Meeting Management

Sherpany and Microsoft Teams Integration: The ultimate solution for better meetings

Through Sherpany's Microsoft Teams integration, it is possible to benefit from the combined use of both applications. We show what this means in detail.

Tobias Kortas

Sherpany and Microsoft Teams combined bring extremely high added value to meetings, but are commonly regarded as alternatives to one another. Many companies use Sherpany and Microsoft Teams separately, and switch back and forth between them. This can now be completely avoided by utilising both solutions together. Sherpany should be anything but an isolated solution — instead, it should fit seamlessly into the software landscape of companies.

Sherpany is a holistic meeting management solution for formal meetings, and Microsoft Teams is used for company-wide communication. These two tools have distinctly different purposes, but when used together, the outcome is powerful.

In this article, we focus on the Teams integration in Sherpany, its functionalities and its main advantages. We describe the feature in detail and provide step-by-step instructions on how to use it. Likewise, we show how supervisory and administrative boards, executive committees and management teams can make good use of it.

Background to Sherpany and Microsoft Teams: What is the difference?

In meetings with Sherpany, users benefit from functionality that is designed to positively impact the productivity and goal-orientation of meetings. Meeting effectiveness increases, and enhanced results can be expected in a shorter time. By contrast, Microsoft Teams offers a powerful and seamless suite of direct messaging and videoconferencing solutions, but doesn’t include the features of a purpose-built meeting management solution.

With the Microsoft Teams integration in Sherpany, meeting experiences are now improved by the following:

Sherpany and Microsoft Teams can be used together in a complementary and seamless way.
The power of both Microsoft Teams and Sherpany can be combined in pursuit of better meetings.
An enhanced overview and more effective information flows are created.
A clear, central overview of all your existing meetings is created through Sherpany’s calendar integration.

Receive our latest articles, interviews and product updates.

Working behind the scenes to improve meetings

Meeting leaders, organisers, and participants are united: they all want to make the best use of the tools at their disposal to optimise and align their daily work — for intuitive and efficient work, better meeting experiences, and improved results.

With Sherpany's Microsoft Teams integration, this is exactly what is delivered: a better flow of work and information in meeting management. Sherpany becomes a natural part of the digital collaboration ecosystem.

What led to the development of Microsoft Teams integration?

The Microsoft Teams integration in Sherpany simplifies meeting management and creates more clarity for a seamless transition between both tools, and easy and secure collaboration — in one place. Here are the two biggest problems this integration was developed to address — and how it does so:

Problem #1: To set up a Sherpany meeting and hold it virtually in Microsoft Teams, the organiser had to set it up three times (Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Sherpany).

Solution #1: Meeting organisers can create a link for an Microsoft Teams call directly in Sherpany.

Problem #2: Meeting attendees needed to make meetings visible separately in Sherpany and their calendar application.

Solution #2: Creating a Microsoft Teams meeting will also trigger an invitation via email to all participants, which they can add to their calendar application of choice.

The benefit is therefore crystal clear: you no longer need to switch between different tools to create a meeting or manage multiple calendar invitations — everything you need is in one place.

Commitment to our customers

At Sherpany, it is important for us to maintain the highest possible commitment to our customers. We strive for positive meeting experiences, optimal efficiency, and highly functional meeting management.

Many of our clients have requested Microsoft Teams integration. So it was greatly motivating for us to enable just that — and become a Microsoft Independent Software Vendor and have our app published on Microsoft AppSource. Thanks to the Microsoft Teams integration, the use of Sherpany fits even more clearly and intuitively into the daily work routine.

Microsoft Teams integration and its tangible benefits

Let’s now explore what the most important functionalities as well as advantages of the Microsoft Teams integration are.

The Microsoft Teams integration: Key functionalities and their concrete advantages

The first phase of the MS Teams integration in Sherpany focusses on the following:

Microsoft Teams audio and video conferences via Microsoft Teams can be created directly in Sherpany. This eliminates the need to create a single meeting separately in both applications, or also in users’ Microsoft Outlook Calendar.
Thanks to the calendar integration, you can plan your meetings in Sherpany and join them with just one click after dialling in from either application — Microsoft Teams or Sherpany. Calendar invitations are automatically sent to all participants by email. These can then be added to the individual's preferred calendar.
Meetings can be set up intuitively: Simply select Microsoft Teams from the drop-down menu and create a new meeting or update an existing one. An automatically generated link is provided to the participants of the respective meeting.

