Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is virtually synonymous with online collaboration: it’s the definitive hub for working together more efficiently and easily in real time. Microsoft Teams can help your employees communicate and collaborate better. Discover the benefits and functionalities for your organization.

What is Microsoft Teams?

Teams is the online collaboration tool no one can afford to ignore. It’s a communication and collaboration platform on which teams work together in real time, sharing files, holding meetings, making calls and chatting. The hub is accessible everywhere and via any device, and it’s so easy now that the digital workplace looks completely different. As a fixed component of Microsoft 365, it’s seamlessly integrated with all other Microsoft programs. This makes Teams a modern workplace where employees can work together more efficiently and easily.

The advantages of working online with Microsoft Teams

What makes Teams different from collaboration tools like Slack and the well-known Zoom? Firstly, there is its integration with other Microsoft applications. This ensures that all the right information and tooling is in one place, so that you can easily – and simultaneously – work together on Word or Excel files, with everyone always having access to the latest version.

Other apps such as Outlook, Yammer, and SharePoint Video Calling are also linked. This prevents endless mailing back and forth of documents and searching in different environments: everything is done from one interface. In addition, with a click of a button, you can create a working environment for a specific team or project which is fully customized with its own apps and settings and closed off to everyone else. You can also easily add external parties and use all the facilities of Microsoft Teams.

Security in Teams Online

When everyone is working from a different location and from different devices, security is more important than ever. You only have to think of all the confidential conversations that take place online to appreciate this. Microsoft Teams offers you the guarantee of advanced cloud security and compliance through integration with Microsoft 365.

As a result of the coronavirus crisis, many employees started working from home from one day to the next. Some businesses opted for solutions such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger for communication among employees. These may be quick solutions, but they also have all kinds of associated disadvantages. For example, if someone leaves the company, they may still have access to the WhatsApp or Messenger groups. Or people may turn up in a group to which they don’t belong. In Microsoft Teams these things are taken care of automatically, because active governance is organized. If you want to know what security and privacy functions the platform offers, Microsoft has listed them for you here.

Data and privacy are inextricably bound up with successful digital transformation. They therefore form one of the main focuses of Macaw’s approach as a digital enabler – as our Microsoft Security Gold Partner status confirms.

Holding meetings with Microsoft Teams

Whether you’re holding a video call with one person, participating in a team meeting or giving a presentation to the entire company, you can use Microsoft Teams to meet online. This applies for both internal and external use, with up to 10,000 participants at live events. The meeting function also includes numerous useful features that deliver greater efficiency and value – basics such as screen sharing and a chat function, but also things like:

Recording the meeting.
Sharing documents.
Setting up automatic minutes.
Personalized backgrounds (useful if you’re in your living room).
Live subtitles.
A virtual lobby.
Webinars in Teams

Webinars in Teams

Webinars have been growing in popularity for years, and their functionalities are constantly being extended. In Microsoft Team, for example, you can set up your own webinar with the ‘live events’ function. This is handy when you want to explain certain topics internally or set up a presentation to a large audience. The presenter shares the content, video and audio, and the audience can watch and submit questions if they wish using the Q&A function.