Integrations are an important part of our business. We love making our products work with apps that already exist so you can work seamlessly from a project to an email to a task list– and more.
Last year we created an in-house integrations team so that we can build amazing add-ons to Teamwork Projects that aren’t already available in the existing framework.
We’re dedicated to making these “extras” a standard part of our software for users. So far, the Integrations Team has created a Document Editor for editing files and a OneDrive for Business Integration for storing and sharing your work files.
What’s New?
Our latest addition is a beautiful add-in with Microsoft Office that’s available to Windows users. Now you can easily take action on any item in your Teamwork Projects site directly from your Microsoft Office suite without leaving the application that you’re in.
Once downloaded, this latest integration will work in a number of the apps in the MS Office suite: Word, Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint, Visio, Project, Outlook. For the purpose of this example, we’ll zone in on MS Word–but don’t worry, we’ve got lots of videos that will help you discover this integration with the other Office apps.
After opening a new Word doc, you’ll see a menu bar, as usual. Next to the “view” option is a tab called “Teamwork.” Click this tab to see your options.
From here, you can open your Teamwork Projects site, update a status or add a project, and add task lists or tasks. This is particularly useful if you have a bunch of action items that you need to manage for the doc. You’ll also skip the hassle of switching back and forth between apps.
If you have the required permissions to access templates within your Teamwork Projects site, you can use them to create task lists through the add-in. If you’re a frequent MS Office user, you can probably see how this will really help to automate your workflow.
If you have important information that you need to document, you can even add a notebook or a message. By selecting the “use current document” button you can automatically convert the content of that document to a notebook without using copy or paste.
If you’re creating a message, then you can attach the active document to that message. You can also add links to Teamwork Projects from your MS Office suite. All of this is really useful for adding context to the data you’re uploading.
Key Timesaving Features
One of the great features of this integration is the ability to stop, pause and log your time using the Teamwork Timer as you work. Now, whether you’re writing a doc, creating a presentation, using your email, or working on a spreadsheet you can log your time against a specific task.
This timer is applicable to each document, so there’s no need to manually start and stop timers. If you’re working in one document and need to switch to another, your timer will automatically pause and start in the document which you have changed to so you can easily log time across multiple documents.
This gives you a nice method of comparison and shows you where you spent most of your time. It’ll prove useful too for estimating time on similar tasks going forward.
The core functionality of this integration is the same in each of the MS Office apps, but there are a few exceptions due to the nature of the app you’re using. For instance, when you’re assigning a task from Outlook, the subject of the email will default to the name of the task and the email content will end up in the description of that task.
The sender of the email will be added as a follower on the task and it will be assigned to the recipient of the email.
It’s easy to get bogged down with lists that keep coming into your email inbox and having to manually record these tasks somewhere else – we’ve all been there, so if you still rely heavily on email, this latest addition will change your life!
If the detail in the task doesn’t suit you, you can always adjust it manually. All of this is available to our users on the small office payment plan and higher.
But Wait, There’s More!
We’re not finished just yet! The crowning jewel of this add-in is the functionality we’ve added between Microsoft Project and Teamwork Projects. You can now import from and export directly to Microsoft Project to Teamwork Projects. No more manually creating the project! It’s hassle-free and promises to save loads of time and effort.
Another nice perk with this feature is the ability to export your projects from Teamwork Projects into MS Project, and any changes that you make here can be imported back into Teamwork Projects.
Please note this feature is available to users on our Grow and Scale plans.
Want to learn more? Our support team has created this article from our help docs site to help get you started. It’s useful to note that you can add different MS Office accounts for different Teamwork sites. In other words, if you have both US- and European-hosted sites, everything works smoothly.
Want to get started? Download from our website now or via the Integrations section in your Teamwork Projects site through the My Profile tab.
Stay Tuned…
We’re very excited about the benefits this integration will bring to you and we have so many more exciting things planned for this year.
Are there any integrations in particular that could really help you work better? Will this latest addition help you get more organized? Can we improve it even further? Let us know. We’d love your feedback in the comments below.