Microsoft Teams for Office 365

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Foh96zq24M0

Microsoft Teams is now live for Office 365 with some nifty new features. 

Microsoft’s new chat-based workspace and collaboration tool, Microsoft Teams, is now available for all Office 365 users. Inside the Teams environment, you can now communicate with your colleagues through threaded text messages or via audio and video chat.Collaboration tools and online chat have become increasingly essential in today’s workforce with many members of the same team working remotely; whether it be overseas or at home.

Teams is tightly integrated with other Microsoft apps and services, a huge advantage for all the many businesses invested in the Microsoft Office ecosystem. For example, all files in Teams are stored in SharePoint Online, and you can view Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents within Teams. You can add a OneNote, Power BI (analytics), or Microsoft Planner tab, among others, to any channel or chat, and work in those tabs without leaving Teams. Voice, video and meetings throughout Office 365 are powered by Skype, including in Microsoft Teams.

It’s on by default, right now, with extra love for Outlook and SharePoint

Here are the chief features included in the app:

  • A hub for teamwork with access to Word, Excel, SharePoint, OneNote and Power BI.
  • Threaded, persistent chat with team conversations, private and 1:1 chats.
  • Supports for audio and video calling on mobile.
  • Inbuilt mojis, stickers, GIFs, and custom memes.
  • High level of customisation with access to tabs, connectors and bots from MS and third party partners.
  • Hyper-scale, enterprise-grade security that supports global standards including SOC 1, SOC 2, EU Model Clauses, ISO27001 and HIPAA.
  • Mobile audio calling, with video calling on Android (iOS and Windows Phone “coming soon”)
  • Email integration

Teams is software-as-a-service and Microsoft promises ongoing evolution. For starters, Microsoft says we can expect more integration with third-party software vendors so that their apps can pipe messages into Teams and information can flow both ways.

Microsoft Teams is now live and officially a part of Office 365, at least for those users with an appropriate business subscription.