{"id":4089,"date":"2017-03-14T23:23:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T23:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/teams-microsofts-slack-rival-opens-to-all-office-365-users.html"},"modified":"2017-03-14T23:23:21","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T23:23:21","slug":"teams-microsofts-slack-rival-opens-to-all-office-365-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/teams-microsofts-slack-rival-opens-to-all-office-365-users.html","title":{"rendered":"Teams, Microsoft\u2019s Slack rival, opens to all Office 365 users"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

After unveiling<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0limited preview\u00a0of Teams in November last year, Microsoft is now\u00a0rolling out its collaboration and communication platform, positioned as a rival to Slack, more widely: Teams is now available, and free, for\u00a0all\u00a085 million monthly active users of\u00a0Office 365, Microsoft\u2019s suite of cloud services and apps as a web app and native apps for Windows, iOS and Android.<\/p>\n

Along with it, the company is announcing\u00a0some 150 integrations with third-party services like Asana, Zendesk and Hootsuite, alongside the ability to chat (with other humans or with bots), security services, customization options and more.<\/p>\n

(No word on when and whether Teams would expand outside the Office 365 ecosystem: \u201cWe\u2019ve had some discussions but right now remain focused on our huge user base,\u201d noted Mira Lane, Microsoft Teams\u2019 UX lead.)<\/p>\n

The wider launch comes in the wake of some reasonable success so far. Microsoft said\u00a0the Teams preview has had\u00a0some 50,000 organizations sign up and try out the service.<\/p>\n

That\u00a0figure\u00a0includes both companies that have tried it as well as those who have stayed on to become active users, and Microsoft would only tell me that many stay on, with the number of people per company ranging from small groups to\u00a0organizations with hundreds of users. (Notable customer wins, it said, include\u00a0Accenture, Alaska Airlines, Conoco Phillips, Deloitte, Expedia, J.B. Hunt, J. Walter Thompson, Hendrick Motorsports, Trek Bicycle and Three UK.)<\/p>\n

For a new app\u00a0that is coming to the market after the meteoric rise of Slack, as well as other competing\u00a0services like Workplace from Facebook and Hipchat from Atlassian, some might argue that Teams and Microsoft are\u00a0late to the game.<\/p>\n

In its favor, Microsoft\u00a0is banking on the low-friction aspect of the service: Those being targeted are already using Microsoft apps like Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint and Power BI, so there will be familiarity and convenience. And it\u2019s free to try out.<\/p>\n

As we noted<\/a> when Microsoft debuted the service in November, Teams throws a lot at the user from the start. If you\u2019ve ever used something like Word or Excel, you know that this is a very Microsoft approach.<\/p>\n

The basic interface follows a lot of what you might already know for workplace collaboration products, which are often based around a left rail that lists discussion groups, and the main stream to the right that charts conversations.<\/p>\n

Within that, Microsoft takes you into a pretty huge range\u00a0of different options that tap into its many other products. These include direct chats, the option to hold audio and video calls, the ability to call\u00a0in spreadsheets and other documents, run some analytics and more, along with spaces for \u201cevergreen\u201d content as well as others for more rapidly changing data.<\/p>\n

On top of this, Microsoft has built a chatbot framework that initially is dedicated to helping you use Teams better, but over time will include integrations built by developers to bring in a variety of other services too, similar to Slack, Messenger and a number of other chat services.<\/p>\n

This seems to be intentional, not accidental or a sign of disorganization at Microsoft.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shift to\u00a0modern working styles that are\u00a0open and transparent by default are part of our core philosophy of one size does not fit all,\u201d Lane said in an interview. \u201cOrganizations are different in how they do business and collaborate. Some will use multiple tools, for example Yammer for a CEO to speak to the whole organization, but for more tight collaboration they\u2019ll use Microsoft Teams. We think it\u2019s okay to be fluid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strange balance that Microsoft is trying to strike here is between giving you too much to do, too many options; but also the lingering question of whether all this\u00a0will be enough to sway users to the service.<\/p>\n

This is not just an issue when considering Microsoft Teams compared to products from different companies, but when comparing it to Microsoft itself, which already has a number of applications where users can communicate and collaborate with each other, including Yammer, Skype and more.<\/p>\n

So far, the experience has been that while some services have definitely gained traction (Slack now has more than\u00a05 million daily active users, and 1.5 million paid accounts), given that there are millions more\u00a0businesses in the world, there is still a lot to play for, and a lot to win. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing people\u00a0kicking the tires on all products and looking for something more enterprise grade,\u201d Lane noted.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/9lgrfioY0tQ\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After unveiling\u00a0a\u00a0limited preview\u00a0of Teams in November last year, Microsoft is now\u00a0rolling out its collaboration and communication platform, positioned as a rival to Slack, more widely: Teams is now available, and <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-4089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t