Getting to know the fastest growing business app in Microsoft History
Microsoft Teams is the fastest growing business app in Microsoft history with over 100 million daily users and has quickly become the gold standard of collaboration tools.
Teams combines chat, video conferencing and file sharing with colleagues both inside and outside of your organisation.
Although similar in some ways to other collaboration software such as Slack, there are many features that make it stand out from the crowd.
Integration with other Microsoft 365 apps
One of the biggest advantages of Teams is that it is integrated with the entire suite of Microsoft 365 Tools in the back end, allowing you to seamlessly work on projects using just the one app.
You don’t need to switch apps when collaborating – you can open Word, Excel or PowerPoint files directly in Teams, immediately share it with your co-workers and collaborate on it in real-time. No need to send out different versions of a document via email anymore – you can add comments, schedule tasks and chat about the work right there.
You can also organise meetings in Outlook, save files to SharePoint and trigger Power Automate workflows right from within the Teams app!
A personal favourite of mine is the Microsoft Planner app – you can easily add this app as a tab to your Teams channel to assign tasks, keep everyone in the loop and stay on top of deadlines.
More than just Chat
A way to ask quick questions that aren’t ‘email worthy’. Email used to be the only option and many of us are still drowning in email overload. Teams chat on the other hand is as close to tapping your colleague on the shoulder as you can get in the virtual world. But it’s also more than just chat - you can attach files, video call or schedule a meeting without leaving the chat window.
Meetings
Meeting in Teams makes the experience so much easier – as soon as the meeting is scheduled, you can chat with the participants, create the agenda, share files and meeting notes all in one place. Then immediately after the call, the recording is right there in same tab along with any notes or chat shared throughout!
It’s also super simple to join a meeting – even for the technologically challenged - simply press “Join” to jump into a meeting.
Use any device
Teams has an app for both desktop and mobile, so wherever you are and whatever device you are on, you can easily collaborate, communicate, and access all your files, chats and meetings.
Activity Feed
The activity feed in Teams is a quick glance at what you’ve missed since you last opened Teams – any urgent tasks, messages or mentions. It’s like having a personal assistant to get you up to speed!
Change your background
We’ve all seen the infamous video of the child interrupting the BBC News interview!
With working from home still going strong, you can up your professional game by changing or blurring your background with the click of a button.
These are just a few of my top reasons why I love Teams and is only scratching the surface of what you can do with this incredibly powerful tool. Get in touch if you’d like to chat more about Teams and how it can benefit your organisation.