In the past few years, remote and hybrid working has emerged as one of the major trends. This work style has pushed team leaders to identify new methods for project communication and collaboration.

To understand the benefits of Microsoft Teams in the workplace, it’s important to see how it moves beyond traditional methods of project collaboration, which are no longer feasible.

Microsoft Teams centralizes chat, file sharing, video calls, and scheduling within the Office 365 environment. Below are twelve practical ways Teams streamlines teamwork and boosts productivity across your organization.

1. Organize Your Workspace with Strategic Channels

Structuring your digital workspace is a great way to improve employee collaboration. Microsoft Teams allows you to create dedicated channels for specific projects, topics, or departments, keeping conversations focused and organized.

For sensitive discussions, you can use private channels, limiting access to only invited members. These collaboration methods used by work teams ensure that information is both accessible to the right people and secure from others.

2. Centralize Documents and Team Chat

The team collaboration chat feature in Microsoft Teams is the most frequently used. You can centralize all project files directly in Teams for one-click access. Pin key documents at the top of each channel so everyone can find briefs, style guides, or reference files without switching apps. Using chat or channel tabs for sharing attachments helps keep files organized and prevents version confusion.

3. Streamline Communication with Shortcuts and Alerts

Efficient communication is a priority. Teams helps you cut through the noise with powerful features. You can use slash commands like /goto to quickly jump to a specific team or channel. When a message requires immediate attention from your Microsoft teammates, you can mark it as one of your urgent messages, which sends repeated notifications until it’s read.

4.  Run Effective Virtual Meetings

Start or join video meetings in one click with Meet Now or scheduled calls. Once the call has started, you can share your screen or individual windows to walk through presentations and documents together.

This once again saves you the hassle of handling multiple platforms at once – one for video calls, one for chatting, and another for sharing all the required documents. All calls and shared content remain within your secure Office 365 tenant.

If you’re looking for efficiency and a platform that addresses collaboration in the digital age, especially in today’s work-from-home and hybrid working environment, this is the tool for you.

Enhance Meetings with Advanced Features

Teams also offers advanced features to boost engagement. Together Mode places participants in a shared virtual space, like an auditorium, to reduce meeting fatigue and make meetings feel more connected. You can also use fun or professional virtual backgrounds to maintain privacy and professionalism.

For accessibility and record-keeping, the platform provides live transcripts during the meeting, and you can access full meeting transcriptions afterward to review discussions and action items easily.

5. Integrate Apps for Seamless Workflows

Add tabs for Excel, Planner, or OneNote within any channel and work directly in Teams. Connect Power BI dashboards to view reports without leaving your workspace.

You can even use Microsoft Planner as an extra tab in Teams, which – you guessed it – allows you to plan and schedule work, meetings, and deadlines. It also informs you when certain work commitments overlap with others and notifies you about any upcoming projects that are due soon.

With OneNote and SharePoint integrated with Microsoft Teams, importing and exporting information is seamless.

Turn Messages into Actionable Tasks

A key part of using Microsoft Teams for collaboration is its ability to connect conversations to actions. For instance, you can directly turn messages into tasks in Microsoft Planner without leaving the chat, and create shared checklists using Loop components.

There are countless project management apps for teams that connect with over 200 Microsoft and third-party apps to give you a seamless work experience. This includes Salesforce, Trello, and Adobe Creative Cloud, as well as social media apps like Twitter and LinkedIn. It’s a fully customizable collaboration platform.

6. Utilize a Cost-Effective Solution

Access Teams at no extra cost if you already have an Office 365 subscription. Teams replaces multiple standalone chat and meeting platforms, reducing duplication and lowering overall collaboration expenses.

7. Boost Cross-Departmental Communication

We all know that numerous projects in business require different departments within a company to collaborate with one another.

Utilize organization-wide teams and channels to keep stakeholders informed beyond your department. @mention groups or tags to loop in cross-functional members.

Share company announcements or policy changes in a “General” channel to keep everyone aligned. BrightWork 365 and Teams integration simplifies collaboration between teams and improves business communication in company projects.

8. Enable Collaboration from Anywhere

One of the most important features any collaboration platform needs to have today is a good mobile app.

Download the Teams app for iOS and Android to respond to chats, join meetings, and approve tasks on the go. It’s much more than just a useful chatting app on your phone, too.

You can manage security, change permissions, and control how employees use data through it.

9. Stay Updated with Your Activity Feed

The activity feed is one part of Teams that perhaps people find most useful. When you first log into the platform at the start of the workday, you will be able to see a summary of just how much work you have scheduled.

Review your Activity feed to see mentions, replies, and upcoming meetings in one view. Filter by unread, Mentions, or Likes, and use the Filter icon to focus on high-priority notifications.

10. Collaborate Securely

Rely on enterprise-grade security with two-factor authentication, firewall protection, data encryption in transit and at rest, and compliance with ISO 27001, SOC 2, and GDPR. Use sensitivity labels and built-in data loss prevention policies to protect confidential project information.

These make it easy for you to ensure that all your data is secure in a company policy-compliant way, and allow for worry-free collaboration and data sharing.

Of course, some of the burden to ensure data security also falls on you, like making sure all of your employees use the multiple-factor authentication feature to avoid their accounts being hacked.

11. Use Automation and AI for Smarter Collaboration

Improve your collaboration by using automation and AI capabilities, which help create a better workplace collaboration experience. You can connect Teams to Power Automate to create custom workflows, such as automatically posting a message in a channel when a new file is added to a SharePoint folder.

With the introduction of Copilot in Teams, you can get AI-generated summaries of meetings you missed, complete with action items, making it easier than ever to stay in the loop.

12. Access Features Suitable for Remote Working

Since 2020, Microsoft and other collaboration platforms have ensured that it is the best tools to use for remote workers.

With meetings being scheduled with ease and the platform itself being available on multiple devices, you can see how effective communication in Teams is built for remote project management.

Turning Team Collaboration into a Competitive Advantage

Microsoft Teams centralizes project communication, collaboration, and reporting within Microsoft 365. Teams is especially effective in hybrid environments, where consistent communication, shared access to information, and real-time task visibility are essential.

Features like channel organization, document pinning, and AI-driven workflows make Teams adaptable without becoming complex. If you’re managing day-to-day communication or coordinating cross-functional projects, Teams provides the foundation for a focused, connected workspace.

How BrightWork Helps You Collaborate Better

BrightWork brings structure to Microsoft Teams with standardized project and portfolio management in Microsoft 365. BrightWork 365 connects task tracking, project requests, templates, and dashboards in a single system, helping teams move quickly from planning to execution.

Project managers and team leads can assign work, monitor progress, and stay aligned, all within the Teams experience. From simple task coordination to full project oversight, BrightWork transforms Microsoft 365 into a cohesive project management solution.

Book a BrightWork 365 PPM demo to see how Teams integrates with our SharePoint-based project portfolio management solution.

