- Up next, we're joined by a Microsoft Teams expert,
Daniel Hidalgo to look at the latest updates
for frontline workers in Microsoft Teams,
from the ease of sign-in
to push-to-talk communication with Walkie Talkie and more.
And beyond these experiences,
if you're a manager, we'll show you new ways
to manage your teams with a new My staff portal.
And for IT, we're going to show you new policy packages,
team templates to speed up configuration,
as well as new options for managing shared devices
in Endpoint Manager.
So Daniel, welcome to Microsoft Mechanics.
- Hey, Jeremy, it's a pleasure to be on the show.
- And thanks for joining us today.
So over the past several months,
we've actually developed a renewed sense
of appreciation I think, for frontline workers,
whether they're keeping essential services up and running
or saving lives, literally in the frontline in healthcare.
And really at the same time,
this has also revealed a gap that exists
for these essential workers in terms of access to technology
that really will make it easier for them
to stay connected in the course of their jobs.
- Yes, this segment of the working population
is notoriously underserved by digital tools.
And you're right, the pandemic has exposed
some very real gaps
when it comes to equal access to technology.
In the end, these workers are often left
using their own initiative to communicate
and they end up doing so in ways that can be less secure.
In fact, they typically resort to consumer applications
for things like information sharing.
- Right, and as part of Office and Microsoft 365,
we've had various solutions available
for the past few years, and most recently
that's been in Microsoft Teams.
- We've been working on this for a while,
and really there's no excuse for frontline workers
to be left on the sideline anymore.
In fact, you can avoid people
finding their own potentially risky solutions
by proactively extending the Teams platform to them.
And the beauty here is that Microsoft Teams
can run on either personal devices or shared devices,
it's integrated with your back office,
and it's also secure by design.
You can also configure it to meet the specific needs
of your workers, such as your frontline workers,
their managers, or IT.
So everybody benefits and it's a consistent experience
across the board.
- Right, but I think one of the key pain points here
is getting frontline workers
up and running on their devices.
So for example, everyone might typically have a phone
but it doesn't make sense for them to use their email
or the company to provide an email
and onboard them really in the classic ways.
- Exactly.
So the steps that you might use to onboard an office worker
with a new email and password
isn't necessarily a good option.
And it should be easier, frankly.
So what I want to do is walk you through the steps
that I might take as a frontline worker
or my first day on the job in a retail environment.
So I've been asked to install the Microsoft Teams app
from the App Store or Google Play.
In advance, my company set up my Azure AD account
and my new manager has added my mobile number
so that I can sign in using a one-time passcode.
So I will launch Teams and it takes me to a sign-in screen.
I can simply use my phone number to sign in,
and that's going to send me a text message to confirm.
So once I do that, I am in.
So now I can see my assigned teams and channels,
and next I'll clock in
and I'm ready to work or access any other apps and tools
that I'm approved to use.
- Okay, so that looks pretty easy
and you can already see all the different teams
that you're a member of,
as well as the capabilities that you have there
in the app tray at the bottom of the screen.
- That's right.
So the first thing I want to do is check my shifts for today
and for the upcoming week.
So I will click on the one for today
and you can even see notes for this shift.
It looks like there's delivery coming
and we need to add price tags on everything coming in
and put all items on display.
There's also a note to check out the most recent message
from our CEO Patti,
and I can check that out in just a second.
And if I tap here on the top right of the shift button,
I can also see the manager that's on shift
and others that are working with me on my team.
And if I go back to the home screen,
I can go into tasks and see what's assigned to me.
In this case, I have quite a few tasks listed.
Now let's check out that note from our CEO.
So I'll go back to the home screen
and open the communities icon
so I can take a look at the announcements.
And I can see that there's guidance
for following the newly established COVID safety protocol.
- Okay, but this is your first day
and I have to say you're doing pretty well so far.
But what happens then maybe if you get stuck
or aren't sure how to do a certain task or something
and need help?
What do you do then?
- Great point.
And that's really where the communication elements
in Teams shine.
If I didn't have Teams, I might ask everyone
for their phone number
or connect with them using a direct message service
or look for someone on site.
But here, since I have Teams already running,
I can participate in team conversations.
I can either post a message to the team,
I can see all of my pinned channels,
or I can directly chat with a manager
who we just saw is on duty, to ask a question.
