Item: Microsoft Teams
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Microsoft Teams is used across several departments in our organization. Microsoft Teams improves team and interdepartmental communication greatly over email. With a large portion of staff working virtually and at various office locations, Microsoft Teams enhances collaboration and in a way helps simulate individuals working together in one room. The use of teams and channels as organizational units makes it easy to create hubs of communication and collaboration for different teams and topics.

Pros and Cons

Very easy to share files using chat
Fantastic grouping and organization using channels

Inability to delete conversations. What happens in Teams, stays in Teams, forever...
Too many notifications on things like reactions to comments.

Return on Investment

Microsoft Teams encourages and enhances collaboration
Microsoft Teams saves valuable time by replacing the need for interoffice emails

Alternatives Considered

Slack and Skype for Business (formerly Lync)

Our company used to use Skype for Business and for a short time, we used Slack. We've been using Teams for over a year now and it has surpassed both of those tools. Audio calls over Skype always had technical difficulties and sound issues, though screen-sharing worked pretty good. Skype is missing the way Teams organizes groups as there are no channels or teams, just contacts, chat and calls. Slack and Teams have similar capabilities. Slack's navigation might have a slight edge over Teams, but Teams was more cost-effective for our organization, due to our Microsoft Enterprise Agreement.

Support Rating

I've not needed to use support for Microsoft Teams as there have been no issues that I've dealt with as an end user. Teams includes an extensive help section with search capabilities and training topics reducing the need for support if an issue does arise. Training includes videos and text to refer to.

Key Insights

Do you think Microsoft Teams delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft Teams's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft Teams live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Microsoft Teams go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Microsoft Teams again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Skype for Business (formerly Lync), Azure DevOps Server (formerly Team Foundation Server), Remote Desktop Manager

Likelihood to Recommend

Microsoft Teams is well suited for medium to large sized organizations where team members are spread out in different locations. The instant communication and collaboration makes using Microsoft Teams like being in the same room with your collaborators. Teams isn't necessary for smaller organizations, especially if all team members are together in the same location.

Communicate and collaborate with team members as if you're all together in the same room

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Teams