Pairing Power BI with SharePoint transforms project and portfolio reporting into a structured, real-time experience inside your Microsoft 365 environment.

BrightWork enables project managers, executives, and PMOs to move from reactive updates to proactive planning; all within a familiar Microsoft toolset.

For companies managing projects in SharePoint, this combination offers a straightforward way to get better visibility and control. Project managers, executives, and PMOs can shift from putting out fires to planning ahead, all inside the familiar Microsoft ecosystem.

This article explains how the Power BI and SharePoint integration solves common reporting problems and gives you a complete picture of project health.

Why Traditional SharePoint Reporting Creates Bottlenecks

Many project managers and PMOs who rely solely on SharePoint struggle with limitations in reporting visibility and control.

These issues can slow down decisions and hide important performance trends by introducing the following roadblocks:

Manual Data Consolidation

Project information is often scattered across multiple sites, lists, and spreadsheets. Teams must manually copy and paste data, which consumes valuable hours that could be better spent on project strategy.

Lack of Real-Time Visibility

Reports are typically snapshots pulled weekly or monthly, meaning decisions are based on outdated information. This delay leads to slow reactions to new risks and missed opportunities to correct a project’s course.

Difficulty in Portfolio Oversight

Getting a clear, combined view of the entire project portfolio is a constant struggle. This makes it challenging to assess portfolio health, identify dependencies, or analyze resource allocation at a high level without extensive manual work.

Unifying Project Data with Power BI and SharePoint

Integrating Power BI with SharePoint, both Server and Online, is a strong solution to these reporting headaches. It creates a single source of truth by linking dynamic visualization tools directly to your project data.

Instead of exporting data, this direct connection enables continuous reporting. BrightWork’s pre-configured Power BI Pack ensures SharePoint On-Premises users can centralize project data without custom builds.

Centralizing Project Information

This integration works by connecting Power BI directly to your SharePoint lists and libraries. These lists become a live data source for all your project and portfolio details, from task deadlines and budgets to risks and issues.

Instead of exporting data, the connection gives you direct and continuous access. For organizations using SharePoint on-premises, the BrightWork Power BI pack for SharePoint On-Premises provides a pre-configured solution to set up this central data hub without a lot of setup time.

From Static Lists to Interactive Visuals

SharePoint lists are great for collecting data, but they don’t offer much for visualization. Microsoft Power BI turns this raw data into rich, interactive dashboards. Users can go beyond static tables and work with dynamic charts, graphs, and maps.

These visuals enable stakeholders to filter information, drill down into specific details, and view project metrics from different angles. This interaction helps find trends and insights that would stay hidden in a standard list.

Automating Report Generation

A huge benefit of the Power BI and SharePoint integration is automated report generation. You can schedule data refreshes at set times, such as daily or hourly.

For SharePoint Server, the On-Premises Data Gateway encrypts data during transfer to Power BI. This ensures on-prem data remains secure and up to date within cloud-hosted dashboards.

The BrightWork Power BI Pack – A Ready-to-Use Solution

BrightWork Power BI Pack eliminates the need to build custom dashboards from scratch. With ready-to-use templates for SharePoint On-Premises or Microsoft 365, teams can start visualizing project and portfolio data instantly.

It includes a set of ready-to-use dashboards and reports made specifically for project and portfolio management in SharePoint.

Pre-Built Project Dashboards

The pack comes with a collection of Power BI Reports designed for common project management needs. These dashboards are ready to go, letting project managers quickly visualize project status, timelines, and workloads.

This means you can skip a long development process and get immediate value for your project team.

Comprehensive Portfolio Reports

For PMO leads and senior executives, the pack offers reports that give a high-level view of the entire project portfolio. These dashboards pull together data from all projects, making it simple to:

• Monitor overall portfolio health
• Track performance against strategic goals
• Spot system-wide issues

 

This complete oversight supports better strategic planning and resource management across the company.

Customizable to Your Needs

Every organization has its own reporting needs. While the BrightWork Power BI Pack is ready to use out of the box, it is also fully customizable.

With help from our expert Power BI consultants, the dashboards and reports can be adjusted to match your specific business processes, KPIs, and branding. This flexibility ensures the solution perfectly fits your organization’s requirements.

Visualizing Project Health and Timelines

The BrightWork pack provides specific project-level dashboards that give project managers the detailed views they need. These visualizations make it easy to:

• Track progress
• Spot potential problems
• Communicate status to stakeholders

 

Each dashboard surfaces key insights with drill-down filters, helping project managers answer critical questions around budget, schedule, risk, and project health.

The Project Timeline Dashboard

This dashboard shows a clear, Gantt-like view of the project schedule. It visualizes important tasks, milestones, and their dependencies over time.

Project managers can quickly see the critical path, find potential scheduling conflicts, and track progress against the plan. This visual layout of the schedule is much easier to interpret than a simple list of dates.

The Project Status Report

The Project Status Report is a one-page summary that shows the overall health of a project. It brings together primary performance indicators (KPIs) for budget, schedule, workload, and open issues into a single, easy-to-read format.

This report is perfect for stakeholder updates because it gives a quick but thorough assessment of where the project is, without getting lost in the details.

The Active and Late Items View

To keep things moving, project managers need to stay on top of overdue tasks. This report helps by highlighting all active and late work items across their projects.

It lets managers quickly see which tasks are falling behind and find potential bottlenecks before they affect the schedule. This focused view supports proactive problem-solving and helps keep the project on track.

Achieving High-Level Portfolio Control

The BrightWork Pack includes interactive portfolio dashboards that allow executives to filter by department, status, or strategic alignment, making performance reviews faster and more informed.

The portfolio-level dashboards in the BrightWork pack give leadership the consolidated oversight needed for effective governance and smart decisions.

The Portfolio Timeline View

Much like the project timeline, this report shows the schedules of all projects in the portfolio on one timeline. This combined view is great for spotting dependencies between projects and potential resource conflicts.

For example, leaders can see if multiple high-priority projects have major deliverables due at the same time, allowing them to make adjustments ahead of time.

The Consolidated Portfolio Status

This dashboard rolls up the health indicators from every project into a single, high-level summary. It gives executives a quick read on the overall health of the portfolio, using color-coded indicators for status, budget, and schedule.

This allows leaders to instantly spot projects that are in trouble and need attention, without having to dig through individual reports.

Filtering for Specific Insights

The real advantage of these portfolio dashboards is their interactivity. Executives and PMO leads can filter the reports to get specific information.

For instance, before a departmental review, a director can filter the portfolio dashboard to show only projects in their department. Project manager, status, or any other custom metric can also filter dashboards.

This makes strategic meetings more productive and data-driven. To see these features in action, watch our on-demand webinar, SharePoint Project Reporting with Power BI.

