Note: This would normally be a Premium post, but thanks to Microsoft, we are able to offer it to all readers without any roadblocks. –Paul

Before the pandemic, Microsoft Teams was already off to a fast start, with tens of millions of users. But usage varied wildly by age, with older workers generally preferring established tools like Outlook and younger employees embracing the real-time collaboration and communications capabilities in Teams.

COVID-19 changed everything this year, of course. But we can’t just credit the pandemic, at least not solely, with the rapid adoption of Teams in 2020: Instead, Microsoft has rapidly expanded the capabilities of Teams, turning it into a truly extensible platform that meets far more needs than was originally the case. Today, Teams is a ubiquitous dashboard for today’s remote work, and it sits at the center of our workdays and our interactions with teammates and other employees.

As such, you won’t be surprised to discover that there are native Teams clients for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and that Microsoft is further expanding Teams, starting with mobile, to work for personal use.

Less well known, perhaps, is that Microsoft also provides Teams clients for Linux and the web. And that means that you can sign-in to Teams from literally any device, even a shared or public device, and securely access meetings, chats, and other work. The web client supports desktop notifications, and it even works on Chrome OS, though Chromebook users should also examine the Teams app for Android, which is compatible with that platform as well.

The web client can even be useful for those who have installed the native client, too: If you need to access two different commercial accounts, you can use one with the native client and one with the web client. I do this fairly regularly since I have different Microsoft 365 accounts for my employer and my own domain.

Put simply, there’s no excuse not to stay in touch and stay productive and up-to-date with Microsoft Teams.

You’re not yet using a commercial version of Microsoft 365? Then please try a free month of Microsoft 365 Business Standard, which includes access to the Microsoft 365 desktop, mobile, and web apps, and 1 TB of cloud storage, and can be accessed by up to 25 users. And I’ll be writing a lot more about Microsoft 365 this month to help you get started.

Tagged with Microsoft Teams