Microsoft Teams: For the Rest of Us

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams helps organizations collaborate more efficiently by allowing them to do a number of different activities in a single tool. This includes meetings, chat, and collaboration.

When we talk about collaboration, we mean working with a group of people across your organization to create documents, manage tasks, discuss ideas, or have meetings. Microsoft Teams brings this all together in one place.

What does Microsoft Teams do?

Microsoft Teams has the capability to do a lot, but you have the option on both the organization-level as well as the user level to decide what to use and when. Here is an overview of the features that Microsoft Teams provides:

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams (the software tool) allows you to create Teams (a collaboration space for people who work closely together). Often made up of people who are invested in a common outcome: full or part-time employees, vendors, or guests of the organization. Teams are made up of Channels that allow you to group conversations, files, tabs, and applications together in a logical way.

The power of these Teams is that they provide a very rich collaboration experience in a single interface for users. Teams is a great way to collaborate together as everything you need to collaborate on is right there: files, conversations, meetings, tasks, etc., all with the added security and scalability that Office 365 provides. Microsoft Teams really is the new way of working and is making a huge impact on how organizations collaborate both internally and externally. 

Microsoft Teams Integrations

Most organizations use a number of different tools in addition to Office 365 as part of their digital workplace. Microsoft Teams allows you to integrate tools directly into the Microsoft Teams experience, so you can work with them alongside everything else that Office 365 offers.

Why Was Microsoft Teams Created?

Teams was Microsoft’s response to new ways of working and to compete with hugely popular tools like Slack. Like most of the tools that Microsoft makes, Microsoft Teams has got much better over time. Now, Microsoft Teams is an extremely appealing tool with a range of capabilities that put it in a category all of its own. 

Who can I ‘Team’ with? 

This depends on how you have set Microsoft Teams up, but the answer is really with anyone: 

1. People that you work closely with. For people that you need to be in constant contact with, you can use Microsoft Teams for one-to-one chat, quick virtual meetings, and document sharing. 
2. People within your organization. For projects, topic-based stuff, or collaborating with cross-functional people, you can create a Team and do all your activities within. 
3. People outside your organization. For partners, consultants or external parties, you can invite them to join your Teams and collaborate.

The nice thing about Microsoft Teams is that physical location and time doesn’t matter – you can collaborate with anyone at any time.

Why is Microsoft Teams So Popular?

Microsoft Teams is popular for a number of reasons: 

1. It’s the default tool: Microsoft Teams is becoming the default tool when collaborating with others on Office 365 so users are compelled to use it. 
2. It’s the replacement to Skype for Business: Microsoft Teams will be replacing Skype for Business in 2021, and many organizations are already making the transition.
3. Chat-based tools are all the rage: It provides real-time collaboration, like Slack, but with the integration to SharePoint, OneDrive and Outlook.

Work Smarter in Microsoft Teams with Orchestry

Hopefully, this has helped you understand the functionality of Microsoft Teams and that you’re now capable to explain ‘What is Microsoft Teams?’ if someone ever asks you about it.

Orchestry makes work simple in Office 365 and Microsoft Teams, by empowering your IT Administrators and employees to define a winning Microsoft 365 adoption and change management strategy, with a roadmap of what to use when, for what purpose. Orchestry increases usage and adoption while empowering through governance and simplifies through intelligent provisioning in Microsoft 365, organization-wide at a fraction of the cost, on a subscription basis.

To see Orchestry in action, send us an email at hello@orchestry.com or start your free access now!