Why Microsoft teams are so much better than moving and slowing down for collaboration

I’ve been a Microsoft Team user for the past few months.

During the COVID-19 locks, I underestimated the complexity of this collaborative app and avoided it as wet gym socks. I thought:

Microsoft doesn’t understand how we work. The app has too many features. It does not fit in with the lifestyle of today’s remote workers. I hate the color purple.

It was like this big pile of software in bloom, sitting in an application tray collecting dust. I didn’t want to click on it, and I didn’t want to learn how it worked. At times, I was willing to post a few documents and test features, all the while wishing I was back on Slack.

I’ve been telling people regularly that Microsoft Teams are a joke.

I was wrong.

In the past, I have applied Slack and Zoom because, at least in most of my daily work, they are functional, sleek, and intuitive. Slack is easy to talk to, and the features are so simple and straightforward that you could teach them to a newly defined employee (depending on what’s inside). Zoom has become a de facto tool for most employees because the video chairs are smooth and reliable.

Using teams with real – you know – team the last few weeks have completely changed my mind. I think it’s something in bloom, with too many features that people will never use. There’s an action control system called Planner that just clicks away, but it doesn’t have a lot of automation and it’s all galaxy away from the power and simplicity of Trello. It’s awfully sad that you can’t jump into threaded conversations like you can in Slack. And don’t even start with a few features needed for video chat. (Turning your camera off in Teams means you’ll be in your image, a tiny blip at the bottom of the screen. I think someone hasn’t called and asks when they’ll go in. – in Zoom, you will see a blank screen instead.)

And yet, here we are. I like Teams.

Microsoft made the name in technology because of one word. It may cost a multi-billion dollar company, but the word is integration. Outlook is linked to Word which is linked to Teams. Over the years, people have used another word for that (monopoly) but when you are trying to complete a report and you are alone in an office, the integration is unique. I have started a conversation with people with one click. Great! I can do that in Slack. But then I got to add 17 more people with a few more clicks, and also schedule meetings with them in Teams, and work on a Word doc together.

I’m going to go a few steps further. I’m now starting to think that Teams are much better for collaboration through the final months (hopefully). We need integration now more than ever. If I can click once to start a meeting with 10 people instead of sending them the link, I accept it. I hear this right – the individual tools in the Microsoft ecosystem are not always better. I prefer Slack and Zoom. What I have found is that the COVID-fatigued version would prefer me to one ecosystem that does it all. The pandemic has changed my mind.

Which leads us to Google. Only two companies strive for full-fledged employee productivity leadership. (Sadly, Apple doesn’t seem to know what they’re doing in this regard. There’s no alternative to Slack, Zoom or Teams for real business output.) Google and Microsoft are both left standing.

Google is the closest to Microsoft in terms of getting work done in a fluid and intuitive way, but Google Meet is far from the Teams. They are not even in the same league. If it was just it wasn’t like that! I prefer Google Docs over the online version of Microsoft Word, and Gmail (part of Google Workspace, formerly known as G-Suite) is much better than Microsoft Outlook, especially for those who don’t. deletes your email and is responsible for checking in every five seconds.

For now, that tiny video chat icon in Microsoft Teams and integration with Outlook for group video chat is winning me.

When things get back to normal, I may be ready for the quick, simple and intuitive approach with Slack and Zoom. We’ll see.