On November 2nd, Microsoft unveiled a new application for the Office 365 platform, Microsoft Teams. It will be a tool for organizations that rely on collaboration amongst their teams to fulfill their work. Microsoft Teams is completely integrated into Office 365 and is not available without it. You may be wondering if Microsoft Teams will interfere with Yammer, but Microsoft has made it clear that Yammer is not going anywhere because they do not compete. Microsoft says Yammer is more of a social networking platform rather than a chat/communication service, which Teams is directly geared towards.
Microsoft Teams is currently in preview. What this means for you is that although it is available in 181 countries, 18 languages, and accessible with Office 365 Enterprise and Business, it will not be completely available until early 2017.
Let’s dive into more about how you can use Microsoft Team, and it’s four cores: chat, hubs, customization, and security.
Chat:
Microsoft Teams was created for organizations as a robust messenger. There has been speculation that Microsoft has done this to sway millennials to Office 365. There are two forms of communication within Microsoft Teams, persistent and threaded chat. You may be wondering, “Doesn’t Skype do this?” Well, Microsoft Teams is entirely integrated with Skype which will give the User the ability to use voice and video. Microsoft Teams is also compatible with emoji’s, stickers, GIF’s, and custom memes.
Hubs:
Microsoft Teams is completely built in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneNote, Planner, PowerBI, and Delve. This will optimize and make it seamless for teams to collaborate and share. To conquer information relevancy, discovering, and sharing, Microsoft Teams is backed by Microsoft Graph.
Customization:
Microsoft Teams is completely customizable. Microsoft has seen that all teams are unique and with that may require customization. This is why Microsoft has incorporated extensive extensibility and open API’s. Microsoft Teams has incorporated the same connector model as Microsoft Exchange. This feature gives the Users the ability to receive third party notifications and updates from, for example, Twitter and GitHub. Microsoft Teams wanted to also incorporate intelligence and third party services into the Team environment which is why Microsoft Bot Framework is fully supported.
Security:
What has been a focus of Microsoft’s through 2016 and I see continuing into 2017 is security. Data will always be encrypted whether it is at rest or in transit. Microsoft will not allow any standing access to the customer’s data. Microsoft Teams is also in compliance with EU Model Clauses, ISO 27001, SOC 2, and HIPAA.
FAQ for Microsoft Teams:
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