Microsoft Teams as starting point: is it enough for you?

Many organisations already use Microsoft Teams. Not surprising, seen as what already started out as a powerful collaboration tool, grew out to be an actual hub for teamwork. But could it be the central starting point of your day? Is Microsoft Teams alone enough for you to not only collaborate, but also work as effectively and efficiently as possible? This is a question I’ll help you answer in this blog.

What is Microsoft Teams?

In its essence, Microsoft Teams is a tool for chatting and collaborating with colleagues. It started out as chat software but has grown to be the hub for teamwork and has become the most important communication tool by Microsoft. It’s available as both a local and an online application.

Microsoft Teams allows you to chat and collaborate with people, both internal and external and one-on-one as well as with groups or, as the name implies, teams. Think of departments, colleagues worldwide or mixed teams with colleagues and external parties.

As a part of Office 365, Microsoft Teams has an excellent integration with other Office 365 features, such as Office applications (Word, PowerPoint, Excel), other communication tools (Yammer), bots (Flow, Planner, Dynamics 365) and document management (SharePoint). This integration also enables you to connect channels to your SharePoint sites, so documents you share through Teams will also be available in your SharePoint.

Microsoft Teams also allows many non-Office 365 integrations. However, you do have to build these integrations yourself.

Adding value to Teams with an adaptive workspace

Office 365 (or at least Exchange online) and Microsoft Teams are used in many organisations, and it’s often believed that this is enough. But in reality, many people do use and require more than Office 365 solutions exclusively. What if you use a mix of web, Windows and hosted applications? What if you still need your file server or a remote desktop? What if you prefer another service over one offered by Microsoft? And what if you want to have many different elements integrated in one place, without having to build each integration yourself? That would instantly complicate using Microsoft Teams as your starting point, as it results in all other products, services and applications being scattered, separate and unconnected. Additionally, many people experience SharePoint as complicated.

Does that mean you should stop using Microsoft Teams? Definitely not. It is a great and powerful tool. It just means that for you, it should be a part of your workspace proposition, instead of your workspace proposition evolving around it.

If this is the case for you, you can get more value out of your Microsoft Teams by making it an element of a complete digital workspace. You can do this with Workspace 365, which simplifies Office 365 and allows you to integrate everything you need to work in one place. And what if your job includes mobile work? Many functionalities of Microsoft Teams only work (optimally) in the local application and not online, which complicates working from different devices.

A brand-independent platform

Even though Office 365 is at the foundation of Workspace 365, it does not mean it’s reliant on Microsoft products. In fact, the opposite is true. Due to Workspace 365 independency of brands and vendors, it allows you to integrate all your products and services in one place. All your web, Windows and hosted applications, identity and access management, intranet, news and information, document management solutions and more; all combined and simplified.

Additionally, Workspace 365 allows you to reach all these applications with one single click with Single Sign-On; even remote applications with Clientless RDP. This all may seem like a lot, but due to the adaptiveness of the workspace, it will only show people the things that they need and want to see and use.

Microsoft Teams in the adaptive workspace

So, what’s the role of Microsoft Teams in the adaptive workspace? Workspace 365 does not only seamlessly integrate Microsoft Teams channels into the Document App. In update 2.70, we’ve also introduced the Microsoft Teams live tile. With this live tile, you can instantly open Teams and navigate to the (documents of) a team channel with just one click and open it both locally and online. This way, you make Microsoft Teams a part of your adaptive workspace and work with them both harmoniously.

Is Microsoft Teams enough for you?

In the end, it all comes down to this question: what is it that you need to work optimally? If in your organisation, work is mostly centred around working in teams with solely Office 365 applications, then yes, Microsoft Teams may be enough for you. However, if your work requires other applications or information, you may want to make Microsoft Teams a part of your workspace, and not the foundation of it.