Using a Microsoft Activity Report, 365 Productivity Insights, Provides a Great Addition to Personal Performance Management Resource Toolkit

Many companies over the past couple of months were not prepared for the remote work mandates that were put in place and unexpectedly found themselves scrambling to quickly shift their workforce to work remotely with the initial goal of making sure their employees were able to fully perform their job functions remotely.   Those companies that were not fortunate enough to utilize a collaboration solution (such as Microsoft Teams), were forced to scramble and simultaneously select a collaboration solution that would best meet their needs, quickly implement the solution, and rapidly train all users on how to use the solution.

Resiliency of Operations

During this chaotic process, these companies metrics were the last thing on their minds and they were not worried about how to ensure their team members were actually utilizing the solution. Once remote operations were stabilized (for the most part), managers began thinking about and asking ‘How can I proactively measure the productivity of my remote team and ensure the long-term resiliency of our operations?’

Fortunately, as an Information Security & Privacy Officer and leader of a 100% remote technical team for the past 11 years, I did not have to cope with the chaos of training remote users on new collaboration solutions and was fortunate to have metrics in place to measure the performance and productivity of each member of the team.  However, I am always searching for new tools/solutions that I can incorporate into my strategy and which offer more insight into the activity of the team and I have found the information that 365 Productivity Insights offers very useful.

Easy Dashboard

365 Productivity Insights’ easy-to-read dashboard allows for an at-a-glance view of the activities for both Microsoft 365 Teams and Email. The dashboard allows for flexibility to view the entire team or an individual team member.   Immediately upon being provided access I was able to view on the dashboard:

  • # of emails sent, received, and read by user and department
  • # of Teams attended meetings by user and department
  • # of Teams calls by user and department
  • # of Teams private and meeting chats by user and department

More Calls on Teams vs. Mobile Device

Over the past few months, I personally have experienced a significant decrease of team member calls and texts to/from my cell and office phones while my workload has not decreased.  While I suspected that this was due the corporate usage of MS Teams increasing, I was able to validate that indeed, that more of the cell calls and texts I received were now occurring via teams.  While reviewing the dashboard, I was surprised to see that a couple team members did not have MS Teams installed on their cell phones, especially when overall as a company, we have seen that the flexibility to attend meetings from anywhere (not just from their desk) increases productivity.   Microsoft Teams has made significant improvements and enhanced the sound quality of calls that it now replaces the conference call solution that had been in place for many years, which means additional cost savings to the company.

Training Opportunities

For those team members that had lower activity levels, I was able to use the information provided by 365 Productivity Insights in conjunction with my other resource tools to determine if the team members were working on projects that would decrease their usage of MS Teams and email or if there may be a need to provide them additional training.

Overall, MessageOps’ 365 Productivity Insights has been a great addition to my performance management resource toolkit and adds another perspective on how team members are spending their time.   It has allowed me to ensure that the entire team has adopted into their everyday workflow, the tools which the company has providing and making the best use of the investments.

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