Microsoft have finally released their Slack competitor – “Microsoft Teams” – into the wild. Available to all Office 365 users, Teams allows…. teams to chat/communicate in a centralised place, with access to content, documents and so much more!
What is Microsoft Teams and why should we use it?
When Teams was originally announced, back on 2nd November 2016, there was a lot of buzz and excitement. Finally, there may be a competitive product when compared to Slack that would allow teams already utilizing Office 365’s infrastructure – baked in!
Microsoft have a vast active user base – over 85 million users in fact. Teams has now been made available to every single user, in 181 countries and in 18 different languages. Not only that, but Microsoft have even announced that they’re launching integrations along with Teams for some major 3rd party applications/services, such as:
- Hootsuite
- GitHub
- Zendesk
- Intercom
- Asana
- Trello
Microsoft Teams has all of the essential Office 365 suite applications built in, making it potentially a one-stop shop for teams within organizations. Those apps include: SharePoint, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Power BI – all of which can be worked on collaboratively. There’s also HD/HQ voice and video chat built in to Teams, alongside the built in Free/Busy availability view for team members.
I can’t wait to see the battle for power between Slack (who are clearly worried about this release) and Microsoft and the amazing new features that will come from it!
Useful links
Microsoft Teams release post: https://blogs.office.com/2017/03/14/microsoft-teams-rolls-out-to-office-365-customers-worldwide/
Microsoft Teams official page: https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software
