Microsoft Teams now available for all Office 365 customers

Microsoft Teams, a workplace messaging service, is now rolling out to Office 365, which has more than 85 million users worldwide. The company promises to make new features and capabilities available for Microsoft Teams, with guest access capabilities coming in June along with Outlook integration.

Following the preview launch to customers with Office 365 Enterprise or Business plans, Microsoft Teams is now used by more than 50,000 organisations including Accenture, Alaska Airlines, Cerner Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Deloitte, Expedia, J B Hunt, J Walter Thompson, Hendrick Motorsports, Sage, Trek Bicycle and Three UK, states a post on Microsoft Office blogs.

Apart from messaging, Microsoft Teams includes new communication features such as audio calling from mobile devices and video calling on Android, which would be available for iOS and Windows soon. It adds the ability to email a channel including attachments, send messages with markdown-based formatting and receive notification.

Microsoft Teams contains all the features that are present in Office 365 such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint and Power BI.

The chat-based workspace adds support for public teams within an organisation and enhanced meeting experience.

Organisations can now customise their workspace with Tabs, Connectors and Bots. Along with 150 integrations, Microsoft is partnering with SAP and Treello to build new integrations. While SAP SuccessFactors feature will help employees track performance, Trello will empower teams to get the project work done with boards within Microsoft Teams. Another key element of the app is it incorporates several security features, which the company says are critical for businesses.

Laurie Koch, vice president of global customer service at Trek Bicycle, a customer of Microsoft Teams, in a statement said: "Across Trek's global teams, the integrated collection of Office 365 applications serves up a common toolset to collaboratively drive the business forward."

"We see Microsoft Teams as the project hub of Office 365 where everybody knows where to find the latest documents, notes and tasks, all in-line with team conversations for complete context. Teams is quickly becoming a