So I'll start a private chat and search for Adele.
In my case, I have a damaged box here
and I don't want to tag it with a price
because I'm not sure if a customer will want to buy it.
So in the text, I'll go ahead and say,
"I found a damaged box.
Not sure if I should tag this item, so please advise."
And as you can see, she's replying.
And it looks like she wants me to send her a picture
to see how it looks.
So I'll tap on the photo button in Teams on my phone,
take a picture and send it.
And as you can see, she wants me to set this aside
to return to the supplier.
So now that I've done that and completed my task,
I can navigate back to my task list, then go to task details
and mark everything on the checklist here as done.
- Okay, and one more thing to I mentioned
since you're showing tasks
is that beyond managers assigning tasks,
there are also options for the corporate office
to create task plans and publish those
all the way down to the store level.
So what you've shown here so far is great for chat.
And sometimes I think you need to talk to somebody
for more immediate response
and really get resolution quickly.
What can you do there?
- You do, and with Teams,
you can directly call anyone on your team with the app.
And you can do this
without needing to know their phone number
as you can see here.
But sometimes, you might need to reach out
to an entire department
because maybe you don't know who can help
or who is available and on shift.
And we solve for this with a new capability
called Walkie Talkie,
by allowing you to connect to a specific channel
to find the help that you need.
So as you can see here, I have a few suggested channels.
One for security, and also one that I'm most interested in
which is on curbside pickup.
In this case, I'm fulfilling an order for a customer
and I need to communicate with the delivery dock
for a curbside pickup.
This is an open channel to whoever is on shift
so I don't need to figure out who's there
or look them up in Teams or call him.
Look inside, Jeremy, let's try this out.
Let's say that you are a part of a team
that's working on the dock
and I'm going to try to reach you.
Order for Megan Bowen is ready for pickup.
Please confirm you're on it.
She'll be there in a few minutes.
- Okay, got it.
So everything's packed up and ready.
We're going to greet her once she arrives.
- Perfect.
And you might be used to walkie talkies with local range,
but the nice thing here
is that this is built into your phone.
So you don't need a secondary device.
And in our particular case, it's traversing from Ecuador,
where I am now, to your location in Redmond.
So that's a bit more range than the walkie talkies
you might be used to in the past.
- Love it.
So we've seen how you can chat now and share information,
even make calls or reach channels
using the Walkie Talkie capabilities.
And this is all built into Teams, but what else can I do
to personalize the experience even more?
- So I've shown some of the foundational experiences
that can apply across many industries or situations
but you can also create unique apps
tailored to your business needs, using Power Apps.
Let me show you one that we've built
to do a store walk-through
prior to opening our store every morning.
So here you can see that I've got an app within Teams
and I'll open it.
And because I'm logged into the app,
it knows I'm the person doing the inspection.
And it fills in the date and store location by default.
Now for each area location, I can select it.
I'll stick with accessories,
and I fill in whether the area is clean.
I'll mark yes.
It stocked. I'll mark yes again.
And then I can add a note
saying that it passed its inspection.
Then I'll save it,
and I'm ready for another area inspection.
And this is just a simple app where we've automated
what might've been done using a clipboard in the past
but now you can save paper, time
and all of the manual processes around it.
- Right, and something that we've also recently announced
is the ability to build these no-code or low-code apps
right from within Microsoft Teams
either in the desktop app or in the browser
with the complete Power App studio
and even the underlying data backend using Dataverse.
In fact, you can check out a recent show that we did
with Charles Lamanna that walks through
an entire Power App build start to finish
at AKA.ms/PowerAppsMechanics.
- Right.
So our vision here really is for Microsoft Teams
to provide a simple front end
that can connect to your existing enterprise apps
and systems of record and hopefully make things easier
for your frontline workers.
For example, you can manage your workforce scheduling
on your ERP system and have it show up as shifts in Teams.
We have a growing ecosystem of applications
to help connect leading workforce management apps
such as Kronos or Blue Yonder directly to Teams.
- Okay, so you've now shown us a few highlights
for the frontline worker
but why don't we switch gears a little bit
and change up roles?
Is there anything else that you can do
as a manager now of frontline workers?
- Yes, of course.
So we've covered the experiences for managing shifts
on previous Mechanics shows as you can see on the screen.
