What is Microsoft Teams?

In this era of globalization, people from all over the world are connecting together. Every businessman wants to expand his business to the maximum number of counties and to the greatest number of people.

The chairperson and employees of every organization are spread worldwide and they are working and connecting with each other remotely with the help of a real-time collaboration platform (application),

Business organizations are always looking for which collaboration platform is the best and offers the most useful features.

Now the question is, out of the many options available on the internet, which option is the best, then the solution that stands out is Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams is a real-time collaborative workspace platform developed by Microsoft, as part of its subscription-based service Microsoft 365 family of products.

Microsoft Teams is well integrated with the other productivity tools of Microsoft office where users can create, edit, manage and share their world, excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files together in real-time with their teams.

Why Microsoft Teams is becoming so popular among all professionals like business organizations, schools, etc. What are the features that make this great collaboration platform different and more useful than other communication solutions? Let’s understand more deeply.

What are the best features of Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is the ultimate collaboration app designed to boost the productivity of business organizations that is well integrated with the rest of the productivity tools of Microsoft 365 allows the users to document sharing, face-to-face video conferencing, audio chatting, and also enables users real-time edit manage and share Microsoft Office file with the teams so you and your team stay informed, organized, and connected — all in one place.

Large companies have many remote employees around the world, this number has increased even more after the covid 19 pandemic. In such a situation, it becomes very important to have a good workspace application that facilitates the collaboration of the business team with lots of useful features.

Here is the list of the best features of Microsoft Teams:

• Individually Chatting

This is the main basic feature of the Microsoft teams, you can start chatting one-to-one by simply clicking on new chat, further type in the name of the person, you want to chat with and next compose your message, press enter to send. Here you can also send GIFs, upload your files, etc.

• Group Chatting

A group chat is another feature of Microsoft Teams where you can create one or more groups by simply adding the name of other users of your organization or from other fields into the chat area and start sending and receiving text, videos, and other files in a group.

To create a Group, chose the add participant icon provided in the top right corner of the chat menu.

Chatting one-to-one or in a group are features that you can get easily within most collaboration applications.

• Teams

This feature is a group of people who are brought together for the purpose of working together on a project or with a common intention of all,

Teams can be formed from two types of channels –

Standard: Standard form of team is that which is available and visible to all and can be made for general purpose.

Private: Private team is not visible to everyone; it is created for private collaboration with specific people. It is specially used when a team working on any sensitive information.

• Channels

The channel is the place for the team where all the action takes place.

This feature of Microsoft Teams allows teamwork to share their innovative ideas as well as work together remotely on documents and projects in real-time to implement those ideas. Microsoft teams has created effective ways to work together from a distance.

• SharePoint. 

Every team channel using Microsoft Teams has a SharePoint team site that offers the team to store their files in the default document library folder contained in the cloud storage of Microsoft: OneDrive. All files shared, edited, or created during the team communication will automatically save.

You can customize permission and security options for sensitive information. Also, track and stay updated on your project’s status using this feature.

• Video calling and screen sharing. 

Microsoft Teams offers you a seamless fast and clear video calls feature by which you can call people within your business organization or external parties like clients, suppliers, etc.

By using this feature, you can easily share your desktop with a multi-user during real-time collaboration for technical assistance and other reasons.

• Video conferencing. 

Your experience of online meeting through face-to-face video conferencing is at the extreme level with Microsoft Teams. It allows users to host up to 10,000 users, whether they belong to the same organization or external persons.

• Audio conferencing. 

This feature allows to join up to 1000 people meeting by phone.

Audio conferencing is a very useful feature, especially when one cannot attend the meeting using the Microsoft Teams application on his device for some reason. As such, he/she may join the Microsoft Teams meeting by dial-in number. To do this no internet required only requires additional licensing.

• Full telephony. 

MS Teams also supports connectivity to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), which enables its users to make and receive calls as if it is a telephone. Note this need additional licensing.

• Integrations

Microsoft Teams has hundreds of integrations available through Microsoft AppSource, its integration marketplace. 

What are the new features added to Microsoft teams?

• Noise suppression

By using this feature, you can remove unwanted noise during an online meeting.

• Transfer meeting devices

MS teams now offer a feature, by which you can transfer your meetings from one device to another device. This feature will help you a lot when your first device starts facing some problem during the meeting, or its battery gets down.

• Teams for personal use

MS Teams is developed for all, now you can use it absolutely free for personal use amongst friends and families, to do this just sign in with your Microsoft account.

• Switch accounts

Now you can switch in MS Teams from one account to another account and to do this you don’t need to log out from your primary account.

• Pin Posts

This feature of Microsoft allows you to pin as many messages as you want so that they can be easily accessed and used when needed.

• Additional status controls.

Microsoft Teams offers visible status while you are working remotely, here Teams provide you full control of your visible status, you can change it depending on your availability for the others.

• Improved notifications

This feature allows you to Turn On or Turn Off all your channel notifications. Apart from this, you can customize all the notifications of your channel by choosing the custom option.

• Mute attendees

You have the option in MS Teams to mute as many participants as you want without disabling their mics.

• Insights

As we know, each student has different workability, learning skill, and way of expression.

In Microsoft Teams’ by receiving actionable Insights educators can analyze their students and deliver better learning outcomes.

• Emojis in Teams & Channels

Emojis are the modern way to express your emotions by using them in your chat messages as these are the symbols of facial reactions and MS teams has expanded reactions  

• Channel calendar

Channel Calendar is a shared calendar feature that helps team members to organize collaboration for the pre-determined event.

• End of meeting notification

If your meeting exceeds the fixed schedule time, it will not end automatically unless you actually end it or leave it. No matter how long it is running. With the help of this feature, your meeting is never interrupted.