In this post, we show how Microsoft Teams integrates with other applications and tools to enhance any Project Management practice.
Once in Microsoft Teams, a quick filter on Connectors for Project Management shows Trello, Asana, Jira and more.
We took several of these on a test drive to assess the integration with the goa of assessing those that feel seamless versus others that are little more than a view to the other platform (at least at this time). And if you’re still weighing all your options, we’ll highlight how some features complement and others are redundant. Not all integrations are outside of Microsoft. We’ll also touch on Microsoft’s Planner and PowerBI.
This blog series does not cover the main built-in features of Teams as this was covered in a previous blog. To get an overview of Teams, please refer to our intro blog.
Custom apps can also be created and uploaded, but we are not covering this capability in this series.
The software descriptions below are not meant to be exhaustive. All of these are fantastic stand-alone products. This series is designed to highlight the integration points specifically with Teams.
Asana is a web and mobile application that can be configured to display in either list, calendar, or Kanban board style.
Trello is an application based on Kanban-style boards that allows for even more integration, via PowerUps, with Slack, WireframePro, join.me and many more.
Teams/Trello redundant features
The argument could be made to use Microsoft’s Planner instead of Trello; if you have Teams, you already have Planner available at no extra cost. Planner is not as full featured as a stand-alone product and even less so as a Teams’ connector. See more in the Planner section below. (In all transparency, I’m a HUGE Trello fan.)
Jira is an issue management tool that allows teams to configure projects for scrum software development and for general project management.
Microsoft Planner is an built in feature of Office 365 that allows for light task management in a Kanban-style board.
Microsoft PowerBI is a powerful reporting tool, that while requiring additional licensing, is fully integrated into the Office 365 suite. Dashboards can be added as a tab on any channel and are interactive. Toggle through different views of tasks by status, owner, account and more without leaving Teams.
While not a connector, Suttna it is a fairly handy bot that can be configured to gather status updates from team members on behalf of the Project Manager.
Configuration options are available for the questions to be asked, of whom, and how often.
While more tools be used for Project Management, there’s just not enough room in a single blog. Many will be covered in future blogs on Product Management, Customer Service, Recruiting, Marketing and Developer/Coding work groups and include, among others:
See our next blog in this series when we will share tools for Product Management. If there are other connectors you’d like us to take on a test run, or if you would like to share any of your experiences using Teams for Project Management, please let us know at solutions@amaxra.com.