How to Embed Power BI Reports in Your SharePoint Site

Once your reports are ready, embedding them into a SharePoint page gives your team easy access. Displaying a report on modern SharePoint pages is a simple, three-step process:

1. Publish Your Report

After creating your report in Power BI Desktop, publish it to the Power BI Web Service. This action makes the report available online and provides the options needed for sharing and embedding.

2. Generate the Embed Code

In the Power BI Service, open the report and navigate to the File menu. Select “Embed report,” then choose the “SharePoint Online” option to create a secure URL for embedding.

3. Add the Web Part

On your SharePoint page, enter edit mode and add the “Power BI” web part. In the properties pane, paste the report URL you copied to display the interactive dashboard directly on the page.

Ensuring Your Project Data Remains Secure

Integrating important business platforms naturally raises questions about data security, particularly with sensitive project information. The SharePoint and Power BI integration is built with security in mind, respecting the permissions and controls you already have.

SharePoint Server Security Features

Your data’s first line of defense is the solid SharePoint Server security model. Permission levels control access to sites, lists, and items.

Power BI respects SharePoint’s native permission levels. Viewers only see data they are authorized to access, ensuring reports remain secure and compliant with Microsoft 365 governance standards.

Power BI’s Data Protection Layers

Power BI adds its own layers of protection. A main feature is row-level security (RLS), which lets you limit data access for certain users based on their roles.

For example, a project manager could be set up to see only their own projects in a portfolio dashboard. Additionally, Microsoft provides comprehensive Power BI security through data encryption at rest and in transit, all supported by the security of the Microsoft cloud.

Secure Data Gateway for On-Premises Data

For organizations using SharePoint Server, a secure connection to the cloud-based Power BI Service is vital. This is done using the On-Premises Data Gateway.

The gateway acts as a secure bridge, encrypting and transferring data between your on-premises SharePoint environment and the Power BI Service. It ensures your project data remains protected as it moves to the cloud for reporting.

Evolve Your Reporting with BrightWork 365

BrightWork 365 is a cloud-based project and portfolio management solution built entirely on Microsoft 365. It provides teams with a scalable, structured, and integrated reporting environment using familiar apps like Power BI and Microsoft Teams.

The Next Step in Project Management

BrightWork 365 is the next step in project and portfolio management, built entirely on the Microsoft 365 platform.

This brand new project and portfolio management solution called BrightWork 365 offers a modern, integrated experience for teams that want to get the most from their Microsoft investment.

It provides a structured yet flexible way to manage projects directly in your cloud environment.

Deeper Integration with Microsoft 365

Because BrightWork 365 lives inside Microsoft 365, it connects smoothly with the tools your team already uses every day. This includes deeper connections with:

• Microsoft Teams for collaboration
• Planner for task management
• Power Automate for workflow automation

 

This creates a single work environment where project management is a natural part of your team’s daily flow.

Get Started with a Free Template

Experience the BrightWork approach firsthand. See how structured templates can bring consistency and control to your projects.

Download a free SharePoint project management template to see how BrightWork simplifies SharePoint reporting.

Watch Our On-Demand Webinar

Learn more about optimizing your project management processes with powerful tools like Power BI and Power Apps.  Watch our Optimizing Project Management with Power BI & Power Apps Webinar to see data-driven project management in action.

Remote teams need a few tools to deliver projects successfully: task tracking, document management, and one place to communicate.

With these elements in place, it’s easier for remote teams to stay aligned, be productive, and collaborate.

In this article, we’ll look at practical ways to use Microsoft 365 for remote project teams, including the following:

• Task management with To Do, Planner, Lists, and Tasks for Teams
• Collaboration tools, including Teams, Sway, Stream, and Microsoft Loop
• Apps to support productivity and well-being while working remotely
• Review of BrightWork 365, a project and portfolio management solution

 

1. Personal and Team Task Management

It’s fair to say that there are many ways to manage tasks in Microsoft 365. The challenge is picking the right option for the job!

Microsoft is working towards a unified vision for tasks in Microsoft 365, based on three principles:

• Coherence – Task management will have a consistent experience across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
• Intelligence – Users can leverage intelligent services like the Microsoft 365 Graph or MyAnalytics to manage and prioritize work.
• Integration – Tasks are connected to one of two task-management apps: To Do or Planner. Tasks for Teams allows users to access both apps in one place.

 

Before we take a look at Microsoft 365 applications for task management, it’s worth noting:

• The applications are cloud-based and work across various devices. This ensures remote team members can stay on track at all times with access to up-to-date information.
• You can easily combine these applications with Power Automate workflows to save more time.

 

Personal: To Do

To Do manages individual tasks, both personal and professional. It replaces Wunderlist and syncs across iPhone, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Features include:

• Lists and groups for task organization.
• Prioritize tasks with the ‘My Day’ view.
• Check tasks assigned in To Do or Planner.
• Convert flagged emails into tasks.

 

Note: To Do replaces Outlook tasks for Microsoft 365 users. Task management for the desktop version of Outlook remains as is.

Team: Planner

Microsoft Planner is a visual task management application built on Office 365 groups. Using Planner, teams can plan and manage tasks as Kanban Boards with information on:

• The task owner.
• The task description.
• Start and the due date.
• Status (Not started, In progress, Complete).
• Priority (low, medium, urgent).
• Label (useful for filtering).
• A checklist, a means to decompose a task into smaller steps.
• Add attachments.

 

Managing Tasks and Views in Planner

Boards group tasks by bucket, such as project phase, workstream, or status. Once tasks are created, users can manage work in a few different ways:

• View tasks as boards or as a calendar (schedule).
• Drag and drop a task into different buckets as work progresses.
• Use the ‘filter’ option to view tasks by due date or label.
• Change the ‘group by’ view from ‘bucket’ to assigned to, progress, due date, or labels.
• Work in Microsoft Teams by adding Planner as a tab to the relevant channel.

 

Planner helps teams track work progress independently. Each plan serves as a roadmap for a project, helping your team quickly understand progress and how their tasks fit into the overall picture. With this information to hand, remote team members can work independently and stay on track.

Planner is very intuitive and requires little end-user training. The application is ideal for light projects. However, the application lacks key functionality such as subtasks, project dependencies, and cross-project reporting.

Team: Microsoft Lists

Microsoft Lists is a stand-alone application and extends SharePoint lists. The application can be used in Microsoft 365, SharePoint Online, and as a tab in Teams. With Lists, you can:

• Start lists from scratch, import Excel tables, or use templates like ‘Work Progress Tracker’.
• Choose views: Grid, List, Gallery, Calendar.
• Customize lists with conditional formatting, rules, columns, and views.

 

Team: Power Platform

You can improve task management by using the Power Platform. Power Automate lets you create automated workflows connecting different apps, such as sending a Teams notification when a Planner task is marked complete.

Power BI for project reporting provides data visualization tools. Teams can build custom reports and dashboards that pull data from Planner, Lists, and other sources for a clear overview of project progress.

