What is Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a proprietary business communication platform developed by Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft 365 family of products.

Teams primarily competes with the similar service Slack, offering workspace chat and videoconferencing, file storage, and application integration.

Teams is replacing other Microsoft-operated business messaging and collaboration platforms, including Skype for Business and Microsoft Classroom. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Teams, and other software such as Zoom and Google Meet, gained much interest as many meetings moved to a virtual environment.As of 2022, it has about 270 million monthly users.

Teams main features

• Chat
• teams- virtual work space for users, where you can create your team and share, interacte with other users.
• Calendar- schedual Teams meetings and sync outlook calendar
• Calls- voice, video, landlines (via direct routing or MS calling plans), voicemails – all happen here.
• Files- place to store, share files, OneDrive
• Tasks- plan your or your team’s tasks and to do list
• Shifts- for frontline workers
• Apps- install Teams apps or create your own app.

Teams is not just a collabration tools but it’s platform for digital workplace. you can integrate Microsoft 365 family, setup bots to automate tasks, install popular apps or create your own apps.

Teams gives frontline workers easier communication, flexible shift scheduling, and seamless task management—all in one easy-to-use app. Please check out more here.

You can integrate PSTN on your Teams client.

It means you can call any landlines including mobile numbers, fixed phones, and users from all over the world.

There are 2 diferent posibilities of integrating PSTN with your Teams-

• Microsoft call plans – you can buy MS calling plans license from Microsoft and dont need any extera configration or local infrastructure devices to support this, which is the best way to have phone numbers in Teams, but you need check if this service is available at your country by checking here
• If MS calling plans are not available at your country, or want to use your local phone service provider, then you can integrate your local PSTN services with MS Teams via direct routing. Please see below diagram