Wikipedia describes Microsoft Teams as “a proprietary business communication platform developed by Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. Teams primarily competes with the similar service Slack, offering workspace chat and videoconferencing, file storage, and application integration”. A very apt definition for what Microsoft Teams really is.

In other words, it is the new hub for communicating and collaborating between an organisation’s workforce. Teams came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic, along side with Zoom, becoming the de facto tool for conducting meetings, teaching, and learning by pupils and students across continents. Teams have carried that popularity into the corporate world to become the hub through which team members chat, call, and meet with one another.

Yet not many organisations are using Teams effectively to increase collaboration and productivity. Here we would highlight the major features and ways that you and your organisation can use Microsoft Teams for productivity gains and effective team communication and collaboration.

The main feature of Teams is the Communication function, with this you can use Teams to stay connected with your colleagues through dedicated chats, calls, teams, and channels. You can schedule meetings and share files in the process.

Teams help you define and create a team, which Microsoft defines as a collection of people, content, and tolls based on a specific project or group, providing you with a hub for effective business communication.

Because Microsoft provides Teams templates, these make it quick and easy to create teams with these predefined team collaboration settings, which is what we examine next.

We have already highlighted file sharing as a major feature of Teams. This gives it the collaborative capabilities which enable you to collaboratively edit documents with everyone in your team. 

 You can also manage tasks and deliver projects together.
Teams allow you to organise your collaboration activities in sub-groups called channels similar to TV channels, which you can dedicate to specific topics or projects, enabling you to have conversations, share files, work together on a specific project. 

 Note that channels can be marked as public and therefor open to all team members, or they can be private, and so only accessible to certain members that have been granted access.
Beyond collaboration, you can meet with others on Teams, which is what we consider next.

With Teams, you can instantly meet a co-worker, and start a group meeting. You can also host meetings and webinars with built-in presentation to share files, edit documents, manage tasks, and deliver on projects.

Chatting is increasingly becoming a vital business communication and collaboration tool. With group chats, Teams have taken collaboration to another level. 

You can start a one-on-one and group chats with colleagues and take advantage of the new notification feature that Microsoft has incorporated into group chats using the @ symbol, which will allow you to notify a specific colleague or channel that you are in need of their help. 

Your colleague or channel members will receive a notification that they have been mentioned in a chat, enabling them to respond quicker to your messages.

To get the real benefits of communication and collaboration using Microsoft Teams, we believe that training is key, both for your business users and your developers. 

So, to make Microsoft Teams work for you and turn your organisation into a truly communicative and collaborative organisation get the proper training on how to use Microsoft Teams, who should be communicating and collaborating with whom, and learn from what other similar organisations have used Teams.

Also getting the right partner to help with the adoption of Microsoft Teams as a communication and collaboration tool in your organisation will make a big difference to how successful you are in using it in your company. And this where Agile SharePoint comes in. Go ahead to the next section to read how we can help you maximise your investment in Microsoft Teams as a communication and collaboration tool.