Microsoft Teams has a court date set in Japan. Courts in nine jurisdictions across the country have selected Teams to integrate into their system. Starting this month, the workplace chat solution will help Japanese courts make their evidence procedure more efficient.
The agreement is part of efforts by Japan’s Supreme Court to move through a digital transformation. By leveraging Microsoft Teams, the courts will be able to collaborate more quickly.
Participants in court cases would previously have to tap into evidentiary proceedings through telephone or video calls if they could not attend the court. While this works as a communication method, it was usually impossible to see facial expressions.
Furthermore, people in remote locations would have to access video calling technology at local courthouses. In other words, the process was time consuming and costly.
By embracing Microsoft Teams, the courts want to bypass this process. The platform allows people to see each other more clearly and access documents and other content at the same time.
“As client data is stored at a Microsoft data centre in Japan, even domains with strict oversight policies such as those of central and local governments, public agencies, and medical and educational facilities, can safely use Teams with confidence,” said Tomonari Sato, public sector lead at Microsoft Japan.
Outage
In other Teams news, the platform suffered a brief outage earlier this week.
Microsoft Teams users were unable to access the workplace chat and collaboration platform. Microsoft confirmed the service was down and it remained so for around three hours. Interestingly, the reason for the crash was because the company forgot to renew a security license.