One Tool: Tasks for Teams

Getting to grips with different task management options has become much easier with the recent rollout of Tasks for Teams.

This feature brings tasks from To Do and Planner together, allowing users to manage their tasks in one place – Microsoft Teams.

Tasks are grouped as My Tasks (To Do, Outlook, and tasks assigned to you in Planner) and Shared plans (Planner plans).

The Lists view allows users to edit and update tasks in bulk, a feature not available in To Do or Planner.

2. Collaboration and Content-Sharing

Good remote collaboration requires a central hub for files and communication. Before exploring specific communication tools, it is important to set up a system for file management.

Tools like SharePoint and OneDrive help with this. SharePoint often works as the company intranet, giving project teams centralized document libraries. OneDrive offers personal cloud storage that connects with the entire system.

Microsoft Teams

From real-time chat to video meetings and document management through SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams is built for remote project management. It consists of:

1. Individual teams, a collection of people, conversations, and files, for example, a project.
2. Channels within a team. These are typically focused on a particular topic within a project.

 

A Central Collaboration Hub

Think of Microsoft Teams as a hub for collaboration, tasks, and documents with features such as:

• Real-time chat and messaging
• Video conferencing and meetings for up to 300 people
• Live events for up to 20,000 people
• Document storage
• Real-time co-editing
• Search
• Whiteboards
• Public or private channels
• Robust security and privacy capabilities.

 

Teams suits daily stand-ups, planning, feedback, and onboarding. It also supports asynchronous communication, allowing members to read and reply at their convenience.

Removing the need to reply instantly reduces disruptions and creates an opportunity for everyone to get involved.

Remote Communication with Teams

Here are three easy ways to use Teams for asynchronous communication:

1. Keep important communication open and accessible with group Chats. Use one-to-one chats for individual or sensitive discussions.
2. Replace weekly status meetings with a weekly update in Chat. Ask team members to post a short update about completed and updated work, and any blockers they need help with.
3. Organize communication by topic or project area using Channels. This helps everyone find information quickly.

 

As you’ll see below, combining Teams with Sway and Stream creates more opportunities to keep your team informed and engaged.

Sway

Microsoft Sway is a free content creation tool for building and sharing newsletters, presentations, reports, and more!

It’s one of the leading free PowerPoint alternatives with interactive content. Features include:

• Templates and drag-and-drop editing.
• Import content from OneDrive, OneNote, and YouTube.
• Mobile-optimized and accessible layouts: Vertical, Horizontal, Slideshow.
• Add forms for polls and feedback.

 

While Sway does not integrate directly with Teams, you can add a link to Sway as a tab in the relevant team.

Stream

Microsoft Stream is a video platform for creating and sharing videos and is used to record video meetings in Teams.

It is the default video platform for Microsoft 365, unifying navigation, permissions, and governance, storing files on OneDrive and SharePoint. Stream allows users to:

• Create a company-wide channel and channels for individual teams.
• Customize a channel with company branding.
• Hold live events.
• Upload and share recordings.
• Store and share Teams recordings.
• Add the Stream App to Teams.

 

Stream videos will be treated as any other file in Office, helping users to discover, share, and manage videos easily. Access is based on Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), keeping your content secure.

Stream supports onboarding, updates, feedback, and knowledge sharing across time zones. Other features include transcription, facial detection, noise suppression, chaptering, analytics, and embedded forms.

Dynamic Co-Creation with Microsoft Loop and Visuals

For real-time brainstorming and co-creation, Microsoft Loop provides flexible collaborative workspaces. The platform’s main feature is its interactive components, like tables, task lists, and notes.

You can create these components in one app, for example, a Teams chat, and paste them into another while they stay synchronized. To support this work, remote teams often need to create visual assets.

Clipchamp offers accessible video editing, and Microsoft Designer helps generate professional graphics, which are both important for clear communication.

3. Productivity, Wellbeing, and Employee Experience

So far, we’ve looked at task management for individuals and teams and how to stay connected with remote team members using engaging content.

With these apps in use, collaboration and communication will be easier, clearer, and centralized in one place. Your team will have access to everything they need to complete tasks and support one another.

Now, it’s time to look at another important area for remote management: well-being. Constant change, working from home, worrying news cycles – these take a toll.

The Microsoft Viva suite is an employee experience platform that supports connection, purpose, growth, and wellbeing directly within the flow of work.

MyAnalytics and Viva Insights

MyAnalytics, now a part of Viva Insights, uses AI to track work patterns like emails and meetings. It helps users:

• Find and eliminate distractions.
• Attend the right meetings.
• Automatically set aside ‘focus time’.
• Log off during personal time.

 

The MyAnalytics dashboard is divided into four sections, each packed with practical tips relevant to that area:

1. Focus shows how much uninterrupted time you have each week.
2. Wellbeing tracks ‘Quiet Days, days without any major activity outside your working hours.
3. Network surfaces information about your network.
4. Collaboration shows how much time you spend in meetings, emails, chats, and calls.

 

Personal and Team Wellbeing

Viva Insights helps you improve your weekly calendar by reducing the number of meetings you attend or setting aside time blocks to tackle emails.

These personalized suggestions remain private and are not shared with managers or team members.

You can also work with your team to ensure they have enough time within working hours to complete their tasks and are respectful of each other’s free time.

Access your Viva dashboard through a browser, the Microsoft 365 app launcher, or within Outlook by connecting the two apps.

Expanding Employee Engagement

The Viva suite includes other modules to improve employee engagement. Viva Learning gathers training content from different sources into Teams, which makes upskilling more accessible for remote staff.

Microsoft Forms offers a simple method for gathering team feedback, conducting polls, or running quick surveys to monitor team morale and identify project challenges.

Depending on your Microsoft 365 subscription, additional features for Outlook (web) include setting an email delivery time and task reminders. You’ll find more details in this Sway experience from Microsoft .

4. Supercharge Your Team with AI and Copilot

A major development in Microsoft 365 is its integration of AI. Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant embedded across apps like Teams, Outlook, and Word. For remote project teams, this means significant productivity improvements.

For instance, Copilot can create meeting summaries from a Teams call you missed or help with content creation by drafting project updates and emails.

It also enables an intelligent search that finds files and information by understanding context across your Microsoft 365 environment.

Managing Projects with BrightWork 365 for Microsoft 365

BrightWork 365 is a project and portfolio management solution, deployed on the Microsoft Power Platform in your Microsoft 365 cloud environment.

It brings Teams, Power BI, and Power Automate into a single collaborative hub, allowing teams to work more flexibly. With project templates, status reports, and portfolio dashboards, senior executives have complete visibility across projects, programs, and portfolios.

As BrightWork 365 is configurable, organizations can combine their processes and ways of working with the Microsoft 365 apps commonly used by their teams. To book your free custom demo of BrightWork 365, please contact our team .

