Item: Microsoft Teams
Rating: 10
Author: Che Odom

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Teams

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, MS Teams is being used as our internal instant messenger and file sharing option, as well as our meeting option for conference calls and screen shares. This product is used by all members of our company, and it is a simple way to enable instant communication and sharing and to ensure that conference calls and meetings are using the same tool by everyone rather than having multiple different software options in use as we have had in the past.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Instant messenger.
Instant file sharing.
Contact information within an organization.
Creation of teams for specific project communication.

Cons

I think that in the meetings tool it would be best if once the administrator joins the meeting, that all people joining thereafter or waiting are automatically admitted, having to monitor the people attempting to join the meeting and "admit" them from the "lobby" adds complexity without any reason, and in some cases some people are not admitted because the administrator starts the meeting and is not able to easily monitor who is "waiting".
Creating a chat could be a little easier, it is not as intuitive as I want it to be.
It would be nice to be able to search contacts external to the organization for MS Teams membership and be able to instant message them somehow.

Return on Investment

It is a product that comes as a part of our MS Office 360 subscription, so there is no added cost for use, except the added cost to generate conference lines for call-in during meetings, so the cost of entry is very low.
The instant communication and file sharing is hugely impactful.

Alternatives Considered

Skype for Business (formerly Lync)

We have used Skype for Business and Google Messenger. Google Messenger doesn't integrate with business platform and servers, so we were having to use personal emails to log in, and MS teams took over Skype for Business, ultimately improving the product, and making use of Skype for Business unavailable as an option.
We believe that Teams is the best solution we have come across so far, and are extremely satisfied with it.

Other Software Used

Vista by Viewpoint, ViewPoint ProContractor, Prolog, Bluebeam Revu, Adobe Acrobat DC, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe Photoshop, Bim360, PlanGrid

Likelihood to Recommend

Microsoft Temas is great for internal communication and meetings with both internal and external people.
The instant messenger is not suited for external communication, and in fact, that is not an option within Teams. It would be great if that were an option that was available.
It is great for meetings because the screen sharing is intuitive and the sound (when using the computer as the audio source) is always automatically picked up and works without error when with other conference call/meeting options using computer audio can be complicated and does not always work properly.

Comments

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A great and easy tool to integrate and use company wide