In response to COVID-19: How Microsoft can help with Situational Response and Crisis Communication

[Shelly Avery]

At Microsoft, our top concern is the wellbeing of our employees and supporting our customers in dealing with business impact during this challenging time. For many individuals and organizations, Microsoft Teams video-conferencing, chat and collaboration are playing an important role in helping people continue to work and collaborate.

Please read about Our commitment to customers during COVID-19 By Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365. 

As a response to the recent viral outbreak Microsoft is trying our best to rapidly respond to the situation and there are a ton of great resources and communication efforts happening across the globe. This blog is an attempt to summarize the items that have been share so far.

Here is a list of upcoming events and resources available during this trying time, please see a quick summary here and more details on each below:  

• Situational Response Management and Communications with Microsoft 365 webcast
• Working remotely during challenging times - letter from Lily Zheng Director, Microsoft China
• Guidance on how to Support remote workers using Microsoft Teams
• 6-month free trial for MS Teams
• Crisis Communication App - Set up and learn about the Crisis Communicator PowerApp Template
• Company Communicator App Template for MS Teams 
• Teams + HealthBot, How to use the Azure HealthBot to hand off to a live agent using MS Teams 
• HIMSS 2020 Health Blog Post: Empowering care teams with new tools in Microsoft 365

Join us 12 noon eastern, Monday, March 16^th for the “Situational Response Management and Communications with Microsoft 365” webcast. Microsoft’s Healthcare and Life Sciences group will show how organizations can cope with disruptive situations and ensure business continuity irrespective of the situation using Microsoft Teams and the additional Microsoft 365 Services of SharePoint Online, Yammer, Stream, and more.

Agenda:

• Situational Response Management & Communications Challenges
• Managing Incident Responses with Microsoft Teams
• Situation Response Communications & Employee Engagement with Microsoft 365
• Resources 
• Wrap Up

Additional Resources: 

To help you leverage Teams to promote virtual work and meetings during the Coronavirus outbreak.  These resources include the following:

• Learn how our Chinese friends are Working remotely during challenging times and how to Support remote workers with MS Teams as employees are forced to embrace a working from home lifestyle.
• Microsoft wants everyone to have the technology needed to stay connected during this crisis which is why we are giving away MS Teams licenses for the next 6 months for free, to learn how take advantage of this offer please check it out here.  

Bots:  Low code/no code solutions that can get employees up and running, keep work flowing and communication open:

• Meet the Crisis Communication App and check out how to deploy it to your workforce here.
• Use the Company Communicator app to send push notifications and check in with your workforce using this app template for MS Teams 
• Microsoft has had a HealthBot built in Azure for over a year now but how do you get this in the hands of your remote workforce? Microsoft has enabled a Handoff to a live agent using MS Teams with our, Teams + HealthBot solution.

For a comprehensive overview of Microsoft services and tools for Crisis Management, Business Continuity, and Patient Outreach see “Situational Response Management, Communications, and Virtual Patient Outreach – Webcast Recording” 

I hope this post was valuable, please be sure to follow the Microsoft Health and Life Science Blog for more great content. As more resources come out we will be sure to create another post so stay tuned for more...  In the meantime if you have any questions please email so we can discuss how MS Teams can add value to your organization.

Thanks for reading, Shelly Avery | Email, LinkedIn