Microsoft Teams is taking Microsoft's collaboration capabilities in the right direction
August 03, 2019

Microsoft Teams is taking Microsoft's collaboration capabilities in the right direction

Bryan Goodyear, PMP, CSM | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is leveraged across the organization for instant messaging, conferencing, collaboration, and we'll soon be using enterprise voice. Microsoft Teams is great for keeping operational and project-based collaboration. I use it in my projects and program management. It's great for communicating the current status of projects, as well as leveraging other apps like Planner, OneNote, etc. to help the team in their execution. These apps integrate extremely well into Teams, making it the one-stop location for everything needed (documents, notes, conversations, tasks, etc.).

Pros

  • Collaboration: integrated apps into Microsoft Teams sites keep everything in one place.
  • Administration: users can be added into Teams by owners, rather than going through the help desk to administer permissions via methods like Active Directory.
  • Conferencing: it works consistently well, and you can add other features like external dial-in and enterprise voice with an upgraded license.

Cons

  • Performance: Microsoft Teams can be slow to react, but this has greatly improved since its initial release.
  • Multi-Tasking: When organizing my work, I'm used to having multiple windows open. Teams typically only lets you have one app or Team open at a time.
  • Guest access: It takes a very long time to switch organizations if you're listed as a guest in another organization. It'd be good if switching organizations was a faster process.
  • Positive Impact: we heavily leverage Microsoft because the tools integrate well with one another. We avoided other collaboration investments.
  • Positive Impact: As mentioned, the integrations work very well especially with Teams, so we avoided integration expenses and ongoing support.
  • Negative/Neutral Impact: Teams isn't ideal for external collaboration due to performance and permissions. You must leverage other tools for most client collaboration.
We tend to leverage our existing partnerships wherever possible (including with Microsoft) and for the reasons stated earlier i.e. fewer tools to support, and we don't need to invest in maintaining integrations since Teams integrates well with other Microsoft tools. Of course, Teams replaces functionality that some other tools can provide, including Slack.
As with anything Microsoft, once a product doesn't work well, it can be difficult to find the right support, and it can take weeks for some issues to be resolved. The number of times there are system-wide issues on Teams is less than some other Microsoft products in our experience so far.
Microsoft Teams is well suited in operational & project-based collaboration. Departments like Information Technology or Finance can leverage Teams to notify employees of what's going on in the organization and track operational tasks. Project Teams can leverage the conversations and file repository for project work -- once the project is concluded, artifacts should be archived, and all living documents should be moved to an 'operational home.'
Teams is less suited for collaboration with external partners. As stated earlier, guest access is a challenge, especially when switching organizations.

Using Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams integrates well with other apps. It is easy to administer and set up Teams sites, and it is the one place you have to look for anything related to collaboration within operational and project teams. I give it an 8 because of the noted performance improvements that are needed, the challenges guests face when switching organizations, and because Teams isn't very flexible when it comes to permissions.

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