Microsoft launches Teams group chat for Office

Tony Lopresti, vice president and general manager, BroadSoft Team Collaboration, wrote, “While Microsoft Teams enters the market with a ready-made base of prospective Office 365 users and Slack has gained traction as a standalone messaging app, neither [is] built to meet the communication and collaboration needs of the modern workforce”.

Google is working to leverage its dominant position with a generation of internet users to build a brand for its business apps, redoubling its efforts to sell the G-Suite productivity platform.

Brian MacDonald worked on the original version of Microsoft’s Outlook email app, and was tasked with creating a concept for the company’s new chat software. Where Teams is likely to score over its competitors is in its close integration with other Office products and with Skype for Business. “Teams – like the whole Office suite – is handed down from IT to their users”, he said.

However, one key and highly requested feature, the ability to invite external guests into a Team environment will not ship until this June.

Along with the announcement that it’s now available for all to try, Microsoft also revealed on Tuesday that it has launched 150 new integrations with third-party services, with the likes of SAP, Trello, Hipmunk, Growbot and ModuleQ building on the platform.

Redmond revealed Teams last November and at the time we remarked upon its uncanny resemblance to Unicorn-grade collaborationware Slack.

Microsoft Teams has been available in public preview since September a year ago with trials conducted in Australia by a range of companies including Amicus, Blackmores, Objective Corporation, Readify and RSL Queensland. SharePoint’s not been forgotten either: its file store is now a Tab in Teams.

“Every Friday we used to have these 60-second demos”, explains Jigar Thakkar, head of engineering for Microsoft Teams. “Everything is in context with the channel”. Thanks to Teams being able to access everyone’s Outlook calendars, it can find the best times for a meeting when everyone’s available, then suggest those times. Any emails sent to a channel will be presented with rich-text formatting and can include attachments for downloading. For example, users of the Teams Android app can now join their iOS bretheren in making audio and video calls.

Bots in teams are also now available, and so is public teams support. Considering that many organizations already use Microsoft services in one form or the other, that is one huge advantage the company has right there.

Accessibility features include support for screen readers, high contrast and keyboard-only navigation.

From a partner perspective, Teams is well suited to application developers, service providers and system integrators, as the channel seeks ways to monetise Microsoft’s latest workplace collaboration platform.