The most accurate and true definition of Microsoft Teams,in my point of view,is that MS Teams is a very highly UNIFED communications and collaborative platform in Office 365 suite, Probably you are wondering why did I write  “unified” in a bold capital letters , well , this is due to the fact that UNIFIED is the  most important word that can define this wonderful platform .

Before starting

Before going deeply, a little, no one can deny that there are a lot of other options to communicate and collaborate. Indeed! the business world is always confused about which collaboration platform is the best. Well, there are certainly many options, naming zoom, Google meet, WebEx, Skype for business, Microsoft Teams and others. Also, no one can deny the credibility and originality of each option. However, in this article, I will try to focus on one particularly useful solution which is Microsoft Teams. I would love to inform you, ladies and gentlemen, it is free with Office 365. There is a saying from a well-known Arab poet named Al-Mutanabbi says: 
some people's disasters are other's benefits, 
Due to the impact of Covid-19 and the growing practices of social distancing and working from home. Most people today are working remotely from home and the number of users in the previous mentioned collaboration platform is increasing. The number of the daily active users of MS Teams around the world is about 44 million as of March 19,2020. Which means that  Microsoft Teams has witnessed  a dramatic increase in the use of their communication and collaboration platform within a short period of time , source: www.statista.com

What is Microsoft Teams?

As mentioned earlier, Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaborative platform. It enables users to host and schedule a meeting, chat, share files through teams and channels. Not to mention that this wonderful business platform was only launched in 2017!

Some of you would say that there are plentiful and numerous ways to collaborate in projects and that Microsoft, already, has a several applications that comes with Office 365 such as planner, SharePoint …etc. Well this is where Microsoft Teams role begins. Did you remember when I said UNIFIED? MS Teams makes each and every task easier. Starting with:  to schedule a meeting , share files and information , stay up to date on all the projects, track tasks , integrate Power BI Reports and SharePoint Sites , have notifications , collaborate in a “ word or an excel” document , and to  inform access management … etc . All of these options in a one unified space with no need to launch the other Office 365 from other location!  Brilliant isn’t it? 

Pricing

Microsoft Teams is available as part of Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, but you can get started for free rather than starting as a part of Microsoft 365

You can get the free version which include an unlimited chat and search, Video calling, 10 GB of Team file storage and 2GB of Personal file storage per person and the most important one is that you can collaborate in real time with Office apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
So, to recap, you want to go with Microsoft Teams, you have two options, either you go with the free version or you purchase one of the M365 plan and enjoy it.

Microsoft Teams hidden gems

In this section, I will try briefly to list some of the best features on MS Teams, in order to make sure you will get the most out of this app. And I will try to detail all of that in another post.
  1. Bookmark specific content: it comes with the option to bookmark specific pieces of content to make sure that you can find it later,
  2. Commands: you will be able to get the work done quickly using Slash Commands by typing / then the specified comment
  3. Show and Hide feature: it’s for people who want to avoid overwhelmed information by hiding the inactive teams and showing the active one, like that you will stay organized as much as you would like to
  4. MS Teams connectors: instead of surfing to Twitter, Slack or Trello for example to fetch an information, you can connect those streams straights to channels
  5. Synchronization with SharePoint sites: like collaboration using Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote), you can easily connect a SharePoint Team Site and bring it to MS Teams, so you users will be able to add SP pages and lists into channels, stream news directly, add a website tab of that SP site or libraries … etc.
  6. Information Privacy: Sharing and collaborating is cool, but sometimes the right information should not go the wrong people, with Information barrier you will be allowed to define which individuals can collaborate with you.
  7. Translation: Inline message translation allow you to chat in your native tongue language and translate messages into English for other users.
  8. Guest Access: in the earliest version of MS Teams, people were not able to invite guests to their Teams, however now people in a business can connect with guests outside of their organization.
  9. BOTS: to take advantage of AI feature, try the pre-made MS Teams bots.
  10. Telephony system integration: there are multiple ways to setup a telephony system in MS Teams environment, the well-know 2 ways are the calling plan and direct routing

And remember, there are still more, and more features and I promise I will do a detailed article which describe most of them.


Note: I did not mention the most exciting and important feature to let you eager to know more and keep following me to get the next article :3, I am sorry that’s my policy.


Staying productive while working remotely with MS Teams

That’s the main reason why I come up with the idea to write a small article about this app, with COVID-19 outbreak spreading around the world, all companies and employees start to work from home.
So, with all the changes that come with moving to remote work, and I understand that every individual and team works differently. But remember you can start using Teams today by signing in for FREE, so what are you waiting for? Go and try it and welcome to the new business world !