Thanks to the Internet we can always be connected and communicated with other people. More and more companies are betting on telework to work from home, or from other places. In addition, the Internet allows us to be in contact at all times with our family and friends, whether through chat, voice calls or even video calls. Although many applications and platforms allow us to make video calls, only a few allow us to do it easily and with good quality. And one of the best, both personally and professionally, is Microsoft Teams .
Within the workplace there are several chat platforms that allow companies to create rooms and organize the work of their employees, both working within the company and by telecommuting. Slack is one of the most popular that can be used both free and by paying, in addition to having other alternatives such as the OpenSource Mattermost chat platform , the leader among Discord gamers , the popular Zoom and, of course, Microsoft Teams.
MS Teams is a platform that has gained a lot of popularity in a very short time, and has also quickly gained the trust of all the companies that have opted for it. Initially, Microsoft Team was mainly focused on companies. However, currently Microsoft offers it as an alternative to be able to be connected with family and friends so that we can have a text chat, a calling function and even make video calls through the platform.
Main features
Microsoft Teams is an open corporate chat tool for personal use. Among its main characteristics (at least, for use in companies) we can find:
- It allows you to manage team projects and collaborate in real time.
- Video calls with audio and video in HD.
- Private chat, group chats and chat rooms to talk with all the members of the company.
- Mentions function to attract the attention of other coworkers or the entire room.
- Lets you save conversations and customize notifications.
- Complete search engine for chats.
- Organizational tools to create task lists and assign them to others.
- Business level security.
Microsoft Teams wants to be a mix of Slack and WhatsApp
Microsoft wants to create a unique tool within which users can centralize their entire lives, both work and personal. Teams have also gained a lot of popularity within schools to connect students and teachers and to be able to coordinate courses and projects, both in a classroom and online.
On the one hand, Teams offers us a complete messaging center through which we can talk to other people, friends and family, send GIFs, share files and even access OneDrive cloud storage. We can also use calls and video calls to communicate in a different way, and closer, with other people.
Microsoft Teams also wants to help us organize our day to day . This platform has a complete task manager where we can write down all the pending tasks, and even assign them to other people, it allows us to have multiple shared calendars and manage all the events we want.
Finally, indicate that it also has collaborative work functions and the possibility of sharing locations at any time.
Free for personal use; payment for companies
Microsoft Teams was originally designed for businesses and schools. For personal chat and video calls the company offers us Skype. What’s more, today, if we try to register on a personal level in Teams, it will forward us directly to Skype.
Microsoft Teams is included in the following two plans:
- Office 365 Business Premium : for a price of 10.50 euros per month per user, we will have access to all Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher and Access), 1 TB of cloud storage and cloud services additional such as Exchange, SharePoint and of course Microsoft Teams.
- Office 365 Business Essentials : for 4.20 euros per month we will have access to Office mobile and web applications, 1 TB of cloud storage and access to Exchange, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams services.
Of course, Microsoft offers us a trial version to be able to test the platform before having to pay for it. Just in case you want to try it in a company.
Microsoft does not want users to pay for this service for their personal use. Communicating with family and friends should be free. And for this reason, the company will provide us with a panel, or dashboard, from which we will have access to all the tools it offers us. From it we can contact our family or friends, open a text chat room with them, make video calls and even share any file through the platform, such as photos or videos, in the simplest way.
The free family version of Microsoft Teams will not be as complete as the business version. To start, we can only use it from the mobile, not from the PC. But without a doubt it will become one of the most complete chat and family organization alternatives.
Download Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams has a desktop application for PC and Android and iOS mobile apps. The PC application can be downloaded from the Microsoft website , while mobile applications can be easily downloaded from the respective app stores.
The version of Microsoft Teams for family and friends is completely free, and it will be enough to register with our Microsoft Account to be able to access it. Of course, we can only use it from the apps for Android and iOS, since the desktop version will be exclusively for the business version.
Of course, we must bear in mind that the version for family and friends of Microsoft Teams will not be ready until summer 2020 . At the moment we have to wait and, if we want to continue using the Microsoft platform, we can choose Skype for chat and video calls.
