Microsoft Teams: Getting the Most from Your Subscription
Microsoft Teams is the dominant enterprise communication platform — included in Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise subscriptions that most UK organisations already pay for. Teams combines chat, video meetings, file storage, and application integration in one platform. Understanding how to use it effectively reduces the need for additional tools.
Teams Structure
- Teams: Top-level groups — typically departments or persistent project groups (Marketing, Development, Finance)
- Channels: Topics within a team — a Development team might have channels for Front End, Back End, Deployments, General
- Chats: Direct messages and group chats outside team/channel structure — for informal and cross-team communication
Meetings in Teams
- Schedule directly from Outlook — calendar integration is seamless
- Record meetings automatically — recordings appear in the channel or chat
- Meeting transcription — AI-generated transcript with search, highlights automatic summaries
- Breakout rooms for group exercises
- Together mode for engagement in large meetings
Teams vs Slack
Teams is the natural choice if your organisation uses Microsoft 365 — the integration with SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, and other M365 apps is tight. Slack has a better developer experience and app ecosystem for technology teams. For non-technical organisations already invested in M365, Teams is the right choice and avoids additional cost.
SharePoint and Teams
Each Team gets a SharePoint site and OneDrive storage. Files shared in channels are stored in SharePoint — versioned, searchable, and accessible via SharePoint permissions. Understand this structure to avoid confusion about where files are stored.