Interlink Cloud Blog

For any organization, it is incredibly important to have a system in place that enables employees to be efficient and productive. In most cases, employees take it upon themselves to use applications, usually unknown by the organization, to help manage their tasks and collaborate with their teams more efficiently. This presents a big issue for organizations because their employees use unauthorized and potentially unsecured applications, which can result in the data leakage of secured documents. So, how do you enable your employees to collaborate effectively while making sure they are productive? Microsoft has you covered with their approach to the Modern Workplace and their integration of products such as Planner, OneNote, SharePoint, and many others into their collaboration tool Microsoft Teams.

So, what is Microsoft Teams? If you have not already read our blog Microsoft Teams | A Hub for Teamwork in Office 365, it's Microsoft’s new chat-based work space in Office 365 that brings conversations, content, and people together, all in one place, so they can easily collaborate more. It truly feels like the future of workplace collaboration with everything you need built right in.

Microsoft announced their ‘new vision for intelligent communications’ recently at the Microsoft Ignite 2017 conference, which is to move towards merging everyday communication tasks that users navigate daily into a single application or teamwork hub in Office 365. The typical knowledge worker switches between many different Microsoft applications throughout their work day when interacting with files, meetings, conversations, phone calls, etc. Microsoft is paving the way for their Teams application to be the core communications client for collaborating as a group within Office 365.

Microsoft Teams was launched worldwide in March 2017 and is available to subscribers with the following plans: Business Essentials, Business Premium and Enterprise E1, E3, and E5. At the core, Microsoft Teams is a persistent chat and teamwork hub for Office 365. Built on top of Office 365 Groups and SharePoint, Microsoft Teams can tie together other Office 365 applications into a single client including Exchange, OneDrive and Skype for Business.