Toby Ingleton |
Microsoft Teams, a new chat-based workspace, has been rolled out to Office 365 customers in 180 global markets.
More than 50,000 organisations have already harnessed the preview of the collaboration tool since its release in November 2016. More than 100 new features have been added to the tool in that time in order to meet the requests of preview customers, which included Accenture, Deloitte and Trek Bicycle.
Microsoft Teams has been built to meet the chat needs of modern work teams, and provide a hub for teamwork. The tool can also be customised to meet specific needs and is a secure, safe platform on which to work.
To aid collaboration, the tool includes audio calling from mobile devices. Video on Android is also available, and will soon also be available for iOS and Windows Phone customers.
The various applications and services that make up Office 365 are available in Microsoft Teams. These include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint and Power BI.
Microsoft Teams also features enhanced meeting experience capabilities, including advanced scheduling and integrating free and busy calendar availability for team members.
Furthermore, as Microsoft Teams is built on the Office 365 hyper-scale, enterprise-grade cloud, the tool offers advanced security and compliance capabilities.
“Across Trek’s global teams, the integrated collection of Office 365 applications serves up a common toolset to collaboratively drive the business forward,” said Laurie Koch, vice president of global customer service at Trek Bicycle. “We see Microsoft Teams as the project hub of Office 365 where everybody knows where to find the latest documents, notes and tasks, all in-line with team conversations for complete context. Teams is quickly becoming a key part of Trek’s get-things-done-fast culture.”
Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team, commented: “Moving forward, we’ll provide a regular rhythm of new features and capabilities. For example, we are targeting to deliver guest access capabilities in June along with deeper integration with Outlook and a richer developer platform. Expect our pace to be rapid and responsive to customer needs.”