Microsoft Teams

At Jaserodley, we use Microsoft Teams.

 Microsoft Teams previously known as Skype for Business has really stepped up to the plate.

 It’s a bit complicated at first as to finding out what all the features are and how to activate them as such. But once you know your way around, the features and shortcuts vastly improve your conference experience and once you’ve used them you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them.

 The free version offers almost as much as the paid plan, so unless you’re an enterprise business you can keep your money in your pocket.

 The Mobile app isn’t great, but we use the Desktop/Web app version 90% of the time anyway so it’s not an issue for us.

 My favourite feature is the collapsing long threads when needed - save looking at an infinite thread, it automatically hides older messages. 

At  Simple Life Insure, we have tried a number of web-conferencing tools over the years, but my personal favorite is Microsoft Teams.  

Teams comes standard in a Office 365 package, which makes it user-friendly and approachable compared to other conferencing software. Plus, pretty much everyone has access to some kind of Microsoft software. Setting up a meeting under its name has a familiarity tied to it that's incredibly beneficial, especially when chatting remotely with clients these days.   

My favorite features are the screen sharing and whiteboard functions. In my line of work, life insurance, these two are essential when reviewing policy drafts and documents both with my team and with clients.. All of us can look at and annotate the same document in real-time, which is great.  

As for cons, I've had the occasional snafu with Teams' recording function, which relies on cloud access. Teams automatically files any video recordings in Microsoft Stream as well, which is an add-on piece of software. Your standard Office 365 package only comes with Office 365 Video.  

Its only major headache for me really comes down to its recording function, which requires navigating some hurdles plus an extra platform integration to use smoothly. 

At Packline Solutions, we have been using Microsoft Teams for web conferencing. We have been using Teams across our organisation with great effect. Whilst Microsoft Teams can get a little complex when first setting the program up once all users have been fully onboarded it is a very intuitive platform.

Pros:

1- Organisational live chat which links through to Sharepoint is a fantastic feature allowing conversations to be connected to documents easily.

2- The combination of instant chat, phone and video conference calls is a huge plus

3- Easy to use, simple interface

4- Can view documents and chat according to channels

Cons:

1- Team is ideally suited to in house communication with some technical issues created when inviting users who don't have an Office 365 account.

2- Non-Windows users have issues using the platform for the first time.

3- Can get difficult to set up across an entire organisation without an Office 365 IT specialist