Microsoft has celebrated two years since it first launched Teams with an announcement that it now serves 13 million users every day.
It’s a huge uptake in the technology over just a short period of time, with Microsoft able to win hearts and minds (and, indeed, wallets) with promises of increased workplace collaboration, streamlined business processed and better protection of critical information.
Teams integrates chat, video calls, file sharing and more into a single, intuitive app. It’s proven to be a popular option, with huge companies including FedEx, Emirates and The Adecco Group being just some of those which have adopted the technology.
It’s not all about the big businesses, however, as Teams has been launched in 181 markets and 53 languages. The result is a tool used by more than 13 million people on a daily basis – and more than 19 million people weekly.
Illustrating the speed of which Teams reached widespread adoption, Microsoft compared the ascent of its tool with that of nearest rival, Slack. The latter was released back in August 2013 and has since gone on to amass more than 10 million daily users. Teams, meanwhile, hit the market more than three years later, and has already broken the 13 million barrier.
Not content with resting on these good results, however, Microsoft announced a host of new features to commemorate the news. These include priority notifications for time-sensitive information, read receipts in chats, an ‘Announcements’ feature for channels and a new cross-posting tool that allows users to share the same message across multiple locations.
Elsewhere, users will now be able to send messages directly to groups of individuals based on their roles – not just by name. For example, a retailer may need a message shared among all cashiers – so this can be selected as an option in the drop-down menu, and all members with a cashier title will receive the notification.
The announcement found Microsoft in a confident, jubilant mood, with Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, Jared Spataro, taking to the company blog to proclaim: “Teams is transforming workplace collaboration and helping streamline business processes all over the world.”
