What are the benefits of Microsoft Teams?
What are the benefits of Microsoft Teams?
The business world is always buzzing about which collaboration platform is the best. There certainly are quite a lot of options to choose from. But one particularly useful solution stands out: Microsoft Teams. And it’s included totally free with Microsoft365 or Office365.
Microsoft Teams is a persistent chat-based collaboration platform complete with document sharing, online meetings, and many more extremely useful features for business communications. Having an excellent team space is key to being able to make creative decisions and communicate with one another. Shared workspace software makes this much easier to achieve, especially if a particular team is based in a very large company, has many remote employees, or is made up of a significant amount of team members.
Let’s look at some of the features
Teams and channels. Teams are made up of channels, which are conversation boards between teammates.
Conversations within channels and teams. All team members can view and add to different conversations in the General channel and can use an @ function to invite other members to different conversations.
A chat function. The basic chat function is commonly found within most collaboration apps and can take place between teams, groups, and individuals.
Document storage in SharePoint. Every team who uses Microsoft Teams will have a site in SharePoint Online, which will contain a default document library folder. All files shared across all conversations will automatically save to this folder. Permissions and security options can also be customised for sensitive information.
Online video calling and screen sharing. Enjoy seamless and fast video calls to employees within your business or clients outside your business. A good video call feature is great to have on a collaboration platform. One can also enjoy simple and fast desktop sharing for technical assistance and multi-user real-time collaboration.
Online meetings. This feature can help enhance your communications, company-wide meetings, and even training with an online meetings function that can host up to 10,000 users. Online meetings can include anyone outside or inside a business. This feature also includes a scheduling aid, a note-taking app, file uploading, and in-meeting chat messaging.
Audio conferencing. This is a feature you won’t find in many collaboration platforms. With audio conferencing, anyone can join an online meeting via phone. With a dial-in number that spans hundreds of cities, even users that are on the go can participate with no internet required. Note this requires additional licensing.
To Team or to Zoom?
With many businesses preparing for a transition to a hybrid working a big question being asked though is, which conferencing, and collaboration tool is better, Zoom or Microsoft Teams?
Choosing between the two is easier said than done with both Teams and Zoom offering similarly high levels of quality and a comparable suite of features. Choosing between Zoom and Microsoft Teams boils down to what your priorities are. Here’s the main difference, Zoom is purely a video conferencing tool and Teams is an all-in-one tool that combines video conferencing with team chat and other productivity features.
Zapier summed it as follows:
1. Teams is better for maximising meeting productivity
2. Teams has more advanced meeting collaboration features
3. Zoom is better for external meetings and Teams for internal meetings
4. Zoom copes better with larger meetings and slow internet
5. Both apps play nice with other tools
Our final thoughts, what benefits does Teams have to offer?
1. Teams streamlines work and saves time: As Microsoft’s “hub for teamwork”, Microsoft Teams brings together chat, calls, meetings, Microsoft 365 apps, and third-party tools in one centralised location.
2. Teams hosts more effective video meetings: Videoconferencing has become a mainstay of life during the pandemic, and improved video meetings are one of the many benefits of Microsoft Teams for distributed work.
3. Teams helps you collaborate seamlessly: Leveraging Microsoft Teams collaboration capabilities enables you to move beyond transactional messages and meetings and focus on the flow of work.
4. Teams makes conversations and connections more meaningful: People in a distributed workforce still crave human connection. A host of new Microsoft Teams features make interactions more natural, engaging, and fun.
5. Teams keeps everyone informed: Now more than ever, it’s vital for businesses to keep employees informed and on the same page—wherever they work. Integrated Teams apps help you communicate more effectively with employees.
Your first step to getting Teams
This first step you need to take to get Teams is to contact Rito-Technologies so they can assess your business needs and make a professional recommendation.
Be more productive in your workplace through Information Technology (IT) and grow your business. Rito-Technologies is an IT business partner that maximises business output through technology. They enable their clients to be SMART with their IT Strategic Planning and Microsoft and Office365, which is guaranteed to increase your business performance and ROI.
For more information about our IT Strategic Planning, request a free assessment today or get in touch with us at info@rito-tech.co.za or call us on 010 213 7016 and we will gladly assist you.
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