Microsoft Teams is Microsoft’s take on chat-based communication for business, its answer to competing platforms such as Slack and Atlassian’s HipChat. In its simplest form the service allows users to set up Teams, each of which is essentially a hub for group chatrooms, which are called channels.

However, Microsoft is pushing the platform as being more than just a chat hub. Teams is integrated with Microsoft’s online office suite Office 365, which means it is tied to other Microsoft Office services, such as Word and Excel, as well as its cloud storage and sharing services such as SharePoint. PowerPoint, OneNote, Planner, Power BI and Delve are also integrated with Teams.

TechRepublic’s cheat sheet about Microsoft Teams is a quick introduction, as well as a “living” guide that will be revised periodically as new updates are released.

From the ebook

HOW TO USE MICROSOFT TEAMS?

Microsoft Teams is designed to provide an easier way for small groups of people to communicate and collaborate.

The defacto approach of communicating via group emails and sharing files via a patchwork of different services is difficult—or so goes Microsoft’s rationale—with the potential for missed messages and files. This is the problem Microsoft Teams is designed to solve.

Microsoft argues that Teams’ trump card is its tight integration with Office services and Groups, which allows users to seamlessly and securely switch between editing documents, shared dashboards and planners, and group chat, video and voice calls. That simplicity of just setting up a Team and having access to all these shared services—without the need to spend hours configuring them—is part of what Microsoft sees as Teams’ selling point. Microsoft Teams integration with email also allows messages sent to a designated Team address to be copied to a conversation in Teams.