In order for a project to be successful, project stakeholders need to know what is happening at all times.

From team members knowing their work and responsibilities to senior management requiring updates on overall project status, communicating project information clearly is important every step of the way.

Communication Challenges in Projects

Without open, accurate, and consistent project communication, it’s almost guaranteed your project will fail… or at least run into some major problems along the way.

These days, there are so many collaboration tools designed to facilitate proper project communication. But naturally enough, our favorite here at BrightWork is Microsoft 365, a powerful platform for business productivity platform.

Using Microsoft 365 and BrightWork 365 for Effective Project Reporting – 6 Ways

If you’re overseeing multiple initiatives, our Project Portfolio Management solution gives you enterprise-level governance and reporting alongside Microsoft 365.

Here are six ways you can use Microsoft 365 and BrightWork 365 to communicate project information the right way, at the right time, and to the right audience.

1. Notify team members of responsibilities

Planning is the first step in any project. Once you map out the steps needed to reach your destination, you must inform team members about their roles and responsibilities.

Some ways to communicate these responsibilities to the team include:

• Hold a project kick-off meeting to review the plan, key milestones, and roles.
• Use a collaborative project site for task management. Assign work to team members with integrated tools like SharePoint Lists. For more structured planning, consider Planner integration to visualize workflows and deadlines.
• Create “My Work” reports to help team members find, do, and update their project tasks in Power Platform
• Use scheduled emails to share automated reminders for upcoming or late work – more on this below.

2. Centralize project reports

Your project team is busy and likely working on multiple projects. Likewise, stakeholders are often involved with numerous projects and portfolios.

Team members and stakeholders need a single, centralized location to stay informed about the project’s progress. If everyone is using different work tools and places to store documents, easy project communication is impossible.

Impact of Poor Communication on Project Transparency

According to a survey by Planview, poor communication and the lack of an effective online project management tool are among the top collaborative challenges facing teams. The survey also found that 34% said it takes too long to report project status.

This situation can only lead to poor communication and a lack of transparency around project tasks. A collaborative site in SharePoint solves these communication challenges by bringing all project information, tasks, and reports into one single location.

Power BI reporting in Microsoft 365 options include tasks, issues, risks, and work. You can customize the project homepage with metrics tiles and other reports to highlight key information about your project.

Visual Reporting

Timeline views like the Gantt help to present complex information for ‘at-a-glance’ updates.

The point here is that all project team members and stakeholders know where to go to understand the big picture and find their piece of the puzzle.

Beyond Storage: Building Smart Document Libraries

Centralization means more than having a single storage location. It is about ensuring information integrity and findability.

Using SharePoint document libraries well is an important step. Features like version control prevent miscommunication by making sure everyone works from the latest file. Applying metadata and consistent naming conventions makes documents searchable and easy to identify.

This structured approach also enables real-time co-authoring, which allows multiple team members to work on a single document without creating conflicting copies.

3. Deliver program visibility

Busy stakeholders often want high-level reports about project portfolios, with the option to drill down into problematic projects.

A simple way to deliver this requirement and streamline communication is to add traffic light indicators, R-A-G status, and one-liners about the project using portfolio management templates.

Your stakeholders can see enough information about a project without digging into the nitty-gritty details all the time. For dynamic, real-time insights, connect your SharePoint data to create interactive Power BI dashboards that offer a visual and drill-down-capable view of project health.

4. Use workflow automation for timely updates

An easy way to keep your team up-to-date is to create tailored reports for specific audiences, which are automatically emailed out at pre-set intervals.

Modern process automation can do more than deliver simple reports. With tools like Power Automate workflows, you can automate approvals on important documents. You can also send custom notifications when a task status changes.

This automation ensures stakeholders get relevant information when they need it, without manual effort. For example:

• Team members can share the ‘My Work’ report every Monday morning to help the team plan their tasks for the week.
• If you have a regular meeting with a project sponsor, you can share a recent status report in advance.
• Schedule daily key reports about tasks and issues directly to your inbox, so you can monitor the project without constant check-ins.

 

5. Connect Microsoft Teams for enhanced collaboration

With collaborative tools like Microsoft Teams for project management, project teams are more connected than ever.

In addition to creating teams and channels, your team can use:

• Real-time chat and messaging
• Video meetings and live events
• Document storage
• Real-time co-editing
• Integration with third-party apps and connectors
• Search
• Public or private channels.

 

A benefit of using Microsoft Teams is the ability to add links to external sites, such as a SharePoint project site, as a tab in a team.*

*Note: There is no direct integration between BrightWork 365 and Microsoft Teams.

6. Ensure the Right Audience with Granular Permissions

Good communication also means getting information to the right people while protecting sensitive data.

Microsoft 365’s permissions system lets you implement strict access controls to ensure only authorized individuals can view or edit specific content. This is essential for securing confidential documents.

You can simplify this process by creating user groups for different roles, like the core team, stakeholders, or executives.  This method ensures that communications are targeted, which reduces noise and keeps everyone focused on relevant information.

Drive Better Outcomes with Structured Project Communication

Project communication depends on clear responsibilities, real-time visibility, and secure access to key information.

Microsoft 365 and Power Platform provide a solid foundation for collaboration, but without structure, teams often struggle with siloed updates, inconsistent reporting, and misaligned expectations.

BrightWork 365 builds on Power Platformwith pre-configured templates, role-based dashboards, and automated reports that make it easy to communicate clearly at every level.

If you’re ready to simplify communication, reduce manual updates, and improve project outcomes, we’re here to help.

Everyone involved in a project needs to see slightly different information based on their specific roles and responsibilities.

A PMO (Project Management Office), for example, has different reporting needs than a project team member. For this reason, a successful Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution, such as Power Platform, depends on tailored reporting.

Role-Based Project Management Reports

Team members prefer to focus on their tasks on a particular project, while senior executives will hone in on the high-level status of many projects.

Make role-based project reports useful to everyone involved by getting rid of clutter and providing them with the right types of project reports, with relevant data, at the right time.

For the rest of this post, we will look at three main roles in a project team and the key role-based project reports each audience is likely looking for.

3 Project and Portfolio Reports on Power Platform

Effective reporting is essential at every level of project and portfolio management. Different roles require tailored insights to make informed decisions and keep work on track.

The following three types of reports on Power Platform address the specific needs of senior executives, project managers, and team members.

1. Senior Executives

Senior leaders must monitor multiple projects without switching among emails, spreadsheets, and meetings. They need a consolidated view that aligns every initiative with business objectives. Without a centralized dashboard, executives receive inconsistent updates too late to act.

High-Level Portfolio Dashboards

With BrightWork 365, senior executives get more visibility with real-time high-level portfolio dashboards across any combination of projects or portfolios.

