The technology has brought the world of business closer together. We often collaborate and communicate with colleagues thousands of miles apart rather than staying in the same office. Microsoft Teams is rated as “excellent” by PCMag in a comprehensive review. This makes it easier and more efficient to do so. It is now more important than ever to continue fighting the Covid-19 epidemic.

Here’s how Teams works at the most basic level, as summarized by Tech Republic: Users set up Microsoft Teams, which are essentially “a hub for group chat rooms” — aka channels/conversations. Each Team is able to accommodate multiple channels or chat rooms. To make it easier to understand and avoid confusion, the conversations are threaded. They flow from top-to-bottom and inform users of any updates. Users can easily jump into video or voice chats with other participants of the channel with just one click if they need face-to-face communication.

An integrated part of Microsoft 365 (which, among other things, means that it works seamlessly with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other MS Office programs), Teams continues to improve to meet the needs of its more than 115 million daily active users. Microsoft has added 21 popular apps to Teams so Teamsters can edit third-party projects in Teams meetings. The GitHub integration remains in beta.

However, several “power tools” have now been released from beta and are fully functional. Power Apps for app creation and management; Power Automate for workflow design and template simplification; and Power Virtual Agents, which, according to Silicon Angle, allow users to “build

Microsoft has launched an expanded license agreement called “Advanced Communications,” which allows for interactive meetings of up to 1,000 people and live events of up to 20,000, or as many as Madison Square. This is huge in more than one way.

You might think: These features are great, but do they provide security? Remember the Zoom Bombings, which made headlines earlier this year? Teams are, in a word, super secure. Units are built on industry-standard security technologies. Microsoft notes that Teams also uses the public key infrastructure (PKI), which is a feature of the Windows Server OS, to protect the encryption keys for Transport Layer Security.

 PCMag concluded that “Microsoft Teams offers a wide range of features, including tight integration with Office 365.” This is a good team messaging app for Microsoft Shops.

If it isn’t, it might be. It might be worth switching to Teams, given all it offers.

Before making your choice, you should consider the following:

What problems should a collaboration platform solve for your organization? What are the issues that a collaboration platform should solve for your organization? In the selection process, it is crucial to understand your specific use case.

Understanding the needs of every functional area of your business is important. Do not leave the selection to IT. It should be the one to lead the initiative, identifying the specific needs of HR and Finance. There may also be employees in the company who have adopted collaboration tools on their own to meet their needs. Use their expertise and feedback to guide the selection process.

As with all changes, the behavior will also need to change. There will be training required. It will take some time for the employees to adapt and become productive. As you begin to implement a platform change across the company, effective change management is essential. The organization must be patient, offer the appropriate learning resources, and ask for feedback constantly.

Mindsight has partnered with a number of providers, including Cisco and Microsoft. We can give you an overview of all the major players and their strengths and weaknesses. If you would like to know which platform will best suit your needs, please get in touch with us.

About Mindsight
Mindsight is an IT service provider in Chicago that works as an extension of you and your Team. Our team is comprised of exceptional people, the kind of people that you would want to hire. Our expert-level engineers deliver the full spectrum of IT solutions and services, from cloud, infrastructure, and collaboration to contact centers. Our customers trust us for our expertise, responsiveness, and dedication in solving their most difficult technology challenges.