What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines persistent workplace chat (instant messaging), audio/video meetings and calls, file storage and collaboration (share and co-edit), and application integration all in one place.

Teams Usage

What Teams is intended for:
Note: The below list applies only to usage within the Southwest organization.

1:1 & 1:Many chats (i.e. private conversations).
Channel chats (i.e. group conversations that can be seen by everyone who is a member of the team (if posting to a public channel) or only by members of a channel (if posting to a private channel).
Collaborating with people you work the most with.
Accessing, sharing, and co-editing personal and channel (i.e. group) files.
Teams-to-Teams personal and channel audio/video meetings.
Teams-to-Teams calls.
Application integration for company approved apps (Ex: Microsoft Planner, Jira, etc…).

What Teams is not intended for:

External communication or sharing.

Note: Additional Microsoft Teams features and capabilities, such as the ones listed above, may be made available in the future.

Release Date

Currently, select groups of users are participating in an early adoption program. We anticipate a rollout to production in early Q3.

Training

See End user training for Microsoft Teams for:

A quick start guide that you can download (PDF) and print for reference.
Short, helpful videos on various Microsoft Teams related topics, such as how to start chats, work in channels, send e-mails to channels, etc… Please note that some features shown in the videos may not be available in our environment.
A link to an interactive demo where you can check Microsoft Teams out before using it.
Etc…

Additional Information