Microsoft Teams has cemented itself as a household name in the past 24 months. A huge number of local authority and central government organisations have picked up the tool to maintain collaboration during a time of mass remote working or have been well-versed in the platform since well before the pandemic first emerged.
Microsoft Teams enables the continued ‘flow of work’ for workforces everywhere, as it offers faster, grouped communication that replaces lengthy calls and meetings. Following its dramatic uptake, a new range of Microsoft Teams apps to improve workplace productivity and help to achieve even more from Teams, are beginning to emerge.
Verto 365, which provides a solution to manage workspaces and projects directly from within Microsoft Teams, is a new breed of App that fully opens inside Teams rather than just using notifications, so users don’t need to navigate away and log in and out of other systems to manage their work. It means all work and projects can live in one place and be managed across one platform for everyone.
So why is this important for the public sector?
Arguably, workforces everywhere require the two same things: more time and better data. Verto 365 is the key to providing the opportunity for both.
Verto 365 allows more work, including projects, programmes, workflows, activities, strategies etc. to be managed from within Teams itself, taking away the interruption of having to navigate to alternative platforms to complete tasks. Projects, programmes and even complete portfolios of work can be stored securely and managed from within Teams by multiple users.
It marks a significant shift in user experience by maintaining the flow of work and therefore improving productivity as it holds information and data in one place and in the same format throughout. There is not even the need to log in to Verto separately as it is all part of a single sign-in process that operates from within the platforms. Everything can now be done directly from within MS Teams.
The opportunity
Staff already using Teams can feel empowered to take on more by using new tools from the system they are already familiar with.
The app features functionality such as Kanban boards, dynamic dashboards, interactive Gantt charts, risk, benefit and finance management and every detail needed to successfully plan, manage and run projects and programmes on any scale and all now run exclusively within Teams.
Your teams can engage further in the work being done and begin to vary their responsibilities to take on more by having increased access to the powerful tools on offer.
The Verto Playground is a Verto 365 free-trial option where users can test and learn by viewing huge amounts of sample project information as well as being able to input their own test data to get to know the tools in their own time. The Playground is available for an unlimited amount of time and includes all functionality.
The detail
Verto 365’s seamless Single Sign-on process eliminates the need to remember and input login credentials across multiple platforms each time you want to access your project information. The benefits of integrating this effectively with Office 365 is also evident when uploading/downloading documents directly from/to your OneDrive folders from Verto 365, minimising interruptions to the flow of work.
What’s next
Verto are user-led in their approach to continuous improvement and are excited to work with their existing clients, already making use of Verto 365, for the next phases of development. The Verto team are already planning to begin incorporating their platform into more of the Microsoft suite of tools once the technology is further developed by Microsoft.
As a small and agile company, Verto are one of the first organisations to exploit the new opportunities that Microsoft’s deep integration abilities now offer, and by simply asking, “why not?”, they have re-imagined Teams as a fully functioning project, programme and work management platform to bring ease and simplicity to organisations’, often complex, working practices.