This enables you to assign your staff schedules
and manage those aspects of staffing.
But as a manager,
you're probably the person people come to for help.
Maybe someone on your team can't log in
or they purchased a new phone,
and now, instead of calling IT,
you can manage a few of these basic IT-related processes.
So let me show you.
We built a simplified Azure AD experience called My Staff.
You can access it at MyStaff.microsoft.com
and if I click into retail employees
and select Lynn, you'll see that this lets you
reset passwords and add phone numbers.
So I'll add hers and save it.
And as you can see,
for staff with phone numbers already entered,
I can edit or remove them as well.
- Right, and one more thing to note here
is that your Azure Active Directory administrator
needs to set you up as a manager
with My Staff administrative privileges
in order to manage defined groups and administrative units
like you just saw.
This is where configuring dynamic membership rules
and user groups can also save you a ton of time.
So these are based on things like job title or location.
So for example, anyone with retail sales in their job title
along with a matching location, can be added automatically
to the frontline group that Daniel just demonstrated.
- Yes, and that's a great way to save time
as you add frontline workers into your directory.
But Jeremy, since we're on the topic of admin controls,
why don't you show us a few more new things
you can do to manage frontline workers?
- Let's do it.
So I want to show you a couple of times savers on the Teams
and also Azure AD sides and something that's brand new
in my favorite area of device management
for frontline workers.
So first, in the Teams admin center,
I want to show you what you can do
to build out teams quickly and consistently using templates.
So for example, if you have retail stores
with dozens or hundreds of locations,
you can build out a template
that has templatized channels and apps already configured
so that anyone that's tasked with building out teams
for existing or new stores,
they can do this in just a few clicks.
And before we showed you how easy it was
to get up and running with SMS sign-in,
and that's all now set up with a new authentication method
in the security settings of Azure AD.
There is also where you'll set up the My Staff experience
that Daniel showed as a manager earlier.
And then back in the Teams admin center,
you'll probably want to assign policies
to tailor frontline worker experiences.
So first, with policy packages, you can configure messaging,
meeting, app setup, calling and even live event policies.
And this one is an out-of-box policy for frontline workers,
and if I click into the details
of a messaging policies, for example,
you can see the granular controls for chat experiences.
Now, if I click into app setup,
you can also define the pinned apps
that are in the Teams navigation bar.
And as you'll recall, this is what we saw earlier
in the bottom of the Teams mobile app.
And finally, one of the things I'm most excited about
are the new Microsoft Endpoint Manager preview features
that make it easier to enable management
of shared devices at scale.
So earlier, Daniel showed how you can bring your own device
as a frontline worker and sign in at the app level
using Microsoft Teams.
And now you can also enroll dedicated devices
in Microsoft Endpoint Manager
with Azure AD shared mode automatically configured.
So when setting up a device enrollment profile,
you select the corporate-owned dedicated devices option,
click create new profile,
and then you just select the shared mode token type
for that profile.
Now, this also enables shared device sign out
when a user logs out of the device.
In fact, you can use our SDK so this can work
even with your own custom line of business apps
for Android and iOS.
And you can find out more at AKA.ms/MSALdocs.
Now let me explain how this would work.
So first, shared devices can be checked out,
for example, at the beginning of a shift,
and frontline workers can easily sign in
using the same phone number in SMS that we showed earlier.
Then they'll configure a session pin
for the duration of the shift.
And then with the managed home screen,
you get all of your apps, including Microsoft Teams
to choose from.
Now, when the shift is over,
you can also sign out of the device
as well as all browser sessions and apps too
that have been signed in or automate this process
from an IT perspective using timers
so that it's ready for someone else to use
in a future shift.
- Yes.
And like you said, this is a great option
to have full flexibility over all experiences on the device
to preload Teams or whatever apps you choose to
using Endpoint Management.
- So thanks so much, Daniel, for the great overview today
and the day-in-the-life using Microsoft Teams
as a frontline worker.
But for those who are watching and want to get started,
what do you recommend?
- So first I recommend you to check out
AKA.ms/TeamsForFrontline,
for all of the frontline worker resources
from end user tips to admin setup
and as always, the best way to learn is to try it out.
- And that's all the time we have for this show.
Be sure to subscribe and follow Microsoft Mechanics
for the latest tech updates.
Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
(dramatic music)