Executives see a consolidated status snapshot, can drill into details, or switch to a roadmap view to visualize timelines and dependencies. These views offer a high-level perspective of the entire project pipeline to visualize timelines and dependencies.

Power BI for Portfolio Status Reporting

BrightWork 365 extends portfolio reporting on Power Platform even further with Power BI dashboards.

The BrightWork 365 Power BI dashboard is a pre-built report with dashboards for project and portfolio managers. It serves as a portfolio status report template for consistent updates.

The pack connects to the three BrightWork project data sources – Project Cache, Work Cache, and Project Status Report Cache – and other data sources as needed.

The BrightWork Power BI pack includes:

• Portfolio dashboards with a roll-up summary of all project sites. The dashboard offers four filtering options: “Project Status,” “By Project Manager,” “By Project type,” “By Department,” and “By Priority.
• Portfolio timeline, a Gantt view of all project sites. Drill down by year, quarter, month, week, and day.
• Project and Task Timeline, a Gantt view of projects and tasks. Filter the data by project name, project type, project manager, and task owner.
• Work Reports allow project managers to check the status of tasks, risks, issues, and goals.
• The Status Report Dashboard includes weekly Status updates, overall status summary, highlights, lowlights, and next steps. Project management teams rely on this dashboard, which can be customized to serve as an executive project status report template.
• The Issue Report helps project managers to get further information on issues, including the task owner.

Resource Utilization and Capacity Planning

In addition to project status, executives are concerned with how resources are used. Reports that visualize resource allocation and assist with capacity planning support strategic decision-making.

These insights help identify potential resource constraints before they impact the portfolio and can even include a resource histogram to show workload distribution over time.

2. Project Managers

The responsibility of a project manager is to deliver the project successfully. A key part of this is reporting project progress to stakeholders.

Project managers need a clear set of project management reports to track the status of a project and re-plan easily.

Tracking KPIs Across the Project Life Cycle

When it comes to tracking progress, project managers need a set of dashboards showing items like overdue work, issues, and risks.

These dashboards track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as progress against milestones, the status of key deliverables, and any plan-actual variance. A good project tracking report helps manage the project throughout its entire life cycle.

These project dashboards should be easily editable, so the project manager can re-plan to keep the project running smoothly. This is especially important for managing scope creep and tracking formal change requests against the original project charter.

Efficient Project Report Management

Project managers also need to save time when creating reports. An efficient project reporting process is necessary.

A project manager should be able to create a status report within 3 to 5 minutes, or they just won’t bother. This type of project report is essential for timely communication.

With BrightWork, updates from the project status report automatically roll up to the project homepage and portfolio dashboards for increased visibility.

3. Team Members

Team members sometimes struggle to understand what the point of the project is and what is expected of them. Often, they have no easy way to keep track of their assigned work and when it is due. This is especially challenging for individuals who are juggling multiple projects and day-to-day tasks.

For team members, reports should support their three primary responsibilities on a project:

• View all tasks assigned to them across projects
• See upcoming deadlines and track overdue work
• Update task progress and flag risks or issues immediately

 

Simplifying Tasks with ‘My Work’ Reports

A “My Work” dashboard delivers a focused, actionable task list with filters for Open Work, Due Soon, and Overdue Work. Simple update forms ensure prompt, consistent status reporting.

It’s also important that team members can easily update the progress on a project, and more importantly, flag a risk or issue as soon as it arises. This is a simple but direct way of reporting project status from the ground up, which can inform formal change requests if needed.

Make Project Data Work for Every Audience

Having accurate and up-to-date project management reports supports informed decisions at every level. If you want stakeholders to read reports and act on the information, consider tailoring different types of project management reports for different audiences.

See BrightWork 365 in Action

To see how BrightWork 365 can improve project management reporting, watch our free video demo.

In just 20 minutes, you’ll see key BrightWork 365 features in action, like:

• Project Request Management
• Real-time portfolio dashboards
• Flexible project and portfolio templates
• Automated reporting
• Collaborative team sites.

I recently read that ~1.145 trillion MB of data is created per day as of 2025.

Whilst that number is astonishing in itself, I was struck by another thought: how much data do we consume and process every day?

At work, how much time do we spend gathering data from multiple sources before trying to glean some useful insights from these mismatched sources?

As project managers, the answer is simple – too much time! Tasks, budgets, risks, issues, resources; every element of a project generates data that should be tracked and analyzed.

Transforming Project Analytics

Without business intelligence software or a background in statistics, delivering reliable, actionable insights to drive projects forward is a daunting task. This is the perfect scenario to get started with Microsoft Data Analytics.

That’s where Power BI comes in. It enables anyone to collect and analyze data, transforming it into engaging visualizations without needing coding or statistical expertise.

This guide covers the basics of Power BI, including key concepts, Power BI Desktop, and Power BI Service, making your initial Power BI getting-started experience a smooth one.

What is Microsoft Power BI?

Microsoft defines Power BI as a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that transform unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. It imports data from multiple sources, including SharePoint and Excel.

End-users can easily generate rich reports and dashboards from that data and share these reports with their team. The goal is to find, surface, and act on business insights.

Power BI is part of the Microsoft Power Platform, completing the task of ‘Analyze’ within the ‘Analyze, Act, Automate’ approach. Many users find that after mastering data analysis in Power BI, getting started with Microsoft Power Automate is a logical next step to automate workflows based on their data insights.

Key Power BI Components Explained

As mentioned above, Power BI is a collection of services and apps.

The platform is available in three formats:

• Power BI Desktop – Used to create and share reports.
• Power BI Service – Used to view reports online.
• Power BI Mobile Apps – Used to access reports and dashboards on Windows, iOS, and Android.

 

There are two main end-user roles for Power BI:

• Consumer or user – An individual who uses Power BI Service in a browser to view reports and complete light editing on datasets.
• Designer – An individual, often a business analyst, who creates and shares reports using Power BI Desktop.

 

We’ll review the desktop and cloud offerings further below.

Power BI relies on numerous services to import and transform data and create visualizations.

If you use Excel, you will be familiar with many of these concepts and services. However, Power BI can handle larger datasets than Excel and provides a wider range of visualizations.

Power Query for Data Transformation

Power Query is the engine for importing data and transforming (cleaning) data for processing.

Data is imported through a simple interface and transformed using the ‘Power Query’ editor.

Power Pivot for Data Modeling

Power Pivot is used for creating data models, which involve relationships between tables, and performing calculations.

Calculations use DAX – Data Analysis Expressions – to interrogate data. DAX statements are similar to Excel functions. Power BI includes over 200 DAX functions such as sum, average, max, and count.

Power View for Data Visualization

Power View delivers data visualization in various Microsoft applications, including Power BI, SharePoint, and Excel.

In addition to out-of-the-box visualizations such as bar charts, Gantt charts, KPIs, and tables, additional visualizations are available in AppSource.

Reports and Dashboards in Power BI

Visualizations are used in both reports and dashboards in Power BI.

