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       Collaboration: Defined as “the action of working with someone to produce something,” in the Teams world collaboration means that Teams acts as a platform where you can work closely with people from both inside and outside your organization (if you choose) in a shared space. Teammates access a shared set of resources and documents to work on them together—in real time if required. This can replace the more “traditional” ways of working such as using network file shares or emailing documents back and forth, creating versioning headaches! With Teams you open the app, open the team you need, and get to work.

       Communications: Defined as “the imparting or exchanging of information,” communications is where Teams really shines. Along with all the collaboration goodness it offers, Teams is your go-to place for communicating with colleagues. If you need something quick and easy, start with a chat message. What if that chat gets complicated and it'd be better to speak to the person? Just hit a button and you are joined into an audio call with the option to include video and share your screen. Need to add more people or invite external parties? Teams has you covered, even if those people do not have access to their own Teams tenant; you can let people join via a standard phone call.

       Improve collaboration: Let people work better together by putting all the things they need in one place. Chat messages will be seen in the same context as the documents they relate to so they can be found by anyone who needs them.

       Improve flexible working: Give people better tools that let them work flexibly by providing access to information from multiple devices across device types (mobile, laptop, desktop, etc.) at home, on the move, or in the office.

       Reduce information sprawl: Cut down on “information silos” where documents and information are locked away in inboxes or personal data stores and version tracking is nearly impossible. (Habits can be hard to break. We've all been guilty of emailing attachments called My_Stuff_v1_final_BLedit_draft.docx .)

       Consolidate tools/reduce expenditure: Where you might already have different “point solutions” in use across an organization—such as one for chat, perhaps two or three for meetings depending on if they are internal or external, and another tool for one-to-many broadcasts—you can consolidate them to a single platform. This can not only help reduce costs but also make things less confusing for end users, as they have only one product to learn and do not need to understand or choose what to use when.

       Simplify management: For an organization that has deployed O365, a lot of the traditional management headaches are removed (arguably replaced with a new set!) regarding keeping products current and patched with the latest security fixes. In theory, Microsoft handles this behind the scenes for you, and you are always on a current version of the product. This does not, however, mean that you can sit back and relax. As a proactive administrator, you should be keeping an eye on what features and product changes are coming and working out how to best make use of them for your company.