For a couple of years, our Glexen team has been involved in building a number of integrations and extensions for Microsoft Teams that connect various software to this platform including task management tools, source code repositories, scheduling software, and many more.
Industry: information technology
Team composition: 1 business analyst, 1 designer, 2-3 developers and 1 quality assurance engineer per integration
Time spent: 3-9 months per integration
Technologies: .NET, C#, ASP.NET, Nodejs, JavaScript, TypeScript, Reactjs, Azure
1. Why is it not enough to have just IT systems in the modern world? And how did striving for digital improvements with Glexen result in a 9% operational speed gain for one of our clients?
Do you have plans and initiatives you want to implement?, but it usually takes more time than planned to incorporate all of the ideas? Our customer has been facing significant challenges in communication and collaboration within their teams. The employees operate in isolated departments, resulting in a distinct lack of transparency and coordination across the entire organization. Recognizing the urgent need for improvement, the company’s leadership made a strategic decision to adopt Microsoft Teams as their primary platform for enhancing communication and collaboration.
However, the company quickly recognized that although Teams served as an excellent platform for communication and collaboration, it fell short in addressing all of their challenges. They faced the need to establish seamless connections between their diverse internal systems and applications, including email, calendar, and project management tools, to maximize efficiency and enhance productivity.
The company reached out to Glexen, seeking our expertise in developing integrations and extensions.
Your success is our success. Our success is your success.
– Glexen Solutions
2. How precisely do you need to plan your initiatives?
After gaining an understanding of the client’s goals, Glexen initiated the discovery phase. Our team, including a business analyst, product owner, and select users from the client’s side, collaborated to identify functional and non-functional requirements for future applications. Through thorough discussions and analysis, we examined workflows, use cases, user scenarios, processes, and business needs. The resulting requirements formed the basis for the subsequent development stages, ensuring tailored solutions to address the client’s needs and drive their success. Based on the gathered functional and non-functional requirements, the next architecture was proposed.
Optimal technologies and development processes tailored for each client. – Glexen Solutions
3. All stages of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) (link to the blog post) are important. Now, it's implementation time!
After the analysis phase, the Glexen team and the client transitioned into the design phase, where our designer embarked on creating wireframes and mockups of the applications. These visual representations underwent thorough review and received approval from the product owner.
Сnce the design reached its final iteration, the Glexen development team started the implementation phase of the integrations from the ground up. The team followed the best practices of writing code, conducting extensive reviews, testing, fixing, and addressing any bugs or glitches that occurred during this phase. The product manager regularly reviewed the progress through demos and provided feedback to the development team. With all features developed, bugs resolved, and nonfunctional goals achieved, the app became launch-ready. On the designated day, it was submitted to the Microsoft Teams marketplace. After successful moderation, it became downloadable and ready to use.
4. What were the results of the initiative?
Glexen developed an integration that linked the company’s calendar and scheduling tool to Teams, enabling employees to conveniently schedule and manage meetings within Teams. This integration eliminated the need to switch between multiple apps and services, saving valuable time and reducing the risk of errors.
Additionally, Glexen’s team developed a project management integration that empowered teams to create, assign, and track tasks directly within Teams. This integration improved the client’s efficiency, enhancing productivity and enabling effective collaboration.
With the aid of our integrations and extensions, our client successfully enhanced communication and collaboration among their teams, streamlined workflows, and achieved increased productivity.
5. How did the initiative with Glexen benefit the client's business?
The client’s leadership expressed great satisfaction with the achieved results, while the employees embraced the new streamlined process with genuine enthusiasm. According to gathered metrics, all of these showed a significant 9% increase in the client’s operational speed, which was a great success. Building upon this success, at Glexen, we have dedicated ourselves to assisting numerous other businesses facing similar challenges. By harnessing the remarkable capabilities of Microsoft Teams, we effectively enhance their overall efficiency and productivity.
The sky’s the limit with Glexen – get in touch now!