Features and comparison of Microsoft Teams

Feature of Microsoft Teams and Comparison with other software like skype, webex and slack.

Microsoft teams is cloud based team communication software. The main capability in Microsoft teams includes business messaging, video meetings and file sharing.Microsoft Teams is an easy to use central hub for team communication.

Microsoft Teams launched in March 2017. In September 2017, Microsoft announced Teams would replace Skype for Business Online in Office 365. Microsoft has been replacing Skype for Business Online features into Teams over the past several months, including messaging, meetings and calling capabilities. Microsoft Teams can be integrate with other Office 365 applications including Exchange, PowerPoint and SharePoint.

Microsoft teams is chat base application that features group and private messaging with threaded conversations within each team. Within each team user can create different channel to manage the communications by topic for thousand (each team have up to 2500 members and 100 owners) of users from the same or different organizations also. Each Channel have their own tabs along the top. Conversation (group chat), Files (shared documents) and Notes (shared OneNote) are automatically created and you can then add your own tabs. By clicking reply to the specific comment in the conversation you ensure that your response is part of that thread. Owners can add new members, edit the settings, delete, rename team. When a team is created, a group will be created in office 365, which includes a shared outlook inbox and calendar, a SharePoint site and document library, a OneNote notebook and Planner. User can edit-create PowerPoint, Excel, Word files in teams.

Why use Microsoft Teams

Teams increases productivity by making all your collaboration– conversations, chats, online meetings, shared files, tasks, etc. available in one single app and one single interface. In addition, Microsoft Teams have a wide range of 3rd party apps like Zendesk, Asana, GitHub, Trello, Azure DevOps, JIRA cloud etc to integrate in teams so that user don’t need to switch between the apps to get their work done.

Using Teams we can focus our attention to work related topics instead on spending time to check mail inbox for messages through channels. So instead of getting side tracked with random email, we can focus our limited time on the channel where we actually working.

Teams increases transparency- In many organizations keeping everyone in loop for what is going on is big challenge. In teams we can post our message to relevant channel and @mention the people name to whom we want to notify and leave it for everyone else to read it.

Since teams is a purely cloud base application, user can able to access information from anywhere.

The guest-access feature in Microsoft Teams allows users to invite people outside their organizations to join internal channels for messaging, meetings and file sharing. This capability of Microsoft Teams helps to make business-to-business project management easily.

Microsoft Teams vs Skype for Business

Since Teams having all the functionality that Skype for Business offers, there is really no reason to choose Skype for Business over Teams. Microsoft has made clear that it wants to create a single platform that will unify all collaborative requirements for working professionals. Microsoft had really tried to create a single platform for all requirements of communication application for working professionals. Teams lets you set appointments, share file, video – audio calling, conference call, create groups – channels and performs numerous other tasks.

Below is feature comparison list for quick reference.

Microsoft teams compete with similar products like Slack, Cisco Webx. 

Both apps offer free versions, with subscriptions to paid plans available. With Microsoft Teams, the cheapest paid plan is in the Office 365 Business Essentials, and it starts at $5/user/month (billed annually). There’s also a Premium Version available at $12.50/user/month (also billed annually).

With Slack, its Standard Version will cost you $6.67 user/month (billed annually), whereas the Premium will be $12.50 user/month (billed annually).

Below is feature comparison between them.

Microsoft Teams Vs Slack Vs Cisco WebEX