r/MicrosoftTeams • u/natehc123 • 4d ago
Discussion What do you genuinely like about Microsoft Teams?
I know Teams gets its fair share of criticism here (some of it deserved!), but I also suspect many folks—especially in medium to large organizations already on Microsoft 365—actually like it.
So I’m starting this thread to capture the positive side of the Teams experience.
✅ What features or workflows do you genuinely appreciate?
✅ How has Teams helped your org collaborate more effectively?
✅ What made Teams a better fit for your company from whatever you had before?
Let’s hear the good stuff—what makes Teams actually work for you?
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u/Inevitable_Exam_2177 4d ago
Email is a dumpster fire, so moving conversations into a semi-permanent threaded mode where you can pick up where you left off is great
Collaborative file sharing (with multiple simultaneous people editing a file) is a true game changer, avoiding the need to email around documents. This makes it possible to have a single source of truth which can be continuously updated
I wish I could say the Planner integration is also fantastic, but I’ve found I can’t build up the momentum across multiple teams to actually use it effectively
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u/natehc123 3d ago
Totally. I got an email the other day with a couple of attachment and I was like WTF!!!
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u/KingDaveRa 2d ago
I've turned off Outlook notifications. Email is replied to when I'm ready.
You want an instant reply, instant message me.
I also enjoy shit posting gifs in the team group chats.
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u/spacelama 3d ago
I remember when email wasn't a dumpster fire. Ah yeah, before I had to use microsoft tools to read it.
I'm guessing you haven't had sharepoint royally screw up documents worked on by more than one person at a time before, then? I understand the theory as to why collaborative editing is hard, but I haven't seen any other company screw it up so much as MS have.
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u/Inevitable_Exam_2177 3d ago
By and large it’s worked very well in ky experience. An occasional merge conflict but nothing too serious. OneDrive on Mac sometimes loses the plot but directly editing SharePoint documents more reliable. The hardest part of the process is either getting people to understand how to sync Teams folders to their desktop using OneDrive, OR getting their sometimes aged and often locked down institutional PCs set up properly to allow them to do so.
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u/DumpsandNoods 3d ago
Were the libraries being accessed from synced computer folders?
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u/spacelama 3d ago
company.sharepoint.com/blah
Collaboratively working over the table, communicating to each other, modifying different parts of the document at the same time. Absolutely basic stuff, it couldn't get right.
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u/lemon_tea_lady 4d ago
Pretty much everything in teams is a web app. I like programming web apps that live inside teams because they can integrate with tons of Microsoft provided data, all within one platform, and it feels like it’s just part of teams.
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u/RobertDeveloper 4d ago
But they can't integrate email? Teams is typical jack of all trades, master of none.
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u/CoffeeOrDestroy 3d ago
"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one".
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u/RobertDeveloper 3d ago
Its a shame companies for teams on their employees, in the past In used slack and i much prefer that.
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u/lemon_tea_lady 3d ago
Outside my scope. 🤷♀️
I just try to make tools that make mine and my coworkers lives easier.
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u/QuestoPresto 4d ago
How did you learn how to do this? I’m trying to get started and I can’t tell if I’m just not getting it or I don’t have the correct version of teams or whatever
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u/lemon_tea_lady 3d ago
I just read the documentation. There are also some templates in Visual Studio.
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u/natehc123 3d ago
That’s a great point about it being all webapps. Not yet built any but love that the opportunity is there and to be able to integrate it with the Microsoft Graph for even more opportunities.
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u/hypnosssis 4d ago
I use the chat with myself to keep a to do list of most urgent tasks or to c/p links to internal documents that will be a pain to find otherwise
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u/AltruisticStandard26 2d ago
I am dumb…. I forget shit all the time, I have a work phone and a personal one. I text or Teams message myself reminders constantly. It is especially helpful when I remember something outside work hours, then I just check my messages when back on the clock
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u/pokebowlgotothepolls 4d ago
I've been getting into Power Automate this year and I just started playing around with sending myself notifications via adaptive cards in Teams. I can summarize what I like about Teams in one word: integration. If you work at a medium to large enterprise like I do, Microsoft 365 is just a fact of life. But the amount of stuff you can access from Teams is staggering. Still takes a ton of man-hours to truly leverage though. AI hasn't made a dent in that yet.
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u/natehc123 3d ago
Totally agree. I find learning more and more and still feel like I’m just scratching the surface. Starting to get into Power Automate and using Copilot Studio. It’s like a new world is opening up.
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u/pokebowlgotothepolls 3d ago
I'm getting access to Copilot Studio soon and I'm really looking forward to it. For my own selfish needs if no one else's lol
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u/Cranifraz 4d ago
Tbh, every company that I know uses Teams does so because it was rolled into their site licensing costs for Office and SharePoint, not because they've done thoughtful evaluation of competing software.
