As we work more collaboratively, it’s important to keep your work chats outside of informal platforms like WhatsApp. Microsoft Teams is emerging as the new hub for employee collaboration and communication that many companies are using to keep not only their communication and documents in one central place but also their communication and HR workflows.
Microsoft Teams apps enable companies to take advantage of the technologies available to work with different team members virtually, regardless of their location. It is available on multiple devices and integrates with your favorite apps to create a holistic self-contained work environment anywhere and anytime you work. Companies like Air France and Beiersdorf use Microsoft Teams apps to manage and automate their day-to-day activities and keep their workflows streamlined.
For HR, such a powerful communication platform saves time, increases efficiency, and lets you focus on the most important aspects of your job. With our curated list of top Microsoft Teams apps, you can simplify your work as an HR (or even as a manager) and ensure your company is powered with the best tools that automate even the most mundane processes.
Similarly, for finance teams, you would want to do your expenses, approve your POs and other workflows inside Microsoft Teams app. And IT teams, wouldn’t you want to give support to your teams right inside MS Teams apps – whether it’s allowing your team to log tickets when they need their password reset to when they are requesting a new mouse or even a new laptop.
If you’re thinking of getting started with Microsoft Teams, we’ll help you pick the best Microsoft Teams Apps to get started with.
Here is our curated list of the Top Microsoft Teams Apps
1. AttendanceBot – #1 app for doing time and attendance
Gone are the days of manual attendance tracking. It’s tedious, often inaccurate, and employees feel micromanaged. What’s more, manual attendance tracking is unscalable. Sending an email to the HR and their assigned managers every time that your employees take leave is impractical, especially if your company is large.
Instead, you need an automated attendance tracking system that allows employees to punch in and out on their own. No hand-holding.
AttendanceBot is your answer! It integrates right into your Microsoft Teams workspace and employees can easily punch in and out within the work management tool, without needing to go through someone else. As HR, you have access to the hours at which your employee arrived at work and when they leave, giving you a robust dashboard to analyze work hours.
What’s more, you can assign managers to each employee so that leave requests are sent directly to the assigned manager within Microsoft Teams app. Once the leave is sanctioned, you receive a notification. AttendanceBot takes care of attendance and leave management without wasting your time while keeping you in the loop at all times.
Simple set-up, does what is expected from it, fairly priced
I wanted a solution integrated into Microsoft Teams, to manage people’s days off. This was evaluated in less than a day and the setup was very quick once we confirmed we wanted to move forward. Support has been good too.
2. OfficeAmp – Knowledge Management and Internal helpdesk
Imagine getting 20-odd messages every day, from questions about where the stationery is to how a reimbursement receipt should be filled. Your efficiency and your workflow are sure to get hindered. Every office is sure to have a dozen or so questions that need quick responses but not important enough for HR to solve. Create an internal helpdesk and issue management dashboard to decrease unnecessary interruptions and allow employees to get around the office faster.
Use OfficeAmp within your Microsoft Teams workspace and create a comprehensive helpdesk that allows employees to ask and get responses to their queries instantly. Employees just need to ask OfficeAmp within their Microsoft Teams questions and it pulls up the relevant answer quickly. From the wifi password to the company stamps, your employees never have to reach out to you for these daily requirements. If they have any questions that aren’t answered in the helpdesk, the request can be raised within OfficeAmp and tracked until you have resolved it.
Besides a helpdesk, OfficeAmp can also be used for issue management. Allow office managers to solve problems in the office without needing a manual to-do list on their palm. OfficeAmp lets you assign issues to the respective manager, track their status, and have visibility on their resolution, all within your Microsoft Teams workspace. You can even set up a mailroom assistant within OfficeAmp so that your office manager doesn’t have to hand-deliver emails that come in for employees.
Build an efficient workspace with this smart office management Microsoft Teams app.
3. ScrumGenius – running standups
Meetings are an essential part of a company’s functioning. You can’t avoid them but it’s important to not let it hinder work productivity. Oftentimes, meetings turn into unproductive time-consuming sessions that your employees have to set through. To avoid this, many companies set up standups, a short daily meeting that allows employees to update managers about work status and any blockers they have. Such daily team chats are effective in keeping your employees accountable.
Transform your daily standup with the ScrumGenius Microsoft Teams App. Automate your status meeting with this smart app. You can integrate ScrumGenius right within Microsoft Teams, and collect responses from your employees about their progress and performance. These answers are collected and can be broadcasted to the team. ScrumGenius also stores the collected data and creates reports to allow you to view your employee’s progress with ease.
