Debunking popular myths about Microsoft Teams

Introduction

Digital transformation aids innovation, effectiveness, and competitiveness to keep businesses ahead of the curve. For instance, Microsoft Teams positively impacted the whole world when the demand for digital collaboration increased recently during the pandemic and the various lockdowns globally. It led millions of employees all over the world to adapt to a home-based working environment successfully. Today, multitude of organizations globally are reaping enormous benefits after transitioning to MS Teams in terms of productivity and ROI.

However, as the path of technology transition is a risky one, there are some organizations including government and private sector that show interest in implementation but with serious considerations. Hence, it is important that any misconceptions around MS Teams must be exposed for a better understanding of the product capabilities and functionalities.

In this blog, we will address five common myths or misinformation about MS Teams helping organizations to grasp realities of the product so that the transformation is exquisitely executed with proper planning. Here we go:

1. “Microsoft Teams is just another version of Skype for Business.”

It is a misnomer to call Teams a replacement for Skype for Business. We must understand that Teams is not just a chat-based tool but a collaboration system to support remote work with next-gen capabilities. Some of the key features that differentiate Teams from Skype for Business are as follows:

• In Teams the length of persistent chat service is managed by retention policies whereas in Skype for Business, it is not.
• With latest integrations such as virtual whiteboards, live meeting captions, background customization, content cameras, proximity join and more, Microsoft Teams meeting experienced is more enhanced than Skype for Business.
• Microsoft Teams is tied with SharePoint and OneDrive for file storage and collaboration in real-time.
• Teams can easily integrate with other platforms via app store. Apps can be added as tabs or in a feature ribbon for easy access.
• Teams constantly updates new features and functionalities to manage collaboration and provide greater user experience.

2. “Microsoft Teams deployment can be executed easily without help.”

Microsoft Teams deployment involves integration of organizational workflows and processes which are unique to every business. You need to develop strategies to bring people and processes together before adopting Microsoft Teams. You must show your employees how Teams will derive greater value by creating new efficiencies or new ways of work that are significantly effective over traditional ones.

For instance, automating redundant and complex tasks will reduce manual handling and make employees more productive. Hence, we suggest the implementation of change management for seamless adoption without user resistance and a marketing and training program in place.

3. “Governance will stop end-users to work effectively on Teams.”

If you are an organization with a large team, then without implementing governance policies, Teams can’t provide you expected benefits. Governance is about setting organizational boundary around collaboration so that the teams function in an order.

By default, Teams gives freedom to all users to create teams, allows guest users to view and access team’s sensitive content, enables external file sharing without monitoring, etc. These scenarios give rise to chaos, conflictions and confusions that recede user adoption and henceforth, productivity. Governance, thus, is used to enforce policies and conventions to keep Teams environment secure, well-monitored, and effective.

4. “Teams is not prepared to support voice in the cloud.”

Microsoft Teams is the future of voice in the cloud. Organizations may assess their requirements mapping with a myriad of features and capabilities provided by Teams which are:

• Direct routing offered by Microsoft Teams enables organizations to connect their own PSTN with Teams by deploying session border control. Using this solution, global organizations can maintain both, conventional and cloud-based PBX model with multiple configuration options.
• Some of the latest conventional PBX features added to Teams are Location Based Routing, Shared Line Appearance, Busy on Busy, Call Sharing and Group Call Pickup, Auto-attendants and Call Queues, Call Park and Retrieve, etc.
• Along with Skype for Business certified phones, Teams is providing natively registered phones too to work with Microsoft Teams directly.
• Microsoft Teams admin center integrates new features such as native device management, Call Quality Dashboard, Teams Rooms, analytics and reporting to detect usage patterns etc. for an enhanced user experience.

5. “Video conferencing endpoint devices are inept to support Microsoft Teams.”

Advanced audio and video devices such as smart conference phone devices, Poly Trio 8500/8800 devices, etc., are available in the market today to enhance meeting experiences in Microsoft Teams. Next, Microsoft Teams Room system encompasses full-fledged meeting capabilities such as one-button join, proximity join and native content sharing to its users. Additionally, using video interoperability services such as Pexip, BlueJeans, etc., existing video-endpoints can access Teams meetings with one-button join.

Conclusion

Microsoft Teams is constantly improving to help its customers enjoy a seamless collaboration than ever. Moreover, if you automate this platform using an in-house or a third-party solution such as TeamsHUB by Cyclotron, you can manage entire Teams ecosystem with just a few clicks and eliminate persistent administrative challenges which are manual and time-consuming.

To learn more about TeamsHUB by Cyclotron, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo