Item: Microsoft Teams
Rating: 3
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have used Teams to conduct remote meetings wherein we review detailed design information, including engineering designs produced using DraftSight, Excel, and other platforms. It is used across our small organization, but also in presentations to potential investors and partners. Numerous problems we faced have been addressed using Team, ranging from resolving disparate viewpoints to calculation errors in Excel or other files.

Pros and Cons

Teams allows us to seamlessly view joint products, details of designed components, and complex cost spreadsheets.
Because our sessions are interactive, attendees can adjust designs or spreadsheets during the meeting.
A big advantage is that the tools we use are MS Office products.

Setting up a meeting and allowing attendees to join a meeting.
Allowing as many attendees as needed.
In many cases, we simply could not connect with participants using audio.
Ease of use overall is poor compared with Skype, until it morphed into Teams.
It would be valuable if Teams was accessible from other Office 365 platforms.

Return on Investment

It has helped when we used it to finalize designs
It has enabled joint decision- making
It has wasted valuable meeting time when trying to connect audio
The overall impact on ROI has been negative

Alternatives Considered

BlueJeans

Teams does not seem to be as useful to us as BlueJeans. This may be because we shifted to the latter after using Teams for some time. BlueJeans does appear to be easier to use overall. In fact, now that Zoom has appeared, it is even easier to use than BlueJeans, particularly with respect to ease of connecting, flexibility, and efficiency.

Support Rating

We have not spent much time seeking support. Microsoft support is generally good, so we suspect that this would apply to Teams. This may be academic, as we don't plan to use Teams unless we observe a wholesale change in ease of access, audio connectivity, and efficiency. Microsoft would be served well by using Zoom for some time.

Usability

Because of the cons we described earlier. To us, this platform or similar platforms are tools, and as a small company we cannot afford to spend much time resolving a problem. It is true that we are sensitive to cost, and understand that Teams must produce revenue. It seems like Teams is more geared to large companies with generous budgets, but for us, cost is important.

Key Insights

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

Are you happy with Microsoft Teams's feature set?

Did Microsoft Teams live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Microsoft Teams go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Microsoft Teams again?

Other Software Used

BlueJeans, Zoom

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited to a meeting with internal attendees, and with less than 3 of these. The attendees have had problems with connecting and also with audio. In many cases, we simply could not get audio to work, wasting valuable time. Perhaps this is an artifact of not using the subscription Business Version of Teams, but if so, Microsoft should make this clear.

Using conferencing tools with minimal effort

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Teams