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Microsoft Teams: Beyond Video Calls

Image: Vitaly Gariev via Pexels

Most people think of Microsoft Teams as a video calling tool — the thing you use for Monday morning check-ins and the occasional screen share. But if that’s all you’re using it for, you’re leaving a lot of value on the table. Teams is actually a surprisingly capable platform for managing projects, collaborating on documents, and even communicating securely with clients.

A recent piece from UC Today highlighted how professional services firms are increasingly using Teams across the full client lifecycle — from initial pitch right through to project delivery. It’s a pattern we’re seeing more of here in New Zealand too, particularly among law firms and NGOs who want to reduce email clutter and keep work better organised.

Channels as project spaces

One of the most underused features in Teams is the ability to create dedicated channels within a team. Instead of one sprawling group chat, you can set up a channel for each project, matter, or workstream. Everyone involved can see the conversation history, shared files, and updates in one place — no more hunting through email threads to find that document someone sent three weeks ago.

For organisations managing multiple client engagements at once, this structure can be a genuine game-changer. You might have a channel for each client matter, a general staff channel, and one for internal admin — all within the same Teams environment.

Document collaboration without the chaos

Each Teams channel comes with its own SharePoint document library in the background. That means you can store, co-author, and version-control files directly within Teams — whether it’s a Word report, an Excel budget, or a PowerPoint presentation. Multiple people can edit simultaneously, and you always have a clear record of who changed what and when.

This is particularly useful for teams working on submissions, policies, or client deliverables where several people need to contribute without creating a mess of conflicting file versions.

Bringing clients into the conversation

Teams also supports external access, meaning you can invite clients or partner organisations into a specific channel without giving them access to your whole environment. This can replace a lot of back-and-forth email for project updates, document reviews, and approvals — and it keeps everything in one auditable place rather than scattered across inboxes.

If you’re in a sector with privacy obligations — health, legal, government — this kind of controlled, documented communication can be a meaningful improvement over standard email.

A few practical tips to get started

• Review your current Teams setup — are channels being used intentionally, or has it become another inbox?
• Pin important files and tabs within channels so nothing gets buried
• Use @mentions to keep conversations focused and reduce notification noise
• Explore the Planner tab for lightweight task management within a channel

Teams is one of those tools that rewards a little investment in how you set it up. If you’d like a hand thinking through a structure that works for your organisation, our team is always happy to help.

Jessica Falconer
Director, Resolve Technology
When she’s not wrangling IT strategies, Jessica can be found wrangling labradoodles, teenagers, and parishioners — not necessarily in that order.