Its been one year since Microsoft Teams was launched and it has been a tremendous success for Microsoft as SLACK is loosing its grip in the market. With O365 and other third party integrations within Teams, its much easier to have a shared chat based workplace  without the need to use different systems. 

I have previously written about How to Get Started, Concept and Usage Scenario and Microsoft Teams Implementation Checklist. Its time to revisit Microsoft Teams and go through some of the fundamental features and capabilities it offers. I am going to highlight each and everyone of those in as much detail as possible so that when you start using Microsoft Teams - you already know your way to get around.

We will be going through the following:

• Clear Out the Confusion - When to Use What
• Introduction to Microsoft Team 
• Microsoft Teams Fundamentals
  • Desktop and Mobile Clients
  • Getting started with Chat
  • Creating Teams
  • Creating a Channel
  • How to Use and Create Tabs in Channels
  • Discovering Connectors and Bots
• Microsoft Teams Adoption
• New and Upcoming Features in Microsoft Teams

In the last few post we completed the planning ,  concept and usage scenario of Microsoft Teams. Now its time to create a implementation checklist and its pretty straight  forward. At the end of the post you will find the link to the excel file which contains all the required checklist items :)

Microsoft Teams license is enabled for all users assigned with the eligible Office 365 subscriptions and  there are no differences between the different Office 365 subscriptions, the availability of the compliance capabilities does rely on the correct subscription level. 

Assuming that you have read the previous post and have completed your initial planning for Microsoft Teams - now its time to focus towards concepts and usage scenarios. We will come to the implementation phase as well and in a way we are already doing it, one step at a time.

This post will be more focused and relevant to the following :

• Project Manager
• Business Analyst
• Technical Architect
• IT Admin
• Power Users

​The plan is to implement Microsoft Teams, which brings chat-based workspace in Office 365 where users have a open space office environment to have conversations and collaborate with each other while building relationships. 

One of the first question which comes to mind is, we are already doing it with Outlook, SharePoint, Yammer, etc so why do we need Microsoft Teams?

Below is a simple breakdown of how most organizations actually use all these applications and where does Microsoft Teams fit in.

• Outlook:  Outlook is used for enterprise-grade email which now has groups functionality
  • Leveraged by users who prefer to collaborate in the familiar environment of email and/or a more formal, structured manner.
  • Provides specific business processes that require email usage to transmit documents and information inside and outside corporate boundaries.
  •  Communicates and connects with users who are outside of immediate workgroups or organizations

Microsoft Teams is now available for O 365 Users and a lot is being talked about, from Slack comparison to its features and how / when to use it. I was under the dilemma like most users on how to get started with it and when to use it? If all of what is said, is available in Teams then why do we have Yammer, Outlook, Delve, SharePoint Intranet, OneDrive, etc.

I have broken down this post in to two and here is the first part which actually lets you do the planning. After doing a bit of research and playing around with it, i was able to come up with the following:

- O 365 Package
- Exchange & SharePoint Hybrid or Online

The two above will help you in starting the conversation on Teams in the right direction.

Questions you should ask your customers or internally in the organization to layout the path for using Microsoft Teams.