A Power BI report refers to a collection of visuals and can span multiple pages. Reports connect to one dataset or data model only.

In contrast, a Power BI dashboard is a one-page summary of your data, with visualizations (tiles pinned to the dashboard by the report designer). You can create your own or use pre-configured Power BI dashboards to get started faster.

Each tile links to an underlying report, making it easy to drill down for more detail as needed. A dashboard can contain links to multiple reports, providing a high-level view of your data in one place.

Power Map for Geospatial Data

This is a useful way to display geospatial data, for example, office locations, on an interactive map.

Power Q&A for Natural Language Queries

Powered by AI, users can simply type questions about their data in the Power BI interface (Power BI Service).

Uses and Benefits of Power BI

The use cases of Power BI depend on organizational requirements. With its global adoption, you’ll find communities and resources in many languages, with users searching for terms like ‘reportes en Power BI’ in Spanish or ‘dalam Power BI’ in Indonesian.

At a high level, Power BI:

• Enables data analysis with connections to multiple data sources.
• Allows users to combine these data sources into a single report for in-depth insights.
• Generates engaging, interactive visualizations with a few clicks.
• Allows users to filter data and create personalized views without changing the underlying dataset.
• Facilities collaboration with comments and sharing.

 

Power BI for Project Management

In the context of project management, Power BI simplifies and enhances 7 benefits of project reporting for managers, teams, and senior executives.

Instead of searching through sites, emails, and spreadsheets, the project team can easily track performance in real-time dashboards.

Power BI dashboards give senior managers and PMOs leads visibility into:

• Current projects within the organization.
• Portfolio timeline with filters for year, quarter, month, week, and day.
• Resource allocation, including project managers.
• Key project metrics.
• Overdue projects.
• Risks and Issues.

 

A portfolio Gantt chart with BrightWork and Power BI

Similarly, project managers can track:

• The project timeline
• Active items and tasks
• Project status reports
• Issues and risks.

 

Power BI Desktop

Power BI Desktop is a free application that installs directly onto your computer, making it easy for new users to get started. You can download from Microsoft or within Power BI Service.

Think of the application as an authoring tool, used to create and publish reports. Designers use Power BI Desktop to import, transform, analyze, and visualize data using the components outlined in the previous section.

Power BI Desktop has three main views:

• Report – Build reports and visuals. This page remains blank until the first visualization is added.
• Data – Transform data using Query Editor.
• Model – Build relationships between tables with a drag-and-drop interface.

 

Preparing Your Data with Power Query

Before you can create visualizations, you must first connect to and prepare your data. Using the Power Query Editor in Power BI Desktop, you can transform data to meet your needs. This process, often called data shaping, involves several steps.

You can shape data by removing unnecessary columns or rows, changing data types (e.g., from text to number), and splitting columns. For more complex scenarios, you might need to combine data from multiple sources.

Power Query provides powerful tools to do this, such as the ability to merge queries that share a common column, similar to a SQL join, ensuring a clean and efficient dataset for analysis and data cleansing.

Building a Data Model

Once your data is clean, the next step is to build a data model. This happens in the Model view of Power BI Desktop. Here, you create relationships between your different data tables.

Defining the correct cardinality (e.g., one-to-one, one-to-many) for these relationships is important for accurate reporting. This collection of tables, relationships, and calculations forms your semantic model (the modern term for a Power BI dataset).

Within the model, you can also use DAX to create calculated columns that add new, derived information to your tables, such as concatenating a first and last name into a full name.

How to Build and Publish a Report

With a solid data model in place, you can start to build reports in Report view. Drag fields onto the canvas and use the visualizations pane to choose charts (bar, line, map, etc.).

After creating your visuals, publish to the Power BI Service. From there, it’s easy to share your work with colleagues and stakeholders, allowing them to view and interact with the report.

Using the Power BI Cloud-Based Service

Power BI Service is a cloud-based application for consumers who receive and interact with reports and dashboards. Users must have a license to access its features:

• A free license allows users to work on personal reporting and visualizations in the ‘My Workspace’ area. Users can also view any reports shared with them.
• A Power BI Pro license is required to publish content to other workspaces and share dashboards ($9.99 per user per month).

 

The platform organizes content into ‘workspaces’, which link to dashboards, reports, and datasets. It’s easy to find content quickly on the homepage. Add your favorite apps and workspaces, use ‘Recents’, or use the powerful Power BI search engine to find a dashboard.

Power BI Service supports light data editing and collaboration via comments on reports and dashboards. To import data, use the ‘Get Data’ to import data from your organization, online services such as SAP, files, and databases.

Note that if you opt to import local files, choose OneDrive or SharePoint as a source. Files stored locally will not update automatically.

Creating Your First Dashboard

One of the primary functions of the Power BI Service is to create a dashboard. Unlike multi-page reports, dashboards are single-page canvases that tell a story with important visualizations. The process starts with a report.

When you find a visual you want to highlight, you hover over it and click the pin visual icon. This action allows you to add the visual to a new or existing dashboard.

Each pinned visual appears on the dashboard as one of many tiles, which you can then resize and rearrange to create the perfect layout. You can also use the Q&A natural language feature directly on the dashboard to ask questions about your data and pin the resulting visual as a new tile.

Power BI for the Enterprise

While Power BI Desktop and Service are the most common components, enterprise environments often have additional requirements. For organizations that need to keep their data on-premises, Microsoft offers Power BI Report Server.

This solution provides on-premises reporting capabilities with a web portal where users can view and manage reports and KPIs. For specific formatting needs, such as invoices or operational reports, designers can create paginated reports, which offer pixel-perfect control over the layout.

Looking forward, Power BI is now a central part of Microsoft Fabric, an all-in-one analytics solution that integrates data engineering, data science, and business intelligence into a single, unified platform.

Simplifying Project Reporting with Brightwork 365

Microsoft Power BI empowers project teams to transform complex, scattered data into clear, actionable insights without requiring advanced technical skills.

BrightWork 365 builds on this foundation with tailored Power BI packs and integrated Microsoft 365 solutions that streamline reporting and collaboration across projects and portfolios.

If managing data and reporting feels overwhelming, BrightWork provides the expertise and tools to improve decision-making.

Your Next Steps with Power BI

Ready to take control of your project data? Contact us to discover how BrightWork can support your Power BI adoption and project management goals.

The free Power BI samples used in this article, along with practical training materials from Microsoft, are an easy way to simplify your analytics.

Multiple project deadlines, decision fatigue, and too much collaboration. Every day, we have to wade through information and distractions to get our core work done.

Some studies suggest that we process the equivalent of 174 newspapers’ worth of information on a daily basis, which can disrupt our focus, lead to poor decisions, and increase the risk of burnout.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could reclaim this lost time and focus on important tasks? Project management workflows, a way of completing tasks, can improve your productivity and keep projects moving with automation.

