Why Microsoft Teams is so much better than zoom and flexibility for collaboration

I’ve been a bit opposed to Microsoft Teams over the past few months.

During COVID-19 lockdowns, I decried the complexity of this collaborative app and avoided it like a wet gym sock. I thought:

Microsoft doesn’t understand how we work. The app has too many features. It doesn’t fit the lifestyle of modern remote workers. I hate the color purple.

It was like that big, bloated piece of software sitting in an application tray collecting dust. I didn’t want to click on it and I didn’t want to know how it worked. Sometimes I reluctantly posted a few docs and tested features, wishing I was back on Slack.

I’ve always told people that Microsoft Teams is a joke.

I was wrong.

In the past, I’ve advocated Slack and Zoom because, at least in most of my day-to-day work, they’re functional, stylish, and intuitive. It’s easy to chat with people on Slack, and the features are so simple and straightforward that you can teach them to a newly created intern (depending on the intern). Zoom has become the de facto tool for most workers because video chats are smooth and reliable.

Using Teams with a real – you know –team the past few weeks has completely changed my perception. I think it’s a bit bloated, with too many features that people will never use. There’s a task management system called Planner that’s just a click away, but it doesn’t have any serious automation and is an entire galaxy far from the power and simplicity of Trello. It’s insanely annoying that you can’t engage in threaded conversations like you can in Slack. And don’t even tell me about a few missing features for video chats. (Turning off your camera in Teams means you become an icon, a little photo at the bottom of the screen. I keep thinking that someone is not online and I ask them when they are. will attach – in Zoom you see a blank screen instead.)

And yet, here we are. I like the teams.

Microsoft has made a name for itself in technology with one word. Maybe that oversimplifies a multi-billion dollar business, but the word is the integration. Outlook is integrated with Word which is integrated with Teams. Over the years people have used another word for it (monopoly), but when you’re trying to finish a report and you’re alone in an office, the integration is remarkable. I was able to start a video conference with people with just one click. Awesome! I can do this in Slack. But I was also able to add 17 other people with a few more clicks, schedule meetings with them in Teams, and work together on a Word document.

I will go several steps further. I’m now starting to think Teams is much better for collaboration during the (last few months, hopefully) of the pandemic. We need integration more than ever. If I can click once to start a meeting with 10 people instead of sending them the link, I will accept it. Listen to me correctly – the individual tools of the Microsoft ecosystem are not always better. I prefer Slack and Zoom. What I discovered is that my tired version of COVID prefers an ecosystem that does it all. The pandemic has changed my perspective.

Which brings us to Google. Only two companies are vying for complete domination of the productivity of knowledge workers. (Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem to know what they’re doing in this regard. There is no alternative to Slack, Zoom, or Teams for actual business productivity.) Google and Microsoft have both remained standing. .

Google is closest to Microsoft when it comes to making it all work in a smooth and intuitive way, but Google Meet is a far cry from Teams. They’re not even in the same league. If only it wasn’t! I prefer Google Docs to the online version of Microsoft Word, and Gmail (as part of Google Workspace, which was previously called G-Suite) is much better than Microsoft Outlook, especially for those of us who don’t delete never get an email and rely on an inbox search every five seconds.

For now, easily starting a video chat (and adding a team) in Microsoft Teams and the integration with Outlook for scheduling group chats is appealing to me.

When things finally get back to normal, I might be ready for the streamlined, easy, and intuitive approach with Slack and Zoom. We will see.