Work Remotely: Say hello to Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based collaboration solution that helps teams work remotely – from home or anywhere else through internet & Microsoft 365 (previously Office 365). Its key features include secure & private messaging, conferencing and file sharing.

Teams helps users store & share files online, manage documents, collaborate with groups and receive notifications. It can be tailored for each team and members can communicate through instant messaging, calling, online meetings and web conferencing. The collaboration tool can be used to work on files within all popular Microsoft 365 apps such as MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SharePoint. Other notable features include open app processing interface, assistant bots, search (conversation & contact), and multi-factor authentication.

Teams integrates with Skype to facilitate voice and video calls for effective collaboration. You can also integrate Teams with third-party applications such as GitHub, Delve, Planner, Trello, Power BI and more. The application is available on a one-time subscription and support is available via phone and online help desk. For a limited time, there is also a free version available.

Use Microsoft Teams for Free

If you run a small business or are part of a working group within a larger enterprise, chances are you need collaborate and communicate with your remote team and as well as people outside your organization. For a limited time, you don’t need to spend a penny on expensive collaboration tools because Teams is free to use.

In the past, Microsoft offered Teams as a monthly subscription service only. However, in order to compete with services like Slack, and rise in work from home practices, Microsoft offers a free version of Team with variety of benefits.

Free Microsoft Teams comes with unlimited chats, audio and video calls. Further, 10GB of file storage for your business team and extra 2GB of storage for every individual in your team. Teams integrates seamlessly with all online MS Office Suite apps as well as more than 140 third-party business apps. Moreover, you can add up to 300 people in your network, who can be inside or outside your business team.

Please note that the free version of Teams is only available to those without a paid Microsoft 365 subscription. The existing Microsoft 365 / Office 365 subscribers who try to sign up for Teams are redirected to a managed account for their existing plan. Users who don’t have a Teams license as part of their Microsoft 365 subscription can sign up for a free one-year trial.

If you have an Microsoft 365 subscription and still want to use Teams for free, you can simply sign up with a new email address. If your address is not already connected with your  Microsoft Account, Teams will set it up accordingly.

For free sign up go to official Teams website