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Microsoft Teams Roll Out
Posted November 6, 2018
ITS rolled out Microsoft Teams for faculty and staff this month. Teams is a new chat-based workspace in Office 365 which allows you and your project teams to easily collaborate to achieve more. All your favorite applications (Word, Excel, OneNote, etc.) are seamlessly integrated into Teams so that all files relevant to your project are organized and easily accessible from one platform.
When it comes to project communication, a great deal of group interaction and communication can be handled from within the app rather than via email. Communication channels in Teams allow different threads of communication relating to different aspects of the project to be more organized and accessible than they might be in Outlook. Instantly communicate with others in the organization to solve problems via Teams Chat (replaces Skype for Business). Teams is also customizable so you can design the interface to meet your needs.
If you're saying to yourself, "Teams sounds a lot like SharePoint", you'd be right. The Microsoft Teams interface is built on the SharePoint platform so all the files uploaded and saved in Teams are actually being saved on a SharePoint site in the background. The main benefits of Teams over SharePoint, in my opinion, are that Teams is more user-friendly, easier to customize, includes in-app communication/chat features and allows for seemingly unlimited integration with other applications to provide an all-encompassing project management solution. Meanwhile, SharePoint, in my experience, is more-or-less a file organization tool. How you adopt or migrate to Teams is completely up to you and your project team.
In order to request a Team, you'll complete the Teams Request form on this page. Project teams will have the ability to request a "best practices" consultation for their project group once the team is created. Teams is accessible via Microsoft Office 365 but it is recommended that you download the desktop application to enjoy all its features. Teams is also available for Android and iOS so you'll always be in-the-know even on the go.
For more in-depth information on Teams including demos and videos, please reference the ITS KnowledgeBase.