Now agile is no longer just for engineering teams, everyone can and should be using a tool like this right inside Microsoft Teams.
4. Zoho Recruit
Recruiting is one of the most important parts of any HR job. But, it’s also a long process. It’s important that you have all your candidate data in one place, that you can contact them without having to look through different spreadsheets and even compare different candidates to understand which suits your company best.
Zoho Recruit is your one-stop solution to recruitment and also happens to another favorite Microsoft Teams app. Use Zoho Recruit to set up seamless workflows that allow you to take your long list of candidates from applied to the first interview to approval. Your email messages and files sent are all stored within this one platform, and you never have to juggle between multiple platforms to get work done.
What’s more, the smart software integrates with Microsoft Teams, making it easy for you to receive updates and notifications.
5. Polly
As an HR, you have to collect employee data on a regular basis. You also need to keep your employees engaged with the company’s running and ensure they are invested in the growth of the company. One of the best ways to keep your employees more invested in the company is with polls. Learn what your employees want to do in the next team outing or understand what changes they want within the office with a quick poll.
Polls also allow anonymity, making employees more willing to open up about suggestions and problems they have. Added bonus? Setting up a polling system doesn’t have to be hard. You may be imagining a long Google Form or a traditional pen and paper polling method but those are both poor user experience and make it tough to keep data from your poll more streamlined.
Instead, if you are an HR that uses Microsoft Teams for your work management, you can use Polly. You can build polls within your communication tool, run them alongside conversations and make it simple for employees to partake in your polls without disturbing their work. You can also grab insights from your polls quickly, see responses and stats as your employees fill in their answers with this Microsoft Teams App.
6. Disco – company culture
As HR, your responsibilities are more than just ensuring your employees deliver results. As companies shift to a culture-first mindset, HRs need to set up systems that encourage positive culture building within the organization. But, building a positive company culture can be tricky. How do you encourage collaboration beyond just asking employees to work together?
Disco is a Microsoft Teams app you can integrate on your Microsoft Teams workspace that makes fostering company culture simpler. The app is simple— reward employees who follow and integrate your company’s values in their work. Whether it’s the junior developer who comes up with new ideas for better client experience or your graphics designer who sets up a side growth hacking project as a marketing tactic, announce and celebrate these wins.
By setting down company values, broadcasting what they are to the team, and recognizing those who use these values within work, you can increase employee satisfaction and build a culture of purpose and meaning at work.
7. Appogee Goals – OKR
Companies are moving fast and every month is packed with multiple targets to ensure the overall goals of the business are met. This means that the traditional method of annual performance reviews isn’t going to cut it. Instead, the modern HR needs to have a system in place that allows employees to manage themselves and align their goals with the company’s.
Microsoft Teams Apps like Appogee Goals make it easier for HRs to set up goals across the organization and for employees to add in their own goals and follow through with it. With the app, you can ensure that employees hold themselves accountable for their own goals, keep track of their progress, and optimize their goals monthly as new projects come up.
The app creates transparency across the entire company, helping to motivate team members and measure each person’s targets in a quantifiable manner. Its dashboard makes tracking and analyzing goal progress much simpler.
8. Employee Onboarding
A good onboarding experience can help you set your new hires up for success from the get-go. Give your new employees a thorough onboarding experience— provide all the details of what their work would be like and explain the company culture. The first two weeks is an important time for new employees and you need to keep them engaged and provide them with the optimal amount of assistance.
But, with multiple other tasks on your plate, you can’t always be present for your new hires and give them the well-rounded onboarding they require. This is where automated Microsoft Teams apps like Employee Onboarding help.
This app is built into your Microsoft Teams workspace. You can schedule tasks, create onboarding sequences, and set up automatic email notifications for the tasks you’re assigning. Instead of manually sending emails and explaining tasks to your new hire every time, you just need to set it up once and you’re good to go!
Give your new hires reading material, ask the office manager for a new laptop, and other hardware for the new hire with an onboarding app to process requests. The dashboard for this app is helpful for everyone involved in the onboarding process— from the new hire to the managers to even you. The app lets users check tasks on their list without needing prompting or reminders from a third party.
Integrate these apps within your Microsoft Teams workspace to get the most out of this work communication tool and increase your efficiency. If you use Slack, check out these 10 HR bots that can super-power your Slack workspace!
Which of these Microsoft Teams apps do you find the most intriguing? Let’s chat on Twitter!