Microsoft Teams

What I think the strongest aspect of Microsoft Teams is how effortless it makes collaboration across the business. Sharing a document in a chat allows multiple users to work together seamlessly in real time, or the ability to spin up a Loop component inside the teams window to help us plan projects in a much nicer way. We also rely heavily on the Planner integration to track our tasks and maintain visibility of our workloads. It gives us a clear overview of where we're doing well or where we might be falling behind. This then fits nicely into the Shifts feature, which helps us stay aligned on our work patterns so we're never there thinking Who's available for this task? Another amazing feature is how simple it is to integrate workflows. Many teams use these to raise tickets straight from a chat message so we can be sure nothing is missed or hidden in threads. In my team we have a nice workflow that checks how everyone is feeling that day just so we can all stay mindful of our moods and if anything needs to be raised.

The breadth of available services and apps is comprehensive and powerful. Teams is offering the concept of UC effectively, with all communications tools gathere together in one place and in most cases offering interchangeable communication flows. For example, taking an external caller and subsequently seamlessly routing them through internal contacts with no apparent separation between telephony users and Teams users is a huge advantage.

What i like most about Microsoft Teams is how seamlessly it brings everything together in one place. I can chat, join video meetings, and share files without switching tools, and the integration with Outlook and other Microsoft 365 apps makes collaboration very smooth. I also value how easy it is to work with colleagues in real time, whether we're documents or running quick discussions.

Depending on how you set up teams, it can be a little bit clunky - a lot of integrations, chats, or multiple apps can cause noticeable lag or stutters. Another fun thing is the typical Microsoft experience - if you enjoy a feature and use it a lot it could be gone, renamed, or completely reworked to work differently to how you want it!

The app- and icon-based interface structure in Teams often leads to confusing or unintuitive user flows. Where a more dedicated provider has stronger contextual and visual clues to the user on how to achieve something, Teams often buries desired functionality behind icons and menus. Many things are only conditionally available in the UI based on back-end settings, and the UI itself often changes as updates are made. This means a user can easily get frustrated not knowing if something is not visible / not available beacuse the UI has changed or because they don't have access to it. Teams also does not offer a proper contact centre solution: while a multitude of apps are avialble and custom content can be added, a single view expected by a contact centre agent with contextual information, link to CRM/cases, etc is not natively available in Teams which defeats the purpose of UC in a contact centre context.

What i like the least about Microsoft Teams is that it can feel heavy and slow at times, especially on older devices. The interface can be cluttered, which makes it harder to find simple functions quickly. I also notice that video and audio quality sometimes drop when the internet connection isn't strong, and integrating non-Microsoft tools is not always smooth.