One year with Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams turned one year old on 12 March. AddPro has been there from the beginning, helping many companies with implementation and training. Teams is now running in 200,000 organizations in 181 countries in 39 different languages. In the last year, 3 million Teams have been created and 60% are outside the US.
The tool gives us a new way of communicating in groups, called intelligent communication, and we have seen many users develop and become more effective. As the name suggests, Teams is best suited for working in groups and projects and it is easy to set up and invite members. Integration with other Office 365 apps means Teams has a bright future as the primary app for collaboration. Meetings in Teams work very well and you can tell that the technology behind them is modern and optimized for the cloud. The quality of the audio and video is fantastic and it's quick and easy to get up and running. You can invite to a meeting from your Outlook calendar or directly from a channel in Teams and it's easy to connect. 2018 will be the year when Teams' meeting features beat Skype for Business and it's time for a shift, right on schedule from Microsoft.
But is all well and good and can everyone start using Teams today and become more efficient? There are some challenges that need to be addressed. Are we ready to move our group conversations into Teams and stop sending emails to everyone in the project all the time? Can we use Teams for advanced document management and what do we do with all the users who have started running Slack? How can we get governance on all Teams, permissions and who shares what to external users? Do we bring the chaos of the file server and intranet into Teams and become frustrated users with yet another tool to manage?
AddPro has the experience and ability to help you use Teams correctly and become more effective users. It's about creating a strategy for which tools to use in different situations "Use Cases" and it's important to find the company's "Teams heroes". We need to teach users and see the benefits of communicating in one channel and actually ditch email and Skype chat. The document management in Teams is based on SharePoint and sometimes it is easier to switch to SharePoint and manage the documents there instead. With the right strategy, training and patience, Teams will be a success at your company. Want to see how a team can use Teams and become more productive? Try AddPro's experiential workshop. Click the button in the right column to download the Discover IT product sheet.
Some features coming during the year
Recording of meeting
Start recording a meeting with a single click. Recordings are saved in the channel and can be replayed by members who could not attend.
Direct translation
Text written in channels and chat can be instantly translated into another language. This makes communication easier across the language barrier.
Background noise for video
The ability to blur the background of the video meeting so that the focus can be on the participants.
Mobile sharing in meetings
Meeting participants can share video, photo or screen from their mobile phone.
Federated chat between Teams and Skype for Business
Use Teams to chat with people running Skype for Business.
SharePoint pages in Teams
Create beautiful pages in SharePoint (news, presentations) and display them in Teams.
Templates for creating Teams
Create a ready-made template for how your projects will work. Also coming to Planner.
Whiteboard and notes
Draw and take notes during the meeting just like we can with Skype today.
Teams and Skype for Business Admin Center
At last, administrators have full control over Teams, settings and management of users and calls.
