Delegation
Enabling employees to support each other by giving permission to work on their behalf.
Problem
Executive time is too valuable for administrative tasks and constant disrpution, as an enterprise communication tool, Microsoft Teams must support and enhance the working relationships and roles assigned to enable all employees to work efficiently.
Research
To understand the role of an executive assistant, we went to where they work and observed. They work as a gatekeeper, intercepting communications and prioritizing what goes through. They are a master of context; empowered to handle administrative tasks with an understanding the executives goals to get things done. They are often working with a team of other EA's coordinating behind the scenes.
Stakeholders
Executives
High workloads with very little time, and the need to portray a professional appearance means needing support from one or a team of admins to screen calls, prep calls and meetings and handle clerical work requiring communications.
Executive Assistants & Receptionists
Constantly juggling tasks and switching contexts - they prize efficiency and making their executive look great. Admins must remember tons of details to let them handle calls and technology can help them lighten the mental load.
IT Administrators
Doesn't have the time to be bothered with random individual requests for settings changes. Their time needs to be spent on the company network and infrastructure to allow the business to run smoothly.
Solution
A settings experience that allows Executives to add anyone as a "delegate" and allows admins to request to be a "delegate". The permissions sharing notification appears as an interactive card within the chat thread between the two people.
We tested early concepts with a select group of admins in varying business sizes, to confirm our setting location and IA discussions.
Quickly search for people inside the organization.
Choose the permissions and send the request.
After assigning or requesting permissions, a card will be sent into the chat conversation of the recipient.
As a result of the given permissions, delegates can make calls on behalf of the people they support.
When given permission to receive calls on behalf of someone, any call directed at them will be forwarded to their delegates. The purple banner is designed to be a visual system where we message the original target of the call, giving the recipient context for why they are receiving the call, used for all transferred and forwarded calls.
Results
As a result of building these capabilities into Microsoft Teams, we have been able to unblock the large scale deployment of key customer accounts. These influential personas affect the day to day work of the C-suite, thus providing a great experience for them is crucial to the product success.