United Airlines, the global airline based in Chicago, Illinois, has been connecting people for more than 90 years. But, even after decades in the industry, there is still room for a fresh challenge, like when the airline was asked to help coordinate a “civilian air activation” and help move Afghan refugees out of the Middle East and Germany. When Harel Magaritz, Managing Director of Network Operation Center, Daily Operation at United Airlines, remembers the event, he calls it “one of the more remarkable things we’ve ever done.” The story he shares is a testament to teamwork. “In August of 2021, United Airlines gathered 250 employees in Microsoft Teams to coordinate the civilian air activation,” he says. Over a period of nearly two months, employees from across United collaborated in Teams to arrange a total of 70 flights, all while continuing to run a worldwide airline. Ultimately, the effort helped assist some 10,000 refugees. “We had multiple Teams channels going 24 hours a day,” says Magaritz. “It was phenomenal, getting everyone together in real time to make sure no information was missed and support was constantly there.” Everything from providing coloring books for young passengers to sourcing Gatorade for dehydrated guests was discussed in Teams, along with the paperwork and logistics needed for such an operation. Without Teams, the undertaking would have been significantly more challenging, notes Magaritz. “If we didn’t have Teams, this mission would have involved hundreds of emails and phone calls,” he says. “Would we have completed the missions? Yes, but it would have been nowhere near the product and level of collaboration we delivered with Teams.”
“If we didn’t have Teams, this mission would have involved hundreds of emails and phone calls. Would we have completed the missions? Yes, but it would have been nowhere near the product and level of collaboration we delivered with Teams.”
Harel Magaritz, Managing Director of Network Operation Center, Daily Operation, United Airlines
Supporting customers and employees with information in real time
While United Airlines’ civilian air activation used Teams as a virtual command center to coordinate high-stakes flights, employees at the airline use the platform to streamline daily operations, too. Magaritz participates in two daily operations calls, an important element of United Airlines’ daily functioning that moved to Teams in 2020. “Historically, those ops calls have been phone calls,” says Magaritz. “Close to 200 folks participate in each one. Switching to Teams created a new dynamic right off the bat.” While in the past, weather updates might have been described verbally by the weather team, today, participants view an active weather map in Teams and use the chat capabilities to ask questions in real time. “We can display information and have a better discussion in Teams,” says Magaritz. “It helps get everyone aligned.”
Town halls and team huddles have also benefited greatly from a switch to Teams. Jon Gooda, Customer and Employee Advocate at United Airlines, remembers how his colleagues initially resisted the change from in-person to digital town halls. “The funny thing was, after using Teams for our town halls and daily huddles, we tried to go back to in-person meetings, and our employees just weren’t having it,” he says. “The meeting experience is so much more efficient and inclusive in Teams.” The ability to record a session and play it back at a convenient time, along with the chat capabilities that make it easy for more reserved team members to contribute, are standout Teams features that employees love. And, when Gooda and his team need to update frontline workers about ever-changing COVID-19 protocols, Teams has become the go-to platform to share rapidly changing guidelines. “Our old way of sharing that type of information would be to send bulletins and more bulletins,” says Gooda. “There is only so much information people can absorb that way. We use Teams to share the hottest items people need to know as soon as the information becomes available.”
United leaders also use Teams to host the company’s yearly “Earnings Live” event that brings together virtual participants from all over the company with hundreds of in-person audience members for a live event. “As an airline, we are very distributed and operate in many, many locations,” says Jason Birnbaum, SVP and Chief Information Officer at United Airlines. “One of the challenges we face is, how do we keep all our employees connected to the mission?” With Teams, Birnbaum and his colleagues found a ready answer to that question. “This new world with Teams and hybrid work opened the door to an entirely new way of connecting with our employees,” he says. United has received overwhelmingly positive feedback: “We have consistently heard that people like having the ability to engage with their leaders through Teams,” says Birnbaum.
And, when an issue arises in the airport that needs immediate attention, like an unexpected baggage delay, United Airlines employees use the Teams mobile app to alert leaders and find solutions in real time. “In the past, we used radios to communicate those types of updates, which was a less targeted means of communicating,” remembers Gooda. “Today, we use Teams to get in touch with the right people instantly. It’s made a big difference in our ability to do our jobs well, take care of customers, and support our employees.”
“Teams and hybrid work opened the door to an entirely new way of connecting with our employees.”
Jason Birnbaum, SVP & Chief Information Officer, United Airlines
Creating custom apps helps employees stay up to date
In addition to facilitating remote work and improved collaboration, Teams has emerged as a single platform for creating and publishing custom applications to address pressing business needs. Case in point, a dedicated COVID-19 bot designed to answer common questions. “We built a bot in Teams called ‘Trinity’ to help answer frequently asked questions about COVID-19 restrictions in various countries where we fly,” says Jim Stathopoulos, Managing Director of Digital Technology, Customer Service Delivery, and Airport Operations at United Airlines. In the past, sharing updates via email created inefficiencies. “We wanted to bring that information to people’s fingertips,” says Stathopoulos. “People spend much of their day in Teams already,” he explains. “Asking those questions directly in Teams with the Trinity bot helps us increase efficiency and reduce the number of tools in use.”
The Trinity bot was such a success that the functionality of the tool is being rapidly expanded, with even bigger plans in the works. “We have already hooked up 12 different data sources to the bot, including things like flight milestones and schedules,” says Stathopoulos, who also hopes to see the bot develop into a voice-activated tool that can help employees plan their day or answer questions about flight status and resources. “We want to build that digital assistant experience people are familiar with at home and bring it into the airports,” he says.
When Terri Miazga, Manager, Crew Scheduling Automation at United Airlines, and her team started to create an internal communication tool for flight attendants, they began with meetings in Teams. “It’s all about bringing the employee into the process,” she says. “We used Teams to conduct focus groups and make sure that the app we created would meet the needs of flight attendants across United.” The result was UChat, a mobile app that flight attendants use to offer up shifts and chat in Teams. Previously, swapping shifts among a highly mobile workforce was a challenge, and flight attendants lacked a mobile app for schedule changes. “Teams and the UChat application help me manage my schedule and get in touch with my colleagues in a timely manner,” says Carly Liberatore, Flight Attendant at United Airlines, who also uses UChat to communicate with colleagues during the boarding process. “Boarding is the most stressful part of our job, and we use the UChat app to communicate with other departments during boarding in a fast, efficient way. It helps us streamline the process.” For Birnbaum, creating a custom app that helped flight attendants take control of their schedules benefits both the employee and customer experience. “One of the most stressful things for a flight attendant is their schedule,” he says. “The UChat app in Teams helps flight attendants manage their schedule easily and gives them the peace of mind to be their best selves when they interact with our customers.”
Sohaib Mohammed, IT Senior Manager at United Airlines, and his colleagues use the Microsoft Graph API to connect existing applications to the Teams platform for easy integration and better visibility. “We use Teams every single day for our communication and collaboration needs,” he says. “It makes sense to provide company-related functions within Teams itself.” For example, United had a mandatory wellness check in the early days of COVID-19, a process that Mohammed and his colleagues digitized in Teams using Microsoft Azure Bot Service. “It took us about a week to deploy the Wellness Check Notification to all 25,000 United flight attendants,” he says. “Using Teams helped us cut down time and costs to get solutions to market faster.”
“Teams and the UChat application help me manage my schedule and get in touch with my colleagues in a timely manner.”
Carly Liberatore, Flight Attendant, United Airlines
Enjoying a consistent meeting experience across a global operation
Mike Taccino, Vice President, IT Infrastructure, Engineering and Operations at United Airlines, describes United Airlines as “global and hyper cross-functional,” a situation that became even more pronounced during COVID-19, when many employees began to work from home. Taccino and his colleagues quickly devised an innovative Microsoft Teams Rooms solution to make collaboration more inclusive and mobile. “We had already invested in Teams Rooms at many of our airport locations,” he says. “But we wanted people to have the exact same meeting experience no matter where they were, so we developed a ‘Teams Rooms in a Box’ concept.” The result is a mobile Teams Room that helps employees connect and solve problems faster using features like whiteboarding. “Colleagues use the Teams Room in a Box system to understand what’s happening in real time across the airline,” says Taccino. “The solution has helped us stay more efficient and engaged, and because of that, United’s a better place.” The use of Teams Rooms has also helped build consistency. “The consistent meeting experience we have created with Teams, and Teams Rooms, has resulted in a better employee experience,” says Taccino, who notes that in the past, employees had to contend with a variety of different meeting room setups depending on where they found themselves on a given day.
United employees also use Teams to gather insights from every corner of the organization. When Stathopoulos and his team were ready to launch a gate redesign and needed feedback from United agents at multiple airports, they used Teams to facilitate digital walk-throughs of the new design and solicit feedback without the need to travel. “We used Teams to stream high-definition videos showing our new layouts, new kiosks, and new signage,” he says. “By using Teams and surveys through the AgilePolly tool for Teams, we could make decisions and evolve the look and feel of the new gates remotely.”
With operations in every time zone and planes constantly in the air, Magaritz doesn’t exaggerate when he says, “The airline business never stops.” “We’re always flying and trying to make the best decisions for customers throughout the day,” he continues. United Airlines employees use Teams to keep pace with an ultra–fast-paced industry and connect across a global business. “We have to live up to the long history of United, to our ability to provide service to customers around the world, and to do so consistently, safely, and on time,” says Magaritz. “Collaboration is crucial for the operation of an airline, and the use of Teams has been a game-changer for connecting and delivering on our commitment to customers.”
“The consistent meeting experience we have created with Teams, and Teams Rooms, has resulted in a better employee experience.”
Mike Taccino, Vice President, IT Infrastructure, Engineering and Operations, United Airlines
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