to select from scratch and now we're going to set the appropriate security so will my team be private or public and that Setting the Privacy of the Team will depend on your own scenarios for me private it is typically the go-to option here because it means that only authorized people can use your Microsoft team if you select public anyone in your organization can freely join or leave meaning your data is effectively available Across The Wider business so I'm going to go ahead and select on private and then give my team a name now it's important not to get too descriptive here there's a description Setting the Team Name and Description box to use to cover off what the project relates to so I'm going to actually call the team name the project name itself to make it very clear when people are using this team what it relates to and use a description field to find a little bit more context and there we have it now we have our project team name and a description I can go ahead and click on Create and once we do that it'll then move forward and create our team as I mentioned if we're not using a template it's pretty quick to get our team literally takes just seconds and at this scenario you could now begin adding people internally for example my colleague at Dallas helping on this project I could search for Adele's name selective on the drop down and then select add but because a team is not ready to go I don't want our team members coming in here and then working in an area that's not yet well structured in fact we're going to go and add people later and I'm going to show you how to do that outside of this screen so let's go ahead and instead click on skip we're not going to go and add anyone into our new team now from this perspective here we have Understanding the Basics of the Team our new team for project zero when you actually create a team it comes with one channel that is called General and it cannot be renamed sadly that's not available hasn't been for many years in Microsoft you have a post area a files tab and also notes now the files tab effectively is a folder structure that you can then go and create additional folders now it's quite common in Project set documents and in general is not something you're necessarily going to follow it might be we're going to create additional folder structures to make Creating Folders for File Storage sure people store content in the right way much like you do on a file or a folder share so click on new and then select folder and you can give a folder a new name for example I could put one and I could put scope in information two we have some financial information if we would like as our second folder here as well and so forth and in each of these folders me and the project team can click into them upload files from your local computer or create brand new files and documents using the online tools whatever the preferences but creating that structure can really help organize your team now alongside that of course we've created folders here in the general channel for our file storage but in some stages of your project such as project stages you can actually go ahead and create channels channels mean that we Creating Channels in the Team get a unique channel to store again our file structure and also a dedicated post tab so in this scenario if I go to the freed up menu by project zero select add Channel I'm now going to create a new channel here and this is all going to be around the first stage of our project and that will be requirements Gathering so in here I can put the channel name as requirements Discovery again I could include a description if I thought it would help people understand what it's for and the Privacy will be standard meaning everyone in my team will have access to our requirements Gathering Channel I can also check this box to ensure that everyone sees this in their team list it doesn't get hidden by teams as our Microsoft team and project also grows so I'm going to go ahead and select add now inside of our new channel we see much the same a new post where we can have dedicated posts for requirements covering and a files tab which now has a structure now again I could come in here and create another folder structure and in requirement scheduling I would expected to see a requirements definition area so we include all of our files to do requirements definition and so forth and again you can create a structure that you would prefer but considering channels you can break down those structures but we also have some other things to consider for example we might want to have a planning Creating a Planning Channel and Task Plan Channel dedicated to all around the plan and the actions around that plan as well so let's go ahead and create a new channel and call it planning again the security or privacy will be marked as standard but importantly in our planning channel here we're going to want to have a project plan now Microsoft planner comes as part of Microsoft 365 meaning we can bring it in to each of our channels and have a project plan that we can actually allocate tasks assign them to people inside of our team and also have notifications and charts and so forth to add it into our channel here for planning I'm going to go and click on the plus icon and in here I'm going to search for an app called tasks by planner and to do now as we search the word task you'll see right at the top and then when we click into it we'll be prompted to give the plan a new name so what we can then do is we'll note it here rather than just call it a tab name as Tas we'll call it project zero plenty well then go ahead leave is be posted onto the channel and click save now we have our project zero planning this is Microsoft planner that we can now use to create tasks it also means that in this scenario I can also update Updating the Buckets and Tasks in the Plan the buckets for example that to do is not particularly what I would want to use here maybe as we mentioned before the first phase of our plan is to consider requirements covering so I'll put a bucket name requirements Gathering our second bucket well that could relate to the design so project zero needs a design right so we're going to put design now in each of these buckets we can then begin to allocate tasks here I'll add a task name and we'll set this as Define requirements we can set a due date which I'm going to be setting for the end of next month and I could also assign this task now at this point there's only me in the team so I only see this account for Alex which I'm logged into so I'm not going to assign it to anyone yet but I'm going to get it ready to go click on add task I can then click into the find requirements and add further detail maybe the start date the priority any additional notes or even create a checklist so a great way to add more tasks and more buckets to build out your project plan using Microsoft planner and not only that as your project grows and your plan grows on the right hand side you'll see a charts button and a schedule to give you even more insight into your plan and not only that the wider team has this capability to keep on top of all their tracks in your Microsoft team and in your project so we now have a selection of channels we