Microsoft Teams

How can Teams help increase productivity and

efficiency?

Through its Chat-Based Communication Features

 Teams is Microsoft's take on chat-based communication for businesses, designed to
eliminate the long email trails

 Compatible on all operating systems and platforms (including mobile).

 It is optimal for smaller teams that work more in real-time, especially on projects (currently,
Teams is for internal teams only – it can't be used to communicate and collaborate with
people outside of an organization at the moment).

 In its simplest form, the service allows users to set up Teams, each of which is essentially a
hub for group chat rooms, which are called channels.
 Multiple chat rooms or channels can be created within a Team and to help keep
chats easy to follow, conversations are threaded, flow from top to bottom and
notify users of updates.

Through Skype
 Easy switching between voice, video and text chat through Skype with a single click
 For example, a video icon next to a channel in the left-hand nav means there's
an open video meeting going on. If you click into the team, you can click the
"Join the Conversation" box in the main feed to jump into the ongoing Skype
conversation embedded in the feed.
Through Office 365
 Teams is integrated with Microsoft's online office suite Office 365, which means it is tied to
other Microsoft Office services – this allows for shared files, calendars and collaborative
editing.

 Microsoft Teams brings Office 365 in a custom tab format. If you click into a particular team
and select Add Tab on the top right, you can add Word, Excel, Powerpoint and a host of
other apps as associated tabs with that team that essentially replicates the full functionality
of the app without leaving Teams.

 Any documents, spreadsheets, presentations and the like that are shared within a Team are
synced with a copy stored in Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage and a local SharePoint
environment, so every Team member always has access to the latest version.
 Collaborative editing of this shared content is also possible, with each user's
changes reflected in the Office software in real time.
 When a team is created, a SharePoint directory is automatically provisioned
behind the scenes with a folder representing every channel. From there, you can
choose a file and open it up directly in Word or Excel, or within that integrated
Office 365 tab directly in Teams. This makes the content more searchable and
easier to interact with – SharePoint’s file mapping allows us to easily locate core
or evergreen content teams need to keep coming back to.

 Users are also able to go over to Power BI within their team and interact with real-time data
visualizations.

 OneNote, Planner and Delve are also integrated with Teams.

Through Bots
 Teams features a few chat bots that will make collaborating with your teams smoother: T-
Bot and Who-Bot

 T-Bot is the embedded assistant that teaches you how to use Microsoft Teams. Typing in
“How do I make a new channel?”, brings up a card that offers a Help topic.
Through Bots (continuation)
 Who-Bot is a quick reference to team members that you need. Typing in “Who knows
about ticket sales” will not only result in members that mention the topic often but will also
offer insight on how to contact them via phone, message, email or more.

 These bots work similarly to how Skype Bots operate and users can switch between a chat
view, browser view, and so on depending on how they wish to process the information.

Through Integrations with Third-Party Plug-Ins

 Teams can also be used to communicate with services outside of Office 365. At the
moment, the built-in integrations are limited to a select few, namely Asana, Hootsuite,
Intercom and Zendesk.

 Each integration appears as a custom-added tab in particular teams, just like the
integrations with Office 365.
 For example, if a support team needed to add a Zendesk (customer service
software) integration, they would click “Add a Tab” and have the ability to
dynamically update and respond to tickets in a full-featured Zendesk interface
from that tab. Adrian McDermott, President of Product at Zendesk, said the
Teams integration has given the helpdesk company a chance to expose
employee and customer reactions at a deeper level. Click here for more info on
how Teams benefits from the integration with Zendesk
 Another integration partner is Asana (a popular project management tool). Chris
Farinacci, Head of Business at Asana, said the tab-based experience gave the
company a deeper level of granularity in its integration while providing a full
top-down view of a project in Teams. Click here for more info on how Teams
benefits from the integration with Asana

SOURCES
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-teams-the-smart-persons-guide/
http://www.pcmag.com/article/349274/microsoft-teams-vs-slack-whats-the-difference
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/review/software/microsoft-teams-vs-slack-3649627/