Five Best Features of Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is the predecessor to Skype for Business, Microsoft’s Unified Communication platform. Teams has taken many of the same elements of Skype for Business and expanded upon them, as well as adding brand new features, not in Skype for Business. Let’s take a look at the five best features of Microsoft Teams.

1 .Superior Conference Calls and Online Meetings

Online meetings and conference calls are often a headache for many businesses. The marketplace of options is saturated with various offerings, each with its own feature set, user interface, and pricing models. Teams sticks with the same model as Skype for Business but greatly improves upon the user interface and ease-of-use. With Teams, the user in the organization can schedule a conference call or online meeting directly from their Outlook calendar. The conference ID and dial-in number are automatically populated into the invite. Regardless of if the parties joining the call are in or outside your organization, Teams has made the process of joining the call dramatically easier than Skype for Business. Inside the invite, the “join Teams” meeting link gives users the option to download the full application or use the web version, either of which begins working within a few clicks.

Once everyone is in the call, it couldn’t be easier to share and collaborate. In Skype for Business and other online meeting platforms, the controls can sometimes be cumbersome and hard to find. In Skype, specifically, there are buttons in every corner of the application and options hidden behind menus. In Teams, every single control is right across the bottom. Whether you are sharing, adding people, IM’ing, muting, or recording, all the options for the call are easy to use and virtually require minimal training to feel comfortable.

Besides the better ease-of-use, the video and audio feeds are clear and crisp with no stutter or latency issues, sharing and collaboration are seamless and have high frame rates. Teams can compete with Zoom, Join.me, and GoToMeeting in features, capabilities, and ease-of-use, and it is significantly cheaper than all of them. This enhanced UI combined with better quality is one of the best features of Microsoft Teams and a great reason to transition to the platform.

2. Better IM – Intelligent Conversations

Instant messaging has now evolved into what Microsoft calls intelligent conversations. All instant messages are now a persistent chat thread that you can always refer to and search. In Skype, when a chat window was closed, it was archived in your email. In Teams, it is a persistent thread just like texting or any other chat application. Beyond persistence, it allows users to attach any type of content they wish to the conversation. You can embed meeting invites, meeting recordings, meeting notes, files, links to files, gifs, tags, and weather stats, etc. There are dozens of apps that fully integrate with the chat function to allow you to share any type of content into the conversation.

3. 3rd Party App Integration

Plugins allow you to integrate all types of 3rd party applications and directly attach them to chats with Teams. Whether they are task apps or project management and note-taking, there is something for everyone and every type of team to help you get more done. These integrations embed directly in the chat as ‘tabs’ so for a single Team you can be using several different third-party apps at once. Microsoft still needs to catch up to Slack in terms of an overall number of apps that integrate, but they are adding more applications very quickly. With the number of applications available it makes the idea of Unified Communications so much greater. Its IM, voice, video, calling, and meetings are all wrapped into one app, while also allowing for 50 other applications and functions to be integrated as well.

4. Mobile

The Mobile application for Teams is very fluid, easy to use, and much more consistent and stable than its predecessor, Skype for Business. Microsoft has improved the app’s user interface, made joining conference calls a single click, and now allows you to schedule Teams meetings directly from the app. While in a meeting you can view screen shared content and video feeds, exactly like you would on the desktop. Also, the Teams app can detect when you are on a meeting with a bad signal and transfer the call to your cell phone, rather than use data for the call. It has wonderful features for limiting the number of notifications you get, or just limiting them to business hours. You can also take full advantage of all the enterprise-grade phone system features of routing calls, parking calls, and answering calls if you are in an IVR or hunt group directly from your mobile. The mobile application allows you to be fully functional while on the go as if you were in the office. Strong mobile integration is among the best features of Microsoft Teams and helps keep your business running smoothly.

5. Full Feature Phone System

Teams is also a full-feature enterprise-grade phone system that can replace an existing PBX phone system for any size business. Office 365 has an add-on subscription that gives you a cloud-based phone system integrated directly into your Teams. There are many devices that work with the Teams phone system including headsets, speakerphones, conference phones, room systems, and desk phones. When a call comes in, it rings on all your devices that are signed into Teams, you can take it from any device, and once you have the call, you can transfer, consult and transfer, put people on hold, park calls, or any function available in an enterprise-grade phone system. Voicemails are transcribed and emailed to you. It’s incredibly easy to use has excellent call quality, and outages are extremely rare. The Teams admin portal in 365 makes it easy for almost anyone to administrate the system. You can easily create users, assign numbers, create hunt groups, and auto attendants, etc. All the setup on the user interface is very easy on the initial setup and for ongoing support.

Microsoft has evolved its Unified Communications platform over the years through several iterations; from Office Communicator 2007, to Lync, to Skype for Business and now to Microsoft Teams. We are excited about the future of this platform and for the countless hours it saves us to communicate seamlessly and effectively with our team, as well as to see how this suite of the best features of Microsoft Teams is built upon.

If you want to learn more about the process of migrating your business over to Microsoft Teams, give TecFac a call or contact us online. We are experts at the migration process and can guide you through a smooth transition that doesn’t upset daily operations.