Since its initial release in 2017, Microsoft Teams has come a long way to become a popular online collaboration tool for businesses of all sizes. This powerful yet intuitive communication and collaboration tool had witnessed a dramatic 50% surge in usage during the pandemic last year. Today, it has become Microsoft’s fastest-growing business application with over 145 million daily active users and over 500,000 enterprises have embraced it including Fortune 100 companies. If you are also planning to opt for Microsoft Teams services, it’s wise to know the pros and cons of this online collaboration tool. Let’s get started.
Pros of Microsoft Teams
1. Integration with Office 365 and third-party apps in a single place
Unlike other collaboration tools, Microsoft Teams comes with Office 365 Suite integration, which simply means that you can have all the business applications that you need to keep your day-to-day tasks running in a single place. In other words, MS Teams allows you to schedule a meeting or share a task, make audio or video calls, and edit files without leaving your chat window. Besides having a perfect synergy with over 30 applications, Microsoft Teams integration allows your workforce to add a wide gamut of third-party applications tailored to their business needs.
2. On-The-Move communication
Microsoft Team is engineered keeping the remote work in mind. This may be one of the reasons behind the popularity of this tool during the pandemic last year. If you are also promoting remote work in your company, MS Teams is for you. By simply downloading the mobile application of Microsoft Teams on the smartphone, your employees will never be out of the loop and also they don’t have to worry about finding a way to a desktop or laptop to attend a meeting. Besides this, they can schedule meetings, make calls, chat with other teammates, and add & access files through their smartphone without relying on other third-party applications.
3. Microsoft 365 users won’t have to pay a single penny
This is something really interesting about Microsoft Teams. If you have already invested your money in buying a Microsoft 365 license, the good news is that you’ll get all the features of MS Teams without spending a dime. Isn’t that really cool? On the other hand, if you go for standalone chat-based tools such as Google Hangouts or Slack, you’ll have to shell out extra money that will add to your IT expenses. Furthermore, if you are on a budget and don’t need premium functions, you can still use the free version of Microsoft Teams.
4. Microsoft Teams- New Features Keep Coming
Similar to Microsoft’s other applications, Microsoft Teams is also evolving incessantly and adding more useful features, applications, and offering better integration with third-party apps. This includes Office 365 suite along with other partners’ apps like SurveyMonkey, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Adobe Creative Cloud, ScrumGenius, and more. With MS Teams, you get an app store where you can look for newly launched business applications and add them to your suite in a click or two.
Cons of Microsoft Teams
- Replete with a host of similar tools
- A limited number of channels
- Lack of notifications
- A limited Flexibility
- Permission settings challenges
- The transition from Outlook is not smooth
- The structure of files is not coherent and it confuses users
Parting Thoughts
After going through the pros and cons of Microsoft Team in this informative piece, hope you’ve got a fair understanding of this online collaboration tool. If you still have any questions in mind regarding anything, you can get in touch with a Microsoft Teams consultant and seek end-to-end consultation. Make sure you clear all your doubts before you embrace this tool to boost the productivity of your workforce and improve the collaboration between Intra and Inter teams.
