26 Jan Microsoft 365 – Co-Authoring can help your business productivity
Drive your business to IT confidence with the Cloud
A key ingredient to a successful business is collaboration. Utilising this effectively can improve your day-to-day working, productivity and increase output. Over previous years it has been difficult to collaborate to a high standard unless sitting side by side. However, luckily for modern-day business owners, advancements in technology have brought a way to work together both in person and when in a remote setting.
Why do we need to collaborate?
Some jobs simply are not possible without collaboration. Some are possible, but a solo effort would not produce the same quality of product or service as is achieved when working together.
As an example – take what is going on in the world at the moment. The horrific Covid-19 outbreak still reaps havoc on our businesses and everyday lives. This provoked a rapid change to the way we work. For parts of your business that rely upon collaboration to achieve their daily tasks to a certain standard, this could have potentially resulted in a dramatic downturn in the quality of products and services they are able to produce.
How we used to collaborate and why it is not fit for purpose
Originally, businesses would have many copies of the document needed to be collaborated on as all employees needed to edit their own version. At the end, this would all need to be consolidated into a single copy. This method is a poor use of time and resources. Ideas are not able to flow freely, fluent communication is not possible, and company standards are not able to be adhered to due to all these pitfalls.
In 2017 technology introduced a solution – a solution that gives you freedom to collaborate whatever your location, allowing you to sustain the levels of output your company produces when in the office or when working remotely. This solution is Co-Authoring in Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Teams
Teams has vastly grown in popularity since the outbreak of Covid-19 forced many businesses to introduce to an at least partially remote working team. With Teams being uniquely catered to have uses both on-premise and when working remotely, it is the best fit for businesses across the globe. Statistics from October of 2020 state that Teams has amassed a daily user count of 115 million – a number unobtainable by most applications of the same type.
The particular feature of Teams we are going to look at in more detail today is Co-Authoring.
Introducing Co-Authoring by Microsoft Teams
“With Office and OneDrive or SharePoint, multiple people can work together on a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation. When everyone is working at the same time, that’s called co-authoring.”
How to Co-Author
These instructions are presented as a guide on how to co-author within Microsoft Word, but the same rules apply when working with Excel and PowerPoint.
- Open the document you wish to co-author on.
- Put the ‘local copy’ into the Cloud – it is referred to as a local copy due to it only being on your desktop. Move your cursor to the top right of the screen and click ‘Share’.
- Once having clicked Share an option appears in the centre of your screen to upload to OneDrive.
- Click OneDrive and the document will be uploaded for you. The document will now be in OneDrive, allowing you to share it with others.
- The next step is for you and your colleague(s) to open the document. Once you have done this you can co-author on said document simultaneously. To tell if your co-author(s) have the document open, look in the top right of the screen – the initials or face of your co-author(s) will show up there. You can even see what part of the document they are in the process of editing by looking at the name above their cursor.
Co-Authoring has the power to change the way you work now and into the future. Whether working remotely or in-office, this gives you the freedom to work with colleagues on important work. Microsoft Teams’ range of tools can change the way you use technology for good. It is recommended to take some time to explore it and discover what this can do for you – and how this can push you and your team to a more productive and collaborative future.
Your IT solution is here – Urban Network
We provide a trusted, competitive and impartial service to our wide range of customers throughout Greater London and beyond.
Urban Networks’ team of talented IT professionals can make your tech problems a thing of the past. With a comprehensive portfolio of managed cloud and on-premise services, Urban Network will deliver the best complete IT solution to your business.
