teams - The Future of collaboration
Online collaboration is a must for the modern-day business. There is increasing market competition to see who can create the best product in terms of features, usability and value for money. Microsoft is becoming a major player with its communication platform Microsoft Teams. As of July 2018, a free version of Teams was made available, which makes it worthwhile exploring what Microsoft has to offer us and how it compares to close competitor Slack.
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Microsoft Teams Highlights

Chat-based interface

Groups can be created to share files and have conversation between relevant members

Able to run Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote apps

Video and voice calling options available

Available on phones and tablet for Android, Apple and Windows
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What is Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is cloud-based team collaboration software that is part of the Office 365 suite of applications. The core capabilities in Microsoft Teams include business messaging, calling, video meetings and cloud file storage. Microsoft Teams comes fully integrated with other Office 365 productivity tools such as Skype for Business, SharePoint, Exchange, and Yammer, making it the one-stop software for all your communication and collaboration needs.

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Slack vs Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is not the only collaboration software available taking advantage of a shift in how people work today. Atlassian’s Stride, formerly HipChat, has recently merged with Slack, which began the chat-based online workspace movement in 2014. Microsoft Teams launched in late 2016 and in terms of market penetration, it is obvious that Slack, despite the enormous buzz and head start of several years, is already far behind Microsoft, with its still immature Teams offering. Teams is finally gaining more momentum and with its enormous user base of Microsoft/Office 365 customers, will ultimately reign supreme as the chat-based workspace king. However, before declaring Microsoft Teams the winner, it is worth a comparison between Slack and Teams before you decide what’s best for your business.
Below is a table that compares the two side by side.
|
SLack
|
Microsoft teams
|
PRICING MODEL
|
Freemium
Standard $8 user/month
Plus $15 user/month
|
Freemium
Office 365 Business Essentials
$7.95 per user/month
Office 365 Business Premium
$17.95 per user/month
You can try both paid plans for free for
30 days
|
MESSAGE HISTORY LIMIT
|
10K messages in Free plan,
unlimited in Standard and Plus plans |
Unlimited in all plans |
AUDIO & VIDEO CALLS
|
Unlimited 1:1 voice and video calls in Free plan
Conference calls for up to 15 participants in
paid plans
|
Voice/video calls with up to 80 people
in a meeting. |
INTEGRATIONS
|
10 integrations limit in Free plan, 800+
integrations in paid plans |
180+ apps and services (as of
July 2018) |
FILE STORAGE LIMIT
|
Free plan: 5GB file storage for a team
Standard plan: 10GB per user
Plus plan: 20GB per user
|
Free plan: 2 GB/user and 10GB of
shared storage
Paid plans: 1 TB per organization
|
SCREEN SHARING
|
Unavailable in Free version,
available in Standard and Plus versions |
Available in all plans |
INTERFACE COLOUR OPTIONS
|
Custom sidebar themes. |
3 themes (light, dark, high contrast) |
CONVERSATION THREADS
|
Yes |
Yes |
Slack vs Microsoft Teams Summary
Slack vs Microsoft Teams Summary The best collaboration platform for your business depends largely on which one you use to manage your content and other apps and services, Google or Microsoft.
go with slack if :
- You’re already using Google Drive, using Google Hangouts for calls and meetings
- You want something very lightweight and easy to setup and use
- Slack has your favorite integrations with third-party apps while Microsoft Teams doesn’t have them.
go with teams if :
- You are a business that is already using Microsoft Office products or Office 365. If you’re not on Office 365 yet and you’re not on the cloud, start with Office 365. If you’re on Office 365, with Essentials or Premium licensing, you already have Microsoft Teams included
- You want a fully integrated experience with all of your Microsoft programs.
- You are not afraid of challenges with deployment and administration (we recommend using an IT expert to help with this)
using Slack with an Office 365 subscription doesn't make sense – why pay extra for a service that is already free with your subscription package?
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Deployment Challenges
For anyone interested in getting started with Microsoft Teams, chances are a technology poses challenges to setup for the first time. Preparation for the journey to Microsoft Teams is critical to ensure setup is correct from the start and adoption is swift. If one does not prepare, as a company expands its usage of Teams, it can quickly snowball into an unmanageable mess. Microsoft has created helpful documentation on Teams deployment, found here.
Developing governance and security strategies and processes, then putting the organisation’s weight behind proper training, are steps that many companies overlook. This can lead to situations where staff are either are not utilising the new software or, the exact opposite, utilisation spins out of control before anyone can steer organisational processes toward even a modest amount of structure.
Below are steps from Microsoft of the typical journey to Teams and the planning one needs to consider before setting up Teams. Some deployment can vary in their structure and planning, as can the setup of every company, but this should give one direction for how to get started.

Plan. Deliver. operate

Step 1: Technical & Legal Evaluation
Technical and legal assessment in the early stages to identify and define what controls are required to implement Microsoft Teams in your organization.

Step 2: Assess/Prepare
Undertake a network assessment and prepare for the rollout. At this point you can start to create the adoption and change management strategy and key user stories that drive user engagement during and after the rollout.

Step 3: IT Pilot
Test these change management and adoption strategies with an IT Pilot.

Step 4: Business Pilot
Refine and run a business pilot in one or two business units leveraging these strategies.

Step 5: Rollout
Refine and leverage the strategy and learnings for a wider rollout.
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Leverage an IT Professional
Often times, companies don’t have bandwidth, resources or the IT expertise to appropriately plan and rollout Microsoft Teams for their organisation. Leveraging a Microsoft Partner and IT expert is highly advised and a popular decision to kick off such new technology in an organisation.
At Cloud Made Simple, we specialise in the complete setup and deployment of Office 365 and Microsoft Teams for any size business. We can assist your team in every area of Microsoft Teams setup from start to finish, including:

Consultation - comprehensive planning of your Teams technical requirements, structure and permissions

Deployment - customised configuration and setup of your Teams structure and permissions

Integrations – configuration of 3rd-party applications through tabs, connectors and bots

File Migration - moving files from their current location into Teams, a hassle-free migration service that will save you headaches

Training - in-person or video conference training for your entire company once your Teams environment is setup to increase adoption and usage of Teams.
CLOUD mADE SIMPLE - Our teams deployment objectives
At the end of a Microsoft Teams deployment, our goals for your organisation include:

A fully-functional Teams environment based on your business requirements

Organisational - wide Teams adoption and proficiency

A more collaborative and efficient working environment
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SUMMARY
Teams caters towards businesses who are seeking to enhance themselves through digital technology. Office 365 has a vast number of functions that are compatible with Teams. Microsoft had created Teams to benefit its Office 365 users, but now it welcomes more people to join by offering a free version of the collaboration tool. There are over 200,000 organisations that use Teams and the number is increasing. Teams also offers regular QA sessions for its 72.2K follower base on Twitter. It is a major focus of investment for Microsoft and will change the way you work.
