10 Must-Have Microsoft Teams Apps for Employee Engagement and Productivity
You technically can get by with using a “naked” version of Microsoft Teams, but why settle for less?
There are hundreds of apps for Microsoft Teams out there, and decision fatigue might deter you from even trying some of them. To help with indecisiveness and save you some time and money, we have created a top list of Microsoft Teams apps that boost productivity and drive employee engagement; some are free, others are affordable, but all of them are useful and fun!
In no particular order, we recommend you try some of the following apps for Teams:
- Vacation Tracker;
- Polly;
- Signeasy;
- Trivia;
- Mural;
- Bigin;
- Matter;
- Health Hero;
- Yammer;
- Nectar.
Vacation Tracker
Vacation Tracker is a complete leave-tracking solution for Microsoft Teams.
This efficient app eliminates spreadsheets and paperwork since all the functionalities are available through the Teams app. Employees can submit the time of request directly, via the bot, or through the Teams tab. Once they enter the PTO title, start and end dates, and reason for the request, and send it — managers and supervisors can approve or deny them with one click. This allows maximum transparency across teams.
Vacation Tracker also displays the remaining leave days, to prevent HRs and employees from going back and forth. Users can review the notifications, overview, or calendar tabs to stay up-to-date and oversee/ prevent overlapping vacations for critical team members.
Vacation Tracker has rich customization options and allows the admin to configure leave policies for different teams and locations, which is especially handy for the remote workforce and varying rules and regulations.
Admins can create custom, specific reports in a matter of seconds, and obtain the data for different time periods, locations, departments, or approval statuses.
Vacation Tracker costs $1/monthly, per user, with a $25 minimum; all plans have a 7-day free trial.
Polly
Polly lets you create surveys in Microsoft Teams channels and group chats fast: just type @polly to start.
It has 30+ templates and different kinds of questions: open-ended, multiple choice, and rating scales. Responses can be signed or anonymous, and Polly will provide voting analytics once the survey closes — with simple data that requires no downloads or spreadsheets. The survey results can be public or visible to the survey creator only.
Polly has plenty of customization options: you can create recurring surveys, schedule them, or enable survey comments so participants can debate and ask questions in the discussion board. You can also create quizzes and trivia games.
Polly has a free plan for up to 25 monthly responses; paid plans start at $49 per month. AgilePolly is a $3/month per-user variant built for asynchronous stand-ups and collaboration.
Source: Polly
Signeasy
Signeasy is a no-download solution for digital signatures. It works within the Microsoft Teams app and supports multiple document formats: Word, PDF, Excel, JPG, PNG, and more.
In addition to signatures, you can add initials, dates, text, checkmarks, and images. Signatures and initials can be drawn, typed out in different fonts, uploaded, or added from the library of pre-saved signatures and initials, with an option to pick a default.
Once signed, you can send the document by picking it up from the library or uploading it, and adding recipients’ emails. There’s an option to add a note for the recipients below. Requesting a signature works similarly: pick/upload the document, add the fields if necessary, and enter the emails.
Signeasy has a rich document template gallery for proposals, agreements, business plans, contracts, NDAs, and other document types.
Pricing starts at $10/month per user, and there’s a 14-day free trial.
Source: Signeasy
Trivia by Springworks
Trivia is an employee engagement app for virtual team bonding and break-time fun.
It has an impressive archive of games and quizzes across multiple categories: This-or-that, Emoji rebus, Pictionary, Hangman, Gotcha!, GIF Charades, and more. Custom quizzes are easy to create, and you can even use them to make onboarding more engaging with Internal Branding Quizzes.
Virtual Water Cooler is a feature you can use to start the watercooler chat; just pick a channel and choose the category, and Trivia Bot will automatically post a question for everyone to answer and debate over.
Trivia has a free-forever plan that allows 3 participants per game.
Source: Trivia by Springworks
Mural
Mural is a digital whiteboard app for real-time visual collaboration between remote teams and coworkers.
The Mural app for Microsoft Teams lets you add a digital canvas directly into channels, chats, video calls, and meetings. It comes with a built-in chat and a notification bot that notifies the participants they’re invited to join a Mural, or mentioned in the chat. Mural comes with its own voice call solution for quick talks.
