Microsoft Teams as business communication software
Microsoft Teams is a relative newcomer to the world of business communication software. Since its announcement in 2017, Teams has been integrated with just about every product Microsoft offers and has swallowed all the features that used to make Skype for Business so great. You can make phone calls, chat, conduct meetings, share your screen, and have video calls, just to name a few of the features Teams offers.Microsoft Teams as a communications platform, replacing Skype for Business, is nice, but that is not what has made it the fastest growing product in Microsoft history. What makes Teams so special is that Microsoft has invested heavily to make it the face and entry point to almost all other Office services. For example, I am writing this article using Microsoft Word, but I am doing so from within the Teams app, as shown.
Using Microsoft Word from within Teams.In addition to integrating with Microsoft Office, Teams also integrates with several third-party applications, as shown.
Some of the apps that integrate with Teams.To be fair, the big competitor to Teams called Slack, is also racing to integrate other software and be the primary business tool you use for communications and productivity. Slack had a head start — hitting the market in 2013 — and became incredibly popular very quickly. However, Microsoft had a big advantage in that so many people already used Office products, so when Microsoft integrated Office with Teams, it was an easy move for users to start using Teams. In fact, in 2020 it was announced that there are more active users of Teams now than Slack. That is a big milestone.
Don’t get me wrong; I still use Slack in my consulting business, since some of my clients only use Slack and don’t use Teams. In fact, I use other apps, too, such as Google Hangouts and Zoom. It is this software diversity that results from my consulting that gives me confidence to contrast and compare these tools.
Microsoft Teams is becoming the one app to rule them all in the Microsoft world. It has become the entry point for Office applications as well as other non-Microsoft software. This is the reason it has grown so quickly. If you are using Microsoft 365 or Office 365, you may find yourself using the integrated services through Teams instead of trying to remember how to use them independently.
Teams terminology
Keeping the terminology in Teams straight can be a challenge. For example, you will eventually find yourself inviting one of your teammates to your Teams team. Or asking what Teams team your coworker is talking about. Once you get used to it, the terminology will seem normal.To get a jump on the terms, here are some quick definitions:
- Teams: Use the term Teams to refer to the product itself.
- Team: A team (lowercased) is a group of users. You can specify settings for teams and have multiple teams within Microsoft Teams. For example, you might want to create a team for accounting, a team for legal, and another team for external contacts.
- Channel: A channel is a group chat within a team. A team can have multiple group chats with the idea being that you can create a chat for different topics.
- Thread: A thread is a specific topic of discussion within a channel. For example, one person might start a new thread in the channel and then others can reply to that thread. You can have multiple threads going in a channel at the same time.
- External/guest user: An external or guest user is a user that is not part of your organization. For example, you might be a consultant and need to communicate with the company’s accountant. You can invite that person as a guest user to your team.