When the New Year bells brought in 2020, few would have predicted the situation we all find ourselves in just a few weeks later.  We are all adapting to social distancing and for many that means our working life now takes place at home. Thankfully, there are some brilliant products which can help make this change less painful!  They can help teams feel connected and help businesses connect with customers & other business partners. Communication tools such as Cisco’s Webex, Zoom and Microsoft Teams have all seen a huge surge in demand. We will explore each of these in a series of blog articles, starting with Microsoft Teams. The great news is that if you have Microsoft Office 365, then you already have Teams – you just need to switch it on!

What can Microsoft Teams do?

Microsoft Teams packs a powerful punch by combining many great features into one app.  Some key features are:

• Instant messaging – chat anytime from anywhere, one to one or group chat.
• Video conferencing – easy to arrange video conferencing at the touch of a button for as few or many as you like
• Audio calling – again one to one or group calls in an easy to manage package
• File sharing – Teams fully integrates with all your regularly used Microsoft staples, allowing you to easily share and edit files
• Integration – it can easily integrate with other Microsoft products but also with many apps from other providers

Teams was launched in 2017 as an upgrade to Skype for Businesses and it was positioned in the market-place to be a direct competitor to Slack.  For its 3 year anniversary, Microsoft have announced some new features which they will be rolling out over the coming weeks.  These include:

• Background blur – no need to worry about your messy room with this useful feature! Currently available on desktops only this is being rolled out to iPhones and iPads over the coming weeks.
• Virtual hand-raising – this feature well help hosts manage meetings effectively as participants can now signal when they have a contribution to make
• Bookings – this will bring a streamlined method of creating appointments, interviews, meetings etc
• Noise suppression – if your child is watching cartoons in the background or you are learning that your partner has a really loud ‘work phone voice’ – no need to worry as this new feature will drown them all out and focus sound on the speaker

If you need help to get Microsoft Teams up and running for your team – then contact us today and one of our Mosquitos will be in touch to make it happen!

RedMosquito are a Microsoft Certified Cloud Solutions partner.