Things You Didn’t Know Microsoft Teams Could Do

Over the last year, Teams has gone from a relatively obscure part of the MS Office suite to being one of its most used. The number of users has almost doubled in that time, increasing from 75 million users in April 2020 to 145 million in April 2021. And it’s still a relative newcomer, only being launched in 2016. If you still aren’t familiar with it, here is all you need to know:

Good shared workspace software should make collaboration easier. Microsoft Teams unifies chat, voice, video and file sharing and is designed to be used by any work group, large or small, whether they are local or remote. It’s also designed to help increase worker productivity by providing a unified suite of tools. The good news is that, for those organisations that already have Microsoft 365 and Office 365 it’s included totally free.

Although it only appeared a few years ago, Microsoft has constantly updated Teams since its initial launch. New features were added throughout 2020 and into 2021:

Chat

As with most collaboration apps, Teams has a chat function that offers both one-on-one and group chats. Teams’ chat includes text formatting, emojis and priority flagging. Files can be shared directly through chat sessions.

Channels

Teams’ main strength is in the ability to collaborate through different channels. Channels can be either Standard, public and open to everyone who wants to join, or Private and focused on specific topics or activities.  Channels tend to have a specific work project or topic, and can be thought of as group chat rooms, suited to the fast-paced conversations impossible on email.

All team members should be able to view and add to different conversations in the General channel. The @ function can be used to invite other members to different conversations.

Meetings

Teams has Online video calling, which can be done to anyone within the company or business or clients outside the business. Teams offers videoconferencing for up to 250 users per session.

Online meetings in Teams can include anyone outside or inside a business. This feature also includes a note-taking app, file uploading, and in-meeting chat messaging. Teams also allows desktop sharing for technical assistance and real-time collaboration on documents.

Video meetings can be scheduled on a channel’s calendar, or users can create them on the fly.

Calling

Teams actually offers outbound calling directly from the client. This allows mobile users with no current internet access to connect to a meeting. In fact, Teams can replace a business’s existing phone system using Microsoft 365 Business Voice, but this does require the purchase of an additional licence.

SharePoint Document Storage

Every team who uses Microsoft Teams will have a site in SharePoint Online, containing a default document library folder. Any files shared in conversations will also automatically save to this folder.

Integration with Microsoft Office

As you would expect, Teams is tightly integrated with the rest of Microsoft 365. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other files can be created and managed within channels. Calendaring connects right into Outlook.

Other Features

  • Teams provides all of the security features of the broader Microsoft 365 suite including two-factor authentication and encryption in transit and at rest in the cloud.
  • Teams offers greater data visibility because all conversations within Teams are persistent. Files and conversations in Teams channels are all saved in the Microsoft 365 cloud, making that data available to Microsoft Graph.
  • Teams supports Training sessions as Trainers can send automated alerts to every student in the session. Teams now also supports virtual breakout rooms. These are essential if trainees are being asked to work on group assignments.

If you want to find out more about the capabilities of Teams and how you can use them, please contact us today about the Training that we have for MS Teams at Infero.

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