Keep reading to learn more about workflows and how to plan a workflow.

What is a Workflow?

A workflow is simply a way of getting tasks done in a logical sequence. Workflows guide a project through its entire lifecycle, from initiation and planning to execution and monitoring. You are likely using workflows every day, both inside and outside of work!

Workflow Visualization and Automation Principles

Workflows are typically presented as diagrams, linking small tasks together to achieve a final goal.

Henry Gantt invented workflows in the 1920s as a way of optimizing work. Gantt documented processes by asking three simple questions:

• What tasks were being done?
• Who was responsible for each task?
• How long did each task take?

 

The same principles apply to workflows today. Where possible, steps are automated. For example, you could create a workflow to send an email reminder when a task is overdue. This way, you can stay on top of work without having to check on progress and send manual emails constantly.

Common Project Workflow Examples

Here are a few common examples:

• An approval workflow for a new budget request.
• A content approval process to move a blog post from draft to published.
• A structured employee onboarding process for new team members.
• A hiring workflow to manage candidates from application to offer.

 

Workflows can take any length of time and can be carried out by one person or an entire team. It depends on the goal. The aim is always to move between steps efficiently, freeing up time and energy for important tasks.

Automated Task Reminder Workflow

Unlike a checklist, each part of the workflow must be connected to a previous step. Using the example of project tasks, let’s say you want to tackle overdue work quickly.

During project set-up, tasks with deadlines are assigned to team members. Each individual receives a notification email and a reminder email 24 hours before the task is due.

If this deadline passes without completing the task, another reminder email is sent to the assignee. This email is sent daily until the task is complete.

Once the task is finished, the workflow ends. You could also send automated notifications to your own inbox when a task is late and when the task is completed.

Components of a Workflow

Workflows consist of four elements. Let’s take a closer look at each component using the example of a late project task above.

• Actors – people or software responsible for the task. In this example, the failure to complete a task on time triggers an automated email.
• Activities – the task that is performed, often represented as a step. Here, this includes completing the task.
• Results – the desired outcome of each step, i.e., late tasks are finished.
• State – the movement between steps. In this case, the task moves from ‘due’ to ‘late’ and ‘complete’ with minimum effort.

 

Each step of a workflow has three parameters as follows:

• Input – the resources needed for a step.
• Transformation – what actually happens to the input, for example, working on the task.
• Output – the outcome of the step, which often acts as input to the next step.

 

3 Types of Workflows and Methodologies

There are also different types of workflows.

1. Process – A process workflow refers to predictable and repetitive tasks. The workflow has a clear path with few variations; for example, a project plan is either approved or rejected.
2. Case – A case workflow has an unclear path to conclusion, for example, a support ticket.
3. Project – Project workflows are similar to a process workflow, but with more flexibility to meet the needs of individual projects. These workflows help to drive the project forward.

 

These workflows are often applied within agile methodologies, such as Scrum and Kanban. Agile workflows prioritize flexibility and iterative progress.

In contrast, the more rigid waterfall methodology relies on a sequential workflow where each phase must be completed before the next begins.

Now that you know more about workflows, let’s look at the benefits of workflows for productivity and teamwork.

Why Should I Use Workflows?

A workflow is a framework for completing tasks the same way, every time.

Having a documented way of working keeps your team on the same page and eliminates bottlenecks.

Workers waste up to 3.5 hours every week trying to find information. Using workflows to hand over documents and tasks as needed can reclaim this time.

How Workflows Improve Efficiency and Collaboration

In fact, an individual workflow can save an organization up to three minutes. This small gain adds up over time!

Workflows save time by automating repetitive tasks that do not require decisions. They reduce errors and rework while collecting data quickly to support informed decision-making.

Workflows also standardize ways of working and help create a project communication plan that enhances collaboration within and between teams.

It also identifies and eliminates bottlenecks, clarifies task dependencies, and creates a baseline for continuous improvement.

Advantages of Using Workflows for Teams

Workflows are really powerful for project teams, helping to:

• Improve scheduling with clear insight into the duration of tasks.
• Increase stakeholder engagement with approval workflows and notifications.
• Increase collaboration with insight into individual responsibilities and progress.
• Quickly introduce new team members to the project.
• Create an audit trail for key decisions.
• Provide easy-to-follow instructions for tasks.
• Clarify hand-off points for tasks and documents.

 

With workflows running in the background for various tasks, you can focus on the project itself and deliver the expected results more smoothly.

The team will know what is expected of them, what they need to focus on, and what is automated.

Steps to Build an Effective Workflow

A workflow represents a business process, a way of working in your organization. A process defines all of the inputs needed for a task, such as data, reports, and decisions. A workflow is a sequential ordering of the tasks and is part of a process.

Before turning to software, you need to document the process you want to automate. Gather your team for a workshop to walk through the process from start to finish as many times as needed.

Use a whiteboard to draw and re-draw the process until everyone agrees on the steps. Focus on the current process, not the ideal one. In time, you can identify improvements, but you need to start with the ‘as-is’ state.

Important Elements to Document

Cover key elements like:

• The start and endpoint
• Inputs
• Outputs
• Key activities
• Task owners
• ‘What-if’ scenarios, for example, what if a developer is not available for a task?
• Documents associated with any steps.

 

Visualizing the Workflow

Once the as-is process is documented, it’s time to create a workflow diagram. While many flowchart tools are available, teams often use other visuals to manage work, such as a Kanban board to track task progression through stages, and a Gantt chart to visualize timelines and dependencies.

Shapes are frequently used to categorize elements of the process in a clear and easy-to-understand manner. The standardized system of symbols  used in Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) includes:

• A circle is used to mark an event, such as the start of the process.
• Rectangles indicate tasks.
• A diamond is a decision point.
• An arrow marks the flow or movement between tasks.

 

Here is a sample business process map from the BPMN site:

Keep diagrams simple. If one person can complete a task alone, use a single box to represent it. After creating the workflow, think about:

• Automating tasks using software.
• Removing unnecessary steps.
• Tasks that can be completed simultaneously.

 

Ask the team to review the final workflow before automating tasks with software.

Using Workflow Automation

With BrightWork’s SharePoint-based workflow management software, teams can implement their documented processes in minutes.

A great starting point is to use a pre-built workflow template for common processes, such as document approvals or task assignments.

This software can be configured to send out automated notifications for status updates or late tasks, ensuring everyone stays informed without manual intervention.

How BrightWork 365 Supports Smarter Project Workflows

Workflows are powerful productivity tools with significant benefits for project teams. With BrightWork 365, you can set up workflows quickly, automate notifications, track tasks, and streamline approvals.

Start simple by working with your team to identify important yet repetitive tasks that are ideal for automation. In time, add more complex workflows to improve task management and collaboration.

Contact us to learn how BrightWork can help your organization optimize workflows and boost productivity.