It can be complicated to pinpoint the most impactful Microsoft Teams features and how they’ll benefit your team. After all, Microsoft’s cloud-based unified communication and collaboration platform is packed full of capabilities – and its feature set is constantly evolving.
These days, Microsoft Teams includes everything from state-of-the-art artificial intelligence assistants to calendaring tools, extended reality applications, and more. However, some of this platform's capabilities stand out more than others.
Here’s our guide to the five most valuable Microsoft Teams features you should be exploring if you’re using Teams to boost your team’s productivity.
The 5 Top Microsoft Teams Features
As mentioned above, Microsoft’s feature list for Teams is constantly expanding, so we definitely recommend keeping up to date with our news reports (and Microsoft’s own product roadmap). In the meantime, these are the Microsoft Teams features we think have the biggest impact on the enterprise.
1. Seamless Integration Options
One of the best things about Microsoft Teams is how flexible it is. First of all, even though Microsoft has now unbundled Teams from Microsoft Office, the platform still works perfectly with all of Microsoft’s business-focused tools, from Word and Excel to SharePoint, OneDrive, and Outlook.
There are even various Microsoft apps that can enhance the functionality of Teams, such as Microsoft Places for AI-powered workplace scheduling and desk booking, to Microsoft Loop. However, you’re not exclusively limited to Microsoft tools if you want to upgrade the functionality of Teams.
The Microsoft app store makes it easy to connect your Teams ecosystem with endless apps for productivity, customer service, human resource management, scheduling, project management, and more. Check out our top Microsoft Teams app guide for more inspiration.
Plus, Microsoft plays well with other vendors, allowing companies to leverage Direct Routing or Operator Connect for business phone features and contact center capabilities.
2. Microsoft Teams Features for Security
Security and compliance will always be critical concerns for any business investing in new technology. Fortunately, Microsoft makes it relatively easy to enhance your security strategy. First, the company partners with a range of vendors who can offer support with archiving, eDiscovery, governance, call recording, and more.
Plus, the Teams ecosystem has plenty of incredible features built into it to improve security. Teams is built to be trustworthy by design, with end-to-end encryption, comprehensive access controls, and multi-factor authentication. With Microsoft Teams, you can access unique features like “safe links and attachments” for files shared by employees.
Businesses can set up conditional access policies and use the Microsoft Purview compliance portal to manage retention policies, data loss prevention, and legal hold strategies. Teams also include tools for auditing, customer key encryption, and information barriers.
3. Artificial Intelligence in Teams
For some time now, Microsoft has been working on making collaboration and communication “smarter” for team members. It introduced Copilot in Microsoft Teams for meetings and chats, offering users an AI assistant to summarize and transcribe meetings and create content.
Today, Copilot can create messages for conversations, intelligently recap calls and discussions, and even help business leaders create meeting agendas or assign action items to team members. Plus, AI features built into Teams, like Microsoft’s “IntelliFrame” solutions, can boost the quality and clarity of video meetings.
Today, companies have more ways to leverage AI-powered Microsoft Teams features than ever before. The Microsoft Teams Premium add-on has advanced Copilot functionality for recapping and summarizing meetings. Microsoft’s Copilot Studio enables companies to create their own autonomous agents capable of completing various multi-stage tasks.