have a project plan we also have the files tabs pre-set up with the folder structures we want our team to work in but what I did mention the start of this video is can we create a list and that Creating an Issue Tracker using Microsoft Lists list might be an issue tracker in the issue tracker I also want to be alerted when new issues on the project occur or maybe I want to alert others to that as well now in our general that sounds like a great place that we could add our issue tracker so again I'm going to go to the top and click on the plus button and I'm going to now select lists if you can't find it just type in the word list and then you'll find this icon here this is Microsoft lists and that allows us when we click on save to add a list into our general channel so I'm going to go ahead and select create a list and we can now create it from a template or we can create one from scratch we can even import it's from Excel or a CSV and have all the hardware done for us but here I would like an issue tracker and the good news is Microsoft already has a template for that so I'm going to select issue tracker you'll then see a preview of what the issue tracker looks like the issue the description the priority status and so forth I'm quite happy with that so I'm going to click on use template we can then give it a name so issue tracker actually I'm going to call it the project zero issue tracker because that's nice and clear if I use Microsoft lists elsewhere that'll be nicely defined by its name we can again give it a description an icon and also choose a color I'll select navy blue and then click on create and we'll now have a project issue tracker already created for us so as issues come up on this project you and The Wider team have access to your Microsoft team can drop in select new and they can log a new issue on the tracker and effectively provide all of that additional context to run your project now in terms of this here what I'd also like to do is have an alert because this is great to collect but I don't want to spend all day going in here and refreshing the screen to try and understand if new issues have occurred which is also feasible to do what you can do here is firstly click on the freed up menu and go to open in Creating Automated Email Alerts in the Issue Tracker SharePoint now as I mentioned the Microsoft list lives effectively in Microsoft 365 under a SharePoint site that means under this scenario we can actually go to the automate tab we can set rules and I can create a new rule that rule could be when a new item is created on our issue tracker I want to be notified and all I would need to do here is effectively send an email to either an individual by name and I can search for my own account I'm using an account for Alex and select that here alternatively I could actually clear that and I can actually set it to the person it's been assigned to in the list so when someone creates that issue there is a column called assign to and once that person is defined an email will be immediately sent to that person to advise them that an issue has been assigned to them so I'm going to go ahead and click on Create and that rule has now been applied and again I could create additional rules for those alerts to be sent based on different activity maybe data in a column change maybe a status was updated well I could again say when the status changes to a specific value and again I can select it to blocked send an email to me as the project manager so effectively I know that this has been blocked and work needs to be done to move that on so now we have an issue tracker we also have the automated alerts meaning you're going to get email alerts when important things change let's go back into our Microsoft team and also consider then how we can begin to also file email into Filing Emails from Outlook into the Team our Microsoft team because as a project we're going to be sending lots of emails well to do that what we can then do is go into Outlook so in Outlook I have an email here relating to a project and it has an association to project zero so I'm going to share this with the project team that also exists in our team all I need to do is highlight the email select share to teams and I can actually file this email into the team you can already see recent locations being requirements discovery of project zero but I could also search for the word xero and you can see it picks up the general project zero Channel if I select that here I can also type a message once that's done click on share and that email will find its way into a Microsoft team so me and the team can pick it up and also respond and make comments on it so if I close this down here and go back into our team and we look back at our general Channel there is our filed email we can see it in place the team can click on reply and reply to that in place that doesn't send an email response but it does mean that you and your team can communicate about how the best way you can go back to this query and also we may need to do announcements for example in our requirements Gathering we need to move Create an Announcement for the Project Team this forward so let's go ahead and create a new conversation and click on the A and the little pencil button on the left hand side under the drop down new conversation change that to announcement and you can now announce something to the team and they will be notified that you've added a new announcement and once we've done that we'll go ahead and click on the send button and that now will announce itself into that channel and also the team will be aware of that so nice and straightforward to add an announcement and then of course finally we need to bring our team in a project area we've just me in is a lonely place to be so all I need to do is click on the free dot menu next to project zero select add Adding Project Members into your Team member and I can now begin adding our team into the project here I'm going to bring in Adele as we mentioned earlier and click on ADD now Adele has been added into that team she has access to all the channels all the files the project plan and also can see those fold emails now once I've done that I may want to add someone else Nestor is the director of the company I'm going to add in Nestor but the difference here is at Nestor he needs an additional privilege Nestor is going to help me manage this team so to do that I can just click in the drop down by member select owner and I can promote Nestor to become an owner so he can also add and remove others and also take control of this project area and make additional changes where it's required so we've now added two people into our team and we're now ready to go so we now have a great area for you to work on in your project we have channels we have our file and folder strictures we have our project plan running in planner we have an issue list a Tracker that sends alerts to the relevant people when new items have been updated or also changed and we also have announcements that we've set up ready to go and added our team members in and you can use use a range of these areas here to improve how you're going to work and create your amazing Microsoft team for your own project foreign [Music]