Microsoft Teams’ conferencing capabilities saw the platform really take off at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as businesses scrambled to ensure their employees could effectively work from home.

Teams ensured meetings continued, connected businesses with clients, suppliers and other businesses in remote locations, provided a place for office chatter and, with those quirky background settings, provided just a little bit of fun to the usual workday.

But did you know Microsoft Teams’ benefits go way beyond its conferencing capabilities?

Here’s our top 11 (sorry couldn’t stop at 10!) features of Microsoft Teams for business:

1. Teams is a central collaboration platform – everything from sharing of documents, to emails, to friendly chat can go through Teams.
2. Teams can now facilitate a larger number of users on video calls at the same time. Initially a downfall, and one of the reasons some businesses moved to Zoom during the lock down period, was the restrictions on the number of participants at any given time. Microsoft has announced a move to a 7×7 format, which will soon allow 49 on-screen video participants simultaneously.
3. Teams enables the migration of existing SharePoint structures and removes a lot of reliance on emails.
4. The chat functionality enables the setup of various channels for individual messaging and group conversations – e.g. an all staff channel for major staff notifications, client channels for specific group file sharing.
5. It can run across several devices – phone (both iOS and Android), as well as Windows and Mac.
6. The calendar functionality syncs to your Outlook calendar for effective meeting scheduling.
7. People that you work with outside your own organisation don’t need an account or Teams set up. It can be run completely in the web browser or from a mobile device.
8. Teams is interoperable with Skype for Business with people outside your organisation. All you need to do is type in their email address for direct messaging, video call or audio call. You can also set up guest access within a team for external contractors.
9. Teams integrates with over 3000 third-party apps to extend its capabilities even further e.g. Polly, a bot which enables the creation of simple polls within a team.
10. Teams Connectors can bring data from external applications, such as Google Analytics, into Teams, so that it can be viewed by everyone within that team.
11. Teams can even integrate with your office phone system.

Here at Centrered we have used Microsoft extensively and know the range of capabilities it can offer your business.

Watch our webinar on How Microsoft Teams will be integral beyond a pandemic, or get in touch with us today to discuss how you could be using Teams in your business.