Teams

Microsoft is very keen that Office 365 tenants should move away from email distribution groups to embrace the world of Office 365 Groups. There is lots to like about Groups, but I have some doubts about the way Microsoft is cajoling people to move.

Microsoft is convinced that Office 365 tenants should move from old-fashioned email distribution lists to embrace the new world of collaboration enabled by Office 365 Groups. A new conversation method allows OWA users to convert DLs that they own. Is it a winner?

Microsoft extends the Office 365 data governance framework to cover conversations in Teams. Office 365 captures chats as items in Exchange Online mailboxes that are discoverable with content searches. And audit events work too!

Microsoft Planner added the ability to assign multiple people to a task. It’s a good step, but it’s the first new feature in nine months. That’s curious when you compare to the development cadence of other Office 365 applications.

The latest version of the PowerShell module for Azure Active Directory contains the cmdlets to recover a deleted Office 365 Group (and a plan or a team). We have been waiting for this feature for two and a half years, but maybe the waiting makes the feature all the sweeter…

The Microsoft Teams application is now generally available. Lots has been done to improve Teams since its preview release and Microsoft has made many good updates. Some edges remain for Microsoft to work on, but Teams is now more than a valid competitor for Slack in the chat-based collaboration market.

Microsoft Teams has reached general availability and with more than 50,000 organizations using the platform, it is off to a strong start.

Microsoft has intensified its competition with Slack by making the Teams platform more attractive for developers. New Bots and deep link capabilities are now available. Meantime, Microsoft also says that they will enable Teams for all Office 365 business tenants.

Teams and Planner are excellent examples of new functionality that Microsoft can create using the toolkit of parts that exist within Office 365. The two applications have excited and delighted customers since their announcement, but the applications are not yet complete. Some challenges exist that Microsoft really needs to take on to round out functionality and capabilities.

Microsoft StaffHub is a new Office 365 application built from bits of Office 365 Groups, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Azure, and Teams. The concept is simple – provide an application to allow the schedules of workers to be managed through a combination of browser and mobile interfaces. It’s an idea that will be popular with some Office 365 tenants, but it’s probably of limited interest to the majority.