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u/mitharas 4d ago
Getting a productivity boost in the form of any messenger for no additional cost sounds rather nice.
Competitors would have to argue for their additional budget.2
u/natehc123 3d ago
Fair point. I’d imagine if they did it may be hard to argue against everything being integrated to not right?
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u/Cranifraz 3d ago
I mean, I think teams is integrated in the absolute worst way.
I would pay money to just have Teams be chat and meetings and not try to do everything at once. It's like being forced to use a browser that doesn't have tabs.
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u/ProfessionalBread176 2d ago
Exactly. M$ is leveraging their current presence with a tool that pretends to "do it all", which it does poorly at best, in an effort to boost licensing revenue
As a result, many enterprises that once had the nuisance of Exchange going to "outlook" are now feeling the suffering zoom to completely new heights
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u/Sorry-Scratch-3002 4d ago
It good for meetings and screen sharing, fine for official and non official chats with colleagues. Best feature: keeps work stuff in separate space. My last place that FB messenger was for quick work messages, sucked during days off.
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u/Marco_Panizzari 4d ago
Conversation are around the topic, no risk of email multiple thread. Working process Shared file
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u/natehc123 3d ago
Did you have a hard time getting people off email to work this way?
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u/Marco_Panizzari 3d ago
The hardest ever with many people. But I don’t mind, the wave of Teams’ followers is increasing.
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4d ago
[deleted]
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u/MisterEinc 4d ago
I map my projects to channels with the people I need to report to and then map those SharePoint files to my OneDrive. All my project files are always updated and available to those people and my Team just by dropping them in my OneDrive folders. Idk how Slack could do anything like that.
How does Slack handle files? Last I checked it didn't really integrate stuff like that.
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u/GreenDavidA 4d ago
I’ve always found Slack’s desktop sharing to be unstable and laggy. Teams is better.
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u/RobertDeveloper 4d ago
My experience is that people share their screen and leave the call they are still sharing, which is a huge bug!
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u/DudeThatAbides 4d ago
Well, being that my company configured ours so it actually integrates and works well with other apps, file sharing and whatnot, basically the fact that I only need to use Teams, an internet browser and our Service Ticketing platform to basically do my entire job. No more Outlook, no more local storage issues…I just can fully collaborate efficiently and with much less need to open multiple applications, files, etc to do so.
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u/natehc123 3d ago
This is amazing that it’s all been set up to be fully integrated as it’s meant to be. And your company achieved the behavioural change of getting people off emails 🙌🏽
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u/DudeThatAbides 3d ago
We have Outlook, but the vast majority of us virtually never need to use it for anything anymore. My clients communicate with me in the ticketing system, and my colleagues through Teams. We can share and access documents using Teams’s integration features. As long as your cloud document libraries aren’t a permissions/filepath nightmare and all applicable M365 licensing is squared Teams works well for collab.
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u/Markolodeon 4d ago
I like how I constantly miss message alerts. And when I say sorry, I didn’t see your message, the other person always says they never see their alerts either.
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u/OutdoorRink 3d ago
As someone who has been selling video conference equipment for over two decades, I like just about everything about it. You guys have no idea how shitty point point video conferences were just 20 years ago.
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u/ChampionshipComplex 4d ago
Youre not going to get many professional answers here - People tend to gravitate to these forums to spew a bit of hate rather than for any genuine professionap discussion.
Teams is Microsoft ls fastest adopted technology in its entire history. Not because as some claim here, it was free but because it is massively popular - We have tens of thousands using it.
The reason it was initially popular is the obvious and the reason Slack took off, which is the Web2. 0 type features in Enterprise. So instead of an Email inbox with no single thread of a conversation, but everything forced on you either date sorted or person sorted - Teams introduced enterprise users to topic focussed threads.
Thats popular, and why things like Reddit exists, it stops people having to play catchup if they join conversations, it removed duplication, it improves search.
So Teams improved topic based conversations.
However then the other asects of Teams became popular. So using its voice features to replace telephony, using its screen sharing to present in meetings, providing a single view into other content like company web pages, document libraries, lists.
Now we couldnt take it from people and its our maon tool, we replaced our telephony with it, it does workflows, its where AI happens, its an interface to backend systems - So its one lightweight pain of glass that does almost everything an employee needs and we dont use Emails internally any longer.
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u/natehc123 3d ago
Thanks for the thoughtful response. That’s why I started the thread in that with something that is used by so many there is plenty for people to complain about. But there is likely a lot to like as the responses are showing. The bundling in the licensing helps but if Teams was bad people would look to switch to something else.
Your comment is telling where you couldn’t take it away from people so proof right there. I’m super impressed you’ve moved away from using emails - that’s an amazing behavioural achievement.
