Microsoft has launched Microsoft Teams—a unified communications platform that raised a lot of dust in the industry. Microsoft Teams, as part of the Office 365 suite, brings together all the functionalities of other Office 365 tools to create a unique collaboration and communication hub for teams.
And while some users enjoy using Teams, others are still not sure whether or not to use it. Below are some of the possible downsides for adopting Microsoft Teams - those who are considering adopting Teams should review these topics before they make their choice:
The biggest stumbling stone for the Microsoft Teams is, surprisingly, other Microsoft tools. With the plethora of options, people are still very confused about which tool to use in which situation. It’s up to Microsoft or the providing organization itself to educate their users about their tools.
For example, look at the following chart explaining Office 365 Groups within the Teams environment:
Even though Microsoft recommends using Teams for specific team-related conversations and Yammer for general company announcements, people are still using both platforms interchangeably. Since there’s no unified search tool for all the Office 365 conversations, it may become a bit tricky if you don’t remember where you had a certain chat. Similar search function shortcomings can be found throughout the Office 365 suite.
By default, everybody in the organization can create a team. This can result in an unnecessary creation of teams which will result in a large storage requirement. The good news is you can restrict team-creating permission to a set of users, but doing so requires a bit of handwork. First you need to create a separate security group with the people who you want to create teams, and then run a bit of PowerShell commands.
Sometimes, Microsoft Teams can be ineffective at providing notifications. For example: Should you try to make a new team with a name that already exists, you won’t get any heads up on it, so you can end up with the two or more identically named teams. Not only does this create confusion, but it also unnecessarily consumes your resources.
However, there’s a workaround for this particular situation. Prior to making a new team, you can check whether the name of the team is already taken by entering the name in the search bar. You will get a list of all the existing teams and avoid the mistake of duplicating the name.
The number of channels is limited up to 100 channels per team. Although this may not be a problem for smaller organizations, others can find themselves in a tight spot. If you surpass this limit, you will have to delete some of the channels. Note that shared files remain in the SharePoint site as backup storage.
Given all these considerations, it may still be understandable for your organization to make a move to Microsoft Teams. You may also want to consider other unified communication solutions like Skype for Business or CallTower's CT Cloud Voice. To make the best, most informed decision, please review our available solutions here.
If you want to find out exactly how your organization will fuction with a unified communication solution like Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business, click on the Teams logo below to schedule a consultation with CallTower: