Microsoft Teams is an amazing platform or tool for collaboration and networking which is used for communicating or business purposes. It offers a wide variety of features that make messaging, online chatting or working together so much easier. You can create groups, channels or your own teams on the platform to interact and engage. And like anything that has it’s pros has it’s cons as well, so does Microsoft Teams.
Below I will be discussing the pros as well as the cons of the platform
Pros
Increased Productivity and Enhanced Communication
Makes working in Digital Space seamless
Better Focus on work
Increased levels of Transparency
1.Increased Productivity and Enhanced Communication
Teams works effectively towards increasing the levels of productivity providing seamless collaboration. It does it through conversations, shared files, tasks, chats, etc making all this available on one platform. Not only this there is also a wide range of 3rd party apps that integrate into Teams. Because of this, the users won’t have to leave the Teams apps in order to get there work done. So, it makes everything available on a single platform.
2. Makes working in Digital Space seamless
With everything shifting to the digital workspace, platforms like Microsoft Teams can be a huge boon. As Teams is a fully cloud-based solution, the move to clouds is very seamless. Being able to access all the information from anywhere that to on any device is a big benefit for businesses. Along with this, you can even reap the benefits of artificial intelligence and big data processing.
3. Better Focus on work
Not only does Teams make collaboration smooth but even allows to focus on work better. This helps to prioritize the time better. You won’t have to spend time going through each and every message instead Teams compartmentalizes all the information into channels. Doing this helps put information in context. A specific channel will contain meetings, documents, or conversations related to a specific channel. So instead of being distracted with random emails, it allows you to focus your attention on one topic at a time. This further helps to spend the time you have on the channels you do work on.
4. Increased levels of Transparency
Transparency is a big issue that many organisations face. Teams resolves this issue as you no longer need to put anyone in cc just @-mention the people you wish to get notified. After doing this leave it for everyone else to read if they wish too. Making meetings visible to everyone the level of transparency is maintained throughout as everyone in the channel can pop-in.
Cons
Confusion due to structure of files
Challenging permission settings
Manual Replications due to Limited flexibility
Tough transition from Outlook
1. Confusion due to structure of files
People mostly search for what they need and don’t care much about storing files physically since everything is shifting to digital. Some people still like to know where a file is located and go through it. But the way files are stored in Teams is pretty confusing. Everything uploaded to conversations gets dumped in a channel root folder. Incase someone tries to move and organize the files, the file links in conversations break.
2. Challenging permission settings
Teams makes sharing smooth and easy. Whoever is a member of the Team automatically has access to all the files as well as the channels. But unfortunately, the teamwork isn’t always binary. In some cases, you might want to differentiate and make permission settings more granular that isn’t possible. Creating private channels in a team for unique permissions is possible but inviting “guest users” to selected channels isn’t possible.
3. Manual Replications due to Limited flexibility
In Teams when you start there is no structure ready from start. You don’t know which teams to create or which channels you need. This keeps evolving over time with the work you do. The building blocks of Teams aren’t as flexible as of now. This can sometimes lead to time wastage resulting in manual replications.
4. Tough transition from Outlook
The only way to transition to Teams is to fully use it and stop Outlook altogether. Unfortunately, since there is a deep dependency on Outlook in Office 365 it is a huge challenge.
So here are the Pros and Cons of using Microsoft Teams.