The interface is intuitive and can be used as a personal/team dashboard, to brainstorm solutions, or prepare a presentation. You can visualize journeys with maps, diagrams, journeys, and workflows, and illustrate with sticky notes, text, images, and GIFs. A built-in timer ensures everyone keeps pace and stays focused.
Permissions are flexible: you can allow view-only, facilitator, and editing access.
Mural has a free-forever plan that comes with 3 Murals and unlimited members.
Source: Mural
Bigin by Zoho
Bigin is a small-business CRM that makes everything customer-related instantly accessible.
Bigin conveniently lays out customer details, contacts, deals, and pipelines in a Kanban-style dashboard, without leaving Microsoft Teams.
The main tab displays posts, files, notes, and the Bigin dashboard, and it can be filtered for easier use. The record cards on the board can be moved around with a drag-and-drop. Records in the pipeline can be created from scratch, edited, sorted, and moved throughout the pipeline. You can switch between multiple views, and customize the columns. The CRM template library covers multiple sales-focused use cases and team types.
Bigin has a messaging extension within Teams: it lets the users search and share the records with other team members.
Bigin is free for single users with up to 500 records, one pipeline, and 3 workflows; paid plans start at €7&month.
Source: Bigin by Zoho
Matter
Win rewards at work with Matter, an employee engagement app employees can use to exchange kudos and feedback.
Matter puts the main focus on employee appreciation: on Feedback Fridays (or other days you pick), the app automatically encourages the team members in a channel to give kudos and recognize others’ efforts. The app provides customizable templates for kudos.
Feedback surveys help coworkers send, receive, and request valuable suggestions, to discover weak spots and improve in a non-threatening atmosphere.
Matter lets you incentivize employee engagement with rewards. Coins are added to kudos and feedback, and employees who collect enough can redeem them for gift cards, charity donations, or other company rewards. The analytics will show the participation levels and top performers.
Pricing starts at $3/month per user, and there’s a 30-day free trial.
Source: Matter
Employee Wellness by Health Hero
Health Hero app supports employees’ physical health, fitness, and well-being. Encouraging your employees to be more active results in boosts productivity, and improves their mood and overall health, both mental and physical. At the same time, teamwork and competition strengthen workplace relations and improve employee engagement.
Users can log different types of physical activities, steps, and workouts, or team up and compete in customizable fitness challenges. Gamification makes fitness challenges more fun, and leaderboards show their status and progress.
Health Hero connects with popular fitness trackers and apps such as Apple Health, Fitbit, Peloton, Garmin, and more. The app is accessible on smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
Health Hero is free for up to 10 users; paid plans start at $2/month per employee.
Source: Health Hero
Yammer
Yammer Communities app serves as the company’s internal social network for knowledge sharing and relationship building.
Once you pin the app to the left side of the Teams interface, you can engage with coworkers in the similar way you would on, let’s say, LinkedIn: you can like, comment, and share posts by coworkers, watch live videos, and exchange messages. From your profile, you can start a discussion, ask a question, praise someone, or create a poll — posts are editable, too.
In addition to Yammer Community, you can add a specific topic to the Teams channel, and receive notifications when someone @mentions you or when there’s an announcement in your Yammer Community.
There’s a Yammer mobile app available for use on the go.
Yammer costs $10/month per user for Office 365 E1.
Source: Yammer
Nectar
Nectar is an employee recognition app for building a better workplace culture.
With Nectar, you can send shoutouts to coworkers and praise their effort easily: summon the bot by typing @nectarbot, mention a coworker, add a hashtag, and write a note specifying the reason for a shoutout. Add the Nectar points so recipients can collect and redeem them for rewards, and you can post a shoutout that others can see and react to.
Nectar allows you to create custom rewards, or pick an Amazon product, gift card, charity donation, or company swag.
The app allows you to automate milestone celebrations, birthdays, and anniversaries, automatically creating a post and allowing others to join with extra points and congratulations.
Creating challenges with rewards in Nectar gamifies employee engagement: customize it yourself, or use a pre-made challenge template.
Nectar costs $2.75/month, per user.
Source: Nectar
A journalist turned content writer – Anja uses her investigative skills to produce high-quality SaaS, Marketing, and HR content.