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u/firenance 4d ago
Easy chat with the team, and ability to make different chats.
Collaborative file share. We use this a lot.
Calling, and our external phone.
I can use the app to segment work vs personal calls.
We recently started using teams webinar. Still a lot of random bugs but convenient.
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u/natehc123 3d ago
How is it compared to Zoom Webinar (if you’ve used that)? Good enough or still way behind?
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u/firenance 3d ago
It functions but there are some quirks when you compare the two.
Zoom webinar default functions “normal” like you would expect. The organizers or presenters are featured and participants aren’t even a thing unless an organizer brings them up to speak.
Teams operates by default like a meeting. People can join and are not by default hidden or anonymous. The organizer has to deliberately dig into the settings to make attendees anonymous, as well as restrictions on chat, Q&A, reactions, etc.
Everyone can see the participant list, everyone. So unless you make it anonymous anyone can see who attended the event. For some things it may not be a big deal, but most people expect anonymity.
Another quirky feature is it acts like a meeting where people can “start” the event by joining before or after it’s scheduled. Organizers can “control” this by enforcing a lobby, but if people join and forget to leave then the event will continue to “run” even after the organizers end it. Several times I have to go back after and kick people out so the analytics and attendance reports will populate.
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u/natehc123 3d ago
Ugh, that doesn’t sound good at all. Too much friction compared to how easy Zoom Webinar is.
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u/firenance 3d ago
There is a price difference also. Teams webinar is included in premium license, where Zoom is a separate license.
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u/meyers980 3d ago
The easy ability to send gifs to my coworkers. I know this is common, but I still appreciate it.
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u/kytosol 3d ago
The only positive is everyone in the company uses the same app. I no longer need 5 different messenger clients to chat to people.
Everything about the app, however, is awful. It regularly crashes on my desktop, the handoff between PC and mobile app doesn't work, it sometimes just forgets my background or blurring and shows my messy room, and probably most infuriatingly it doesn't sync chats on my Samsung phone or tablet properly without being force quit and watered eat time. 🫠
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u/ElbowDeepInElmo 3d ago
It's got pretty good Android Auto integration, at least for basic meeting controls.
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u/FlyingMitten 3d ago
A better thread would be "what does Teams do better than the competition. And leave out core O365 services like doc collab since that works with the competition".
I suspect the list would be far shorter.
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u/Leather_Ice_1000 2d ago
Great meeting transcription tool that can be summarized with AI after the fact to generate meeting notes.
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u/bakelit 2d ago
As a video technician who had to work extensively with virtual broadcasts since the pandemic, the isolated video outputs of each caller has been a game changer. Either via NDI over a network, or SDI outputs on a Decklink card, you can isolate each individual participant’s video feed, as well as the shared screen feed.
Certain Zoom subscriptions offer this as well, since they acquired Zoom ISO, but the NDI feature has been integrated into Teams since 2021 I believe, so it’s become the go-to call platform for a lot of virtual production companies.
Prior to Skype/Teams rolling out the NDI feature, setting up a call with multiple participants with isolated video feeds was either really expensive, or really complicated. Now Teams is pretty ubiquitous, and most people are comfortable using it, so our job has gotten a lot easier.
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u/Jeff-J777 1d ago
I am all for switching my calls from one device to another with zero effort. We also use Teams phone, and I am happy to see MS add new features to Teams phone, and not charge extra for them. Then soon my cell phone number will become my Teams DID.
We also have a number of power apps and distribute them all thought Teams.
The walkie talkie feature is nice too.
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u/SuddenMagazine1751 1d ago
Search function is great.
Can search for a keyword of a message sent to me 3 years ago and still find it within a minute.
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u/lonelythesaurus 4d ago
Prior to Teams we all used Zoom. Some departments stuck with Zoom, and Teams is far superior as a Microsoft heavy company.
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u/natehc123 3d ago
Many people just love Zoom and won’t hear otherwise. Can you say more about Teams being superior.
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u/digableplanet 4d ago
Why did you use Ai to write your post, OP? This is lazy, uncreative, and unproductive.
Ai slop.
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u/spacelama 3d ago
My current work imposed a requirement a few months ago of an MDM policy to be applied in order to be able to sign in to Teams etc on BYOD devices, which imposed requirements that I wasn't willing to accept on my personal device, so Teams and outlook got uninstalled on my devices.
Consequently, I don't see anything out of hours anymore.
I also like it's inability to search accurately. Gives me plausible deniability.
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u/RihardsVLV 4d ago
Nothing. Skype was much better.
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u/whutupmydude 4d ago edited 4d ago
Seamlessly being able to transfer a call I’m on to and from my iPad/phone to my computer if I’m walking around