#OTSTWIT E16 – Boot Camp: What is Teams?

After weeks of new features and deep dives into various capabilities that compliment the Teams platform, Jay and Craig decided to go back to basics. This Week in Teams we provide an introduction to #MicrosoftTeams. We talk about what Teams IS: the hub for M365 but also the hub for the enterprise with its ever-expanding extensibility. We also talked about the base for Teams: SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange Server. And, we discussed if a Team should be Organizational or Functional (sneak peek: It depends).

After weeks of new
features and deep dives into various capabilities that compliment the Teams
platform, Jay and Craig decided to go back to basics. This Week in Teams we
provide an introduction to #MicrosoftTeams. We talk about what Teams IS: the
hub for M365 but also the hub for the enterprise with its ever-expanding
extensibility. We also talked about the base for Teams: SharePoint, OneDrive,
and Exchange Server. And, we discussed if a Team should be Organizational or
Functional (sneak peek: It depends).

The
Hub for Teamwork

Microsoft Teams is
described as The Hub for Teamwork in Microsoft 365. At its base it pulls
together SharePoint, Exchange, and all of the Office 365 capabilities into a
single, user-friendly interface which is much more simplistic than interfaces
like SharePoint. This is a good thing, as the complexity often confuses end
users. For membership, Teams utilizes Office 365 Groups, which simplifies what
we were used to as 4 different membership types in SharePoint down to two very
simple things: Members and Owners.

Beyond Microsoft
365, though, Teams can be The Hub for your enterprise thanks to its
extensibility!

SharePoint
and OneDrive … and Exchange? Oh My!

Behind Teams is the
ever-familiar SharePoint interface, brought to you by SharePoint Online. Within
Teams the interface is MUCH more simple — files with minimal metadata and
configurations. However, with power comes a FULL SharePoint Site collection. For
power-users this means endless functionality as always provided by SharePoint,
but for end-users, it means not having to navigate them.

But what about
OneDrive. I hear this all the time. The key here is to keep it simple: OneDrive
is an app built on SharePoint, so it’s still SharePoint. That said, the
differentiation is WHERE are those files being shared: if you are sharing a
file in a Team, your files are stored in the SharePoint Site Collection; if
your files are being shared in a one-to-one or one-to-many private chat, your
files are being stored in OneDrive and the app is smart enough to set the
participants of the chat as “contributors” — they can edit the file.
Nifty feature.

The connection with
Exchange is much less often discussed. Discussion threads for private chats are
stored in each user’s mailbox that is participating in the discussion. Channel
threads from a Team are stored in the inbox created for the Office 365 Group.
NEITHER OF THESE are available to the end user. These are primarily for
discovery within the M365 Security and Compliance Center. Even the APIs to
these are limited for 3rd part app developers. So, it’s there, but it’s not for
the end-user to touch.

Function
versus Organization

The answer to “when should I create a Team” is, unfortunately, “it depends”. We recognize the usefulness of Teams as a department home for collaboration; so yes, go create your “Information Technology” Team. But don’t stop there. Cross-functional teams allow you to bring together individuals from multiple departments to create mission-centric teams for short (or long) periods of times. Create a Team for collaboration on your hardware modernization. Create a Team to support a customer project. Create a Team to engage with your officemates (and channels for the different office clubs like Coffee Club, Pie Club, Runners Club … yes these are all real clubs in Jay’s DC office!).

In other words:
there’s tremendous value in Teams outside of department-based Teams, but
there’s value in both, so get started simple and then consider expanding the
allowed use cases over time!

Extensibility

From Planner and the
Tasks App to Dataflex, we’ve talked a lot about extensibility in recent weeks.

In short: there are
a series of first party apps available (website tab, planner, SharePoint pages
and Lists, Word and Exchange, etc). These apps enable you to really embrace
Teams as the Hub for Office 365.

There are also a TON
of 3rd party apps integrating into hundreds of non-Office 365 solutions: Jira,
Polly, Trello, AppBot … even AvePoint have solutions that may be useful to your
enterprise. Start exploring and reviewing these 3rd party apps; you never know
how they may increase your organizational productivity.

You can also custom
create your own apps to integrate across your enterprise. Put them in the
marketplace and help others with their problems! Or, “sideload” them
(install them across your systems but without using the marketplace.
Sideloading ensures that only your organization can use them so it’s great for
keeping your solutions and potentially proprietary information private.

The key here is, as
it has always been with SharePoint, that Teams can take your enterprise to the
next level of collaboration across geographies and departments. Take it one
step at a time and the sky is the limit!