Microsoft Teams, Microsoft’s genius team collaboration platform, is only three years old. But it’s already making waves in the field of workplace communications. It has been carefully designed and intentionally stacked with a range of fantastic features to help you and your team work together more efficiently.
1. Integration with Microsoft 365
This seems like a no-brainer, but the relationship that has been forged between these major platforms is incredibly useful. If you are new to Teams and already use Office 365 (now Microsoft 365), it makes sense to use Microsoft Teams as your collaboration platform because you know it will work with the Microsoft 365 applications you’re already familiar with, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint and Outlook.
For those who still love using the tried and true Windows Explorer, Teams uses the same file browsing look and feel. Additionally, if you use Outlook, you can quickly move conversations between Outlook and Teams to maintain organization and facilitate efficient communication.
2. Expedited Team Communications
Switching to a team collaboration platform is an enhancement from using old-fashioned email threads to work with your teammates. Many of your daily tasks can be done more efficiently using chats and channels instead of sending emails back and forth, waiting for replies and sifting through old threads for important information. Microsoft Teams chats are searchable, promote teamwork and collaboration and leave your email’s inbox uncluttered for essential communications from clients and partners.
You can allocate channels to specific topics, making it easier for your teams to keep conversations on topic and quickly resolve problems without unnecessary distraction or irrelevant chatter. Plus, when you separate channels by subject, there’s less clutter to deal with, making it easier for your team to find what they’re looking for without having to scroll through a bunch of unrelated messages.
Public channels are open to all team members, and anything sent to those channels is searchable by others. Private channels can be created for discussions that shouldn’t be open to all members and the content will not be included in search results.
3. Cross-Platform Device Compatibility
Not only does Microsoft Teams have an excellent web-based interface, but you can collaborate with your co-workers no matter where they’re located using its mobile apps. Teams can be used across all of your devices, including Windows, iOS and Android. So, no matter where your co-workers are located or what device they use, the Microsoft Teams app lets you collaborate with your team through text, voice or video.
4. Security
Security is another feature that makes it easy to choose Microsoft Teams over its competitors. Teams has both two-factor authentication and encrypted data. Like all other Microsoft 365 services, Microsoft Teams meets all major compliance standards, including EU Model Clauses, ISO 27001, SSAE16, SOC, HIPAA and SOC 2.
Need to keep your discussions private? You can create private channels and assign specific users to them. Plus, Microsoft Teams comes with a range of advanced security controls, including data-loss prevention, information barriers, eDiscovery, retention policies, legal hold and more.
5. Real-Time Collaboration
Microsoft Teams organizes all your workplace activities, communications, meetings and strategic or creative workshops into a single platform. You can quickly create groups, restore deleted groups, edit group email lists and assign sensitivity labels. You can complete work in real time with your colleagues as you chat with each other and work together on files simultaneously, instead of taking turns waiting for updates via email and downloading version after version of the same file.
You can create multiple channels and chat rooms, making conversations much more straightforward to follow. Teams uses threaded conversation views that run from top to bottom, making them easier to read and follow. Users can be notified of updates in their chats and channels. Plus, if a user needs to have a quick one-on-one conversation with a colleague, they can quickly switch to a video or voice chat with a single click.
6. The Bots Gallery
Finally, Microsoft Teams comes with around 24 bots that have various functionalities to help you and your team become more productive. Need a quick answer about how best to use Microsoft Teams? Use T-Bot. Need to create a poll and get feedback from your co-workers? There’s Polly-Bot. Need to create scheduled reports via sources, such as Salesforce and Google Analytics? Take advantage of Statsbot. Need to give a co-worker a public pat on the back. Help your team bond with Growbot.
To boost your staff’s efficiency and communications today, reach out to our team at AxiaTP to get set up with Microsoft Teams.