In the second step of the integration, the Sherpany agenda integration and sidebar navigation can also be linked to Microsoft Teams so that teams can work even more productively.

How can you benefit from the Microsoft Teams integration?

Steps are eliminated and the process of organising meetings is simplified as Microsoft Teams meetings can be created directly in Sherpany — the effort is reduced and the overview increases.
The effortless calendar integration removes the need for manual calendar entries for meetings. All participants have an overview and can simply dial in with a single click.
Meetings can be scheduled with ease — and accessed from both platforms. The integration ensures that all changes are automatically applied to the individual calendars (of the participants).
Secure collaboration: The integration provides a secure environment that maintains the privacy and confidentiality of your meeting information.

The true power of the integration

In practice, the aim is to combine the best of both worlds of Sherpany as a meeting management solution and Microsoft Teams as a platform for company-wide collaboration. While Microsoft Teams primarily supports efficient communication in teams and organisations, Sherpany offers the ideal platform for formal meetings. The meeting focus — holistically covered in Sherpany — is combined with the comprehensive information and communication flows of Microsoft Teams.

How Microsoft Teams complements Sherpany

Integrated with Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams improves communication within and between organisations.

Application in everyday work

Now we would like to show concretely how the Microsoft Teams integration can be used in everyday work — so that the individual steps are clear.

Meeting organisers can simply select Microsoft Teams from the drop-down menu in Sherpany. To do this, a Meeting Organiser has to connect their Sherpany account with their individual Microsoft Teams account. The Sherpany application can then create Microsoft Teams meetings on their behalf. This is called “the initial consent”.

Once this "initial consent" between the two applications is complete, you can select Microsoft Teams for existing and future meetings — directly in Sherpany.

The integration ensures that all changes are synchronised and thus all participants are kept abreast of meeting updates. For example, if a meeting is postponed, it is rescheduled in the respective calendars of the participants.

Deletions of meetings are also taken over directly in the individual calendars — just like adding or removing people. If, on the other hand, you remove the Microsoft Teams conference call from the meeting, it will not be deleted in the personal calendars, because in this case a meeting will likely still take place.

Solutions per use case

Now let's briefly look at the solutions that Microsoft Teams Integration offers for C-Level and supervisory and administrative board members.

C-Level

Problem	Solution
Organising meetings — mostly the task of an assistant — takes too much time.	Thanks to the streamlined planning process, meetings are organised quickly.
Creating meetings in different applications leads to a lot of effort and poor overview.	Not only having to switch between tools makes creation more effective.
Meetings, documents, decisions, and tasks are scattered.	A holistic overview of meetings, materials, tasks, and decisions is available at all times.
Communication is difficult and it is unclear what needs to be done.	It is easier to assign tasks across the whole team so it is clear who is doing what.
Implemented solutions fall short of the desired benefits.	The full benefit is available through coordinated processes.
Applications are difficult to integrate and inflexible.	Easy synchronisation makes adaptation easy.
No support for meeting processes, no meeting best practices to follow.	Product developed based on deep meeting expertise, supporting all meeting stages, and with additional change management support. Sherpany provides a holistic framework based on meeting science.

Board of Directors

Problem	Solution
There is too little structure in meeting processes.	Integration leads to more coherent meeting management.
Preparation is lengthy and difficult to arrange.	Everything you need for successful preparation is right at hand.
By using too many tools, in the worst case changes to meetings can even be missed.	By adopting changes in individual calendars, everyone is informed.
Security breaches leak sensitive information to the outside world.	Risks are limited by seamless connection of the applications.
Strict compliance requirements cannot be met.	A high level of confidentiality is maintained throughout the meeting process.
Information is lost through the use of different tools.	Thanks to the integration, there is a holistic overview.
No support for meeting processes, no meeting best practices to follow.	Product developed based on deep meeting expertise, supporting all meeting stages, and with additional change management support. Sherpany provides a holistic framework based on meeting science.

Conclusion: Intuitive processes, coherence, and overviews

With Sherpany's Microsoft Teams integration, the customer benefit is clearly in the foreground: through the intuitive connection and complete meeting processes — in the applications combined — coherence and a holistic overview are created. This gives you the opportunity to noticeably optimise your meeting management and simplify your everyday work.

Do you want to know more about our solution ?