Microsoft Teams has grown at incredible speeds since its launch in 2017, surpassing its role model Slack in terms of active users. With the unexpected, short-term migration of millions of employees to the home office in 2020, Teams, and in particular, its built-in video conferencing function, saw more demand than ever before. “Two years of digital transformation in two months,” according to Microsoft. Microsoft has decided to focus on Teams as the intelligent communication solution, terminating its investments in Skype for Business. People, on the other hand, dislike being forced to use anything unless they can see the benefits of doing so. What are some of the benefits of switching to Microsoft Teams?
Pros of Using Microsoft Teams
Enhanced Communication and Productivity gains
The wide range of collaboration features provided by Microsoft Office 365 may cause confusion. However, with Microsoft Teams, you won’t need to search for another collaboration tool or software. Microsoft Teams improves your business efficiency by centralizing and organizing all of your discussions, collaborations, online meetings, file sharing, task management, chats, etc.
Integration of all tools in a single place
Microsoft has prioritized ease of use in Teams. You have a chat tool that also contains all of your other apps. From a channel, you can make a video or voice call, work on files without leaving the conversation, plan a meeting, or assign a task to others.
No additional cost for Microsoft 365 users
For some businesses, additional fees can be a deal-breaker. The good news is that the Teams functionality is free if your firm currently has a Microsoft 365 license. Separate chat solutions, like Slack or Google Hangouts, on the other hand, can add to your company’s costs. Furthermore, if you do not require premium features, you can always use the free version of Teams.
Better focus on your work
You can focus your attention on work-related things and better prioritize your time with Teams. Teams help to divide information into channels and place your information in relevance, so you don’t have to waste time browsing through an inbox full of messages from everyone on anything. The channel only contains discussions, meetings, and documents that are relevant to the channel’s topic.
Increased transparency
Keeping everyone in the loop and making everyone feel like they know what’s going on is a major difficulty for many organizations. This is made a lot easier with Teams. You won’t have to stress about who to cc in an email or who to invite to a meeting anymore. With Teams, you publish your message in the appropriate channel, @-mention the individuals you want to be notified, and leave it open for everyone else to read if they wish. Having meetings available to everyone in the channel increases transparency by allowing anyone in the channel to “pop in.”
New team members can more quickly get up to speed
Getting employees up to speed immediately is critical in today’s dynamic workplace, where we can easily access talent from anywhere around the world. You can quickly get new team members up to speed and interested in teamwork using Teams, no matter where they are in the world.
Cons of Microsoft Teams
A limited number of channels
Per team, the number of channels is limited to 200 public and 30 private. While this may not be an issue for smaller businesses, others may find themselves in a bind. You’ll have to eliminate some channels if you go above this limit. It’s worth noting that shared files are kept on the SharePoint site for backup purposes.
Too many similar tools
Surprisingly, other Microsoft technologies are the largest stumbling block for Microsoft Teams. People are still puzzled about which tool to choose in which situation, despite the abundance of possibilities. It is Microsoft’s responsibility to educate its users about their tools.
Unnecessary storage consumption
Everyone in the company has the ability to create a team by default. It can lead to the formation of unnecessary teams and the filling of storage space. The good news is that you can limit team-creating authority to a subset of users, but it will take some manual effort. You must first create a separate security group for the people you wish to create a team and then run some PowerShell tasks.
Conclusion:
Microsoft Teams is transforming workplace digital collaboration and will be the indisputable center of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem for the next few years. The advantages of employing Teams are considerable, and the drawbacks can be addressed with enough effort and time.
