Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams, an Office 365 service that offers threaded chats and other information from Office 365 Groups in a tabbed interface, is available in public preview. Its features feel similar to offerings like Slack and could be popular with younger workers who are accustomed to chat applications and eschew e-mail and other traditional methods of collaboration. The preview has some setup limitations and does not offer full compliance features, and it may not be suitable for organizations that require eDiscovery and other features.

New Collaboration Service Can Use Agents

Microsoft Teams is a hub that pulls together several Office 365 collaboration offerings (shared calendar, shared files, OneNote notebooks, Skype for Business) into a tabbed, customizable interface and adds a new Groups-based persistent chat service. (See the illustration “Microsoft Teams Desktop Client“.)

Teams joins an already crowded field of chat and discussion services within Office 365: Office 365 Groups shared mailboxes, SharePoint discussions, Skype for Business, and Yammer already fill this need in some way. However, Teams offers a Slack-like user interface, as well as features such as threading and organization, which more users could find appealing. Organizations that do not promote a preferred discussion service could see people default to using e-mail, or worse, miss messages by not checking multiple services regularly.