Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based platform whose main goal is team collaboration. Teams belongs to the Microsoft suite of products. Its core driver is to be an enterprise messaging tool which allows communication and real-time collaboration between users within the organization and outside it.
Microsoft Teams is integrated with a number of traditional Microsoft Office 365 applications enabling document sharing, video meetings and calling. Businesses of any size can use Teams. Users can be in the same office or choose to work remotely. They can access Teams on computers or mobile devices.
How to become a Microsoft Teams Rockstar
What is the purpose of Microsoft Teams?
What is Microsoft Teams? It’s a new type of business tool which is challenging traditional workplace behaviour. Especially our reliance on emails. You can create a space for threaded, conversation-style chats which are funnelled into channels or work topics. Teams keeps large or small collaborative groups on task in a real-time manner.
Teams cuts across geographies and dead time zones to connect cooperating teams to the same task at the same time. Whether work groups are small or very large, they can talk in real time in highly productive clusters. Then use the integrated Office 365 tools such as calendars and meetings in Outlook. They share and edit documents in SharePoint, OneDrive and OneNote.
As can be imagined, it could become troublesome for people to be part of too many teams. Once they get a handle on how to maximize their productivity and utility, people soon get more efficient knowing what to get involved in and how they can best collaborate.
Channels
Once a team is created using a subject area, they are funnelled into channels. These are focused topics of conversation on the subject that allow team members to communicate without the use of email. It is almost like a real time conversation as users pitch ideas and discuss them at length. You can use less formal and more personalized communication forms such as emojis and gifs.
Activity Feed
The activity feed is each user’s peek into the conversations going on in other channels they are not part of. Through what are known as “Channel notifications”, updates appear on items of interest in closed channels. If someone wants to add you to their channel, they can get your attention by using the @mention function. This serves as an invitation for you to enter the channel to contribute.
How to become a Microsoft Teams Rockstar
Chat
The chat function is best used as a side discussion forum between team members within a channel to discuss items not suitable for the group space. These could be small reminders to complete tasks or things like “I’m running late”. Private chats are the equivalent of two or more people stepping out of a physical room during a meeting break to discuss some small matters.
Calling
Users can call external clients and even receive calls to and from landlines and mobile phones. Note, a calling plan is needed for this. The guest-access feature in Microsoft Teams allows users to collaborate with clients outside their organizations to join internal channels for messaging, meetings and file sharing. This facility is particularly helpful for project management with clients.
This particular type of audio conferencing is a game changer, and one that rivals to Microsoft Teams cannot currently replicate. Being able to patch external calls from landlines or mobile phones into online meetings is possible. Due to Microsoft’s legacy telephony infrastructure and another built-in advantage they can use.
Online Meetings
Online meetings can be scheduled or created within channels via the use of a plug in for Outlook. This feature can be used for company-wide meetings or announcements and can host up to 10,000 users. Online meetings can include anyone within the business or outside of it. There are extra enhancements to be found here. These include integration with a note-taking app, file uploading, and in-meeting private chat functions.
File Sharing
One of the main strengths that Teams has over some of its rivals is that it has the facility for file sharing and content collaboration. In your Teams window, you can perform a variety of tasks directly within that window or browser, so that you avoid flicking between different applications.
Among the tasks you can perform involve deleting files, downloading new ones, moving, opening, copying, editing and sharing with others. This functionality is easy and intuitive and you lose none of the main defining or powerful features you would have while using the apps as standalones.
Microsoft Teams for free
Microsoft is offering Teams for free as Microsoft’s commitment to customers during the COVID-19 crisis.
Get your Microsoft Teams for FREE here.
Microsoft Teams is evolving
Follow the evolution of Microsoft Teams.
Conclusion
Microsoft Teams is very user-friendly. It can create a highly productive and involved work environment between fixed and remote workers across a number of geographies and time zones.
Projects become more focused and streamlined using Microsoft Teams. Businesses using Skype for Business will find the migration to Teams smooth and largely trouble-free, while the functionality will remain the same.
Using the extensive family of tools already within Office 365 (known as Microsoft 365 from April 21, 2020), Teams enjoys a face value similarity with other chat-based rivals but has a lot more deep and established business functionality.
Get MS Teams for Free
