A forward-thinking social organisation that challenges inequalities and delivers positive, lasting change, ForViva invests in projects that prevent homelessness, improve health & wellbeing, and create job opportunities.
The entire ForViva Group is united behind one shared vision: Improved lives. From the boardroom to the community centre its values of passion, openness, respect, and trust shine through.
High ideals indeed, and to be applauded. But when the coronavirus pandemic forced the lockdown, it presented a situation that could have seriously impeded ForViva’s ability to maintain its collective approach.
Addressing the challenge of staying connected and collaborating effectively while working remotely.
To ensure that all key staff could collaborate and continue to serve the many communities that rely on ForViva, and its subsidiaries; ForHousing and Liberty, it was looking to roll out Microsoft Teams to dozens of roles across the Group.
All well and good, and under normal circumstances we would have been happy to hold a group training session, but with social distancing in place it was agreed that the training had to take place remotely.
The irony of remotely training people on how to work remotely wasn’t lost on everyone involved. It also presented an extra layer of difficulty as we had to organise no less than 50 one-to-one sessions. But undeterred and with the assistance of ForViva’s management, we scheduled 6-7 individual trainings to take place every day over the period of a few weeks.
In order to facilitate these trainings, we first had to call in two of our senior technical engineers to undertake the initial implementation; configuring ForViva’s networks so that Teams was installed on a new VDI image and the Citrix platform was fully optimised.
We also had to migrate everyone’s individual profiles to FSlogix profiles using group policy to enable the optimisation of profiles on VDI environments. Finally, because we were moving ForViva onto a new desktop, we also upgraded their Microsoft Office applications to Microsoft365 (formerly Office365).
With the setup complete, we then methodically called each person in turn via the newly installed Teams and the training commenced.
The trainings in action.
While the logistics of conducting multiple one-to-one meetings were quite challenging, it also presented us with an opportunity to conduct individual sessions that could be tailored to the abilities of each person, and a great way of ensuring that every single user was set up correctly from all available devices.
Generally, we started by talking the user through the installation process on the devices they wished to use, before connecting them for the training session about Teams – via Teams!
This was followed by a brief introduction to the many features that Teams has to offer, then an explanation of how it can help to make working lives easier, especially under the current circumstances with so many people working remotely.
We then covered the basics, such as how to install, access and navigate around the app. From here we dived down into its many features, explaining how to chat to colleagues, use the instant messaging function, make an audio or video call, share screens, and transfer files. In addition, we made clear the difference between communicating person-to-person and group communications via the different internal teams.
To add to the flexibility and functionality of this increasingly popular collaboration tool, we also explained how to download and access the mobile app. And to complete the picture, we demonstrated how Teams integrates with Microsoft365 and provides direct access to the inclusive Microsoft Office online apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to name just a few).
“Quadris’ training helped our staff understand how to make the most of Microsoft Teams and smooth our transition to remote working.”
~ Mark Sullivan, Group ICT Director at ForViva.
Our support didn’t end with the training.
Even after the training sessions were completed, we held subsequent catch up sessions whenever required and helped to troubleshoot any problems that people encountered.
With the basics well and truly under their belt, the intuitive design of Teams meant that all the newly enrolled users could quickly pick up its many different facets, with support from Quadris available should anyone require further assistance.
Want to know how to make the most of Microsoft Teams?
To find out more about Microsoft Teams and how it can enable your workforce to communicate and collaborate more effectively, just pick a slot in the calendar and Peter will be happy to help. Alternatively, feel free to call 0161 537 4980 and ask for Peter Grayson or email peter.grayson@quadris.co.uk
