Microsoft Teams launched last November and has picked up momentum since then. Microsoft has shared some numbers behind Office 365’s app that prove Microsoft Teams has become a game-changer regarding communication and scheduling in organizations.
Head of the Office 365 Client Applications, Kirk Koenigsbauer, says on a blog post that “[Microsoft’s] commitment is to empower every organization and every team to achieve more.” The company is clearly moving towards that direction since Microsoft Team launched and has already announced several new features to the app such as private voice calling, and deletion of messages.
According to Koenigsbauer, customers seem to be quite happy with Microsoft Teams, such as a process engineer at Hendrick Motorsports who says that they had been able to reduce the number of face-to-face meetings.
In addition, Koenigsbauer quotes CEO and co-founder of Interknowlogy, Rodney Guzman, who also praises Microsoft Teams, stating that his company switched from Slack and is operating better since then.
Slack and Microsoft Teams have been direct rivals since the latter’s launch back in November 2016, and Microsoft is constantly making sure to improve the Office 365 app in order to conquer the chat-based workspaces’ field.
New features coming soon
In addition to sharing the numbers behind Microsoft Teams, Koenigsbauer reveals that Microsoft will release new compliance and reporting capabilities into Microsoft Teams, in the coming weeks. With the introduction of the above, the company expects to help employees communicate and collaborate from anywhere, while at the same time keeping sensitive corporate information secure.
Koenigsbauer also says that at Microsoft Teams’ general availability, Microsoft will deliver WhoBot, which uses natural language processing to help learn about experts in organizations. WhoBot is powered by LUIS.ai and Koenigsbauer promises that “[it] will be able to answer questions like ‘Who in our group knows about the Australia sales numbers?’.”
Finally, the head of Office 365 Client Applications says that the app is still on track for general availability later this quarter. Given that the Office 365 commercial service has 85 million monthly active users, it is safe to say that Microsoft Teams’ usage will skyrocket when the app reaches general availability.
