Microsoft Teams is now available to all Office 365 users after having been available only in preview as of late Fall last year. Now that it’s open to all Office 365 customers it should start to gain a little bit more of a wide appeal and it may even give Slack a little more of a run for its money. The new application that offers team-based chat and communication to businesses is available on multiple platforms including desktop, but more importantly the application is also now available on Android today so if you want to give the service a go for your work communication needs, you won’t be limited to using it just with your computer at work or at home as you can stay in touch on the go too.
Microsoft Teams is capable of quite a bit and it has a nice little robust feature set, and that’s a good thing since it’s now going up against Google’s newly announced Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet options in addition to Slack. As far as what the app offers to users, one thing that might set it apart is the number of bots, at least when it comes to Hangouts Chat, which does have a bot, but just one to speak of, whereas Teams has about 24 different bots available that all cater to their own unique functions as they’re tied into to different third-party services. This sort of gives Teams a leg up as @meet, which is the Hangouts Chat bot, will simply schedule meetings for users automatically.
Bots aside, Microsoft Teams also allows its users to make audio and video calls on Android devices as well as on the desktop, and the service is available to Office 365 users in 19 different languages and in over 181 countries. Teams also have the ability to customize their use of the app further with features like configurable Tabs and Connectors. You’ll need an Office 365 account to gain access to the app, regardless of the platform that you’re using it on, but that should be a given since it’s designed for teams of people to use as a workspace communication tool and isn’t meant for communication between regular users.
