Have you ever made a Cash Advance request and waited too long to get it approved? Or maybe you submitted an annual leave request, and it got approved just a few hours before your day off. All this frustration happens because there is no system to support your process, an undocumented procedure, or simply a lack of information for someone working next door. In this article, we will explore how Approvals on Microsoft Teams can streamline all your approval processes, thus improving efficiency and productivity in your organization.
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Microsoft Teams is a productivity tool that Microsoft launched in 2017. It's part of the Microsoft 365 suite, which allows you to collaborate with co-workers on various projects. During the pandemic, daily active users of Microsoft Teams spiked to 145 million people, a massive increase from 32 million daily active users in the pre-pandemic era. It is now common to consider Microsoft Teams as your go-to application for collaboration.
As your organization gets larger, it is mandatory to always maintain a quick and efficient process on every step. One incredible feature that Teams have is its Approvals feature. Approvals enables everyone in the company to create, manage, and share requests with several simple clicks. In addition, all the approvals related to you are automatically recorded in the system, along with details of your request. Microsoft also added a templating option that allows for an even better experience. This templating option acts as a blueprint that enables you to use pre-set fields for common requests such as expense reports or work from home permissions. If you have a not so common yet recurring request, you can still create your own template. Whenever you receive an approval request, the system will automatically send you a notification.
Approvals is not perfect. For instance, there is no reminder of a pending request. This means that you need to regularly check your Approvals tab to see if there are any pending request. There are no dashboards with eye-catching visuals or such. Also, all your completed and pending requests are listed in one combined list with limited filtering capability.
Nevertheless, Approvals is a great tool for small and medium company using Microsoft Teams and having no existing system to support their approval request process. We can only suggest you to try it.
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Approvals is just one among many features/applications that exist in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. If you need advice on how to boost your productivity leveraging Microsoft 365 tools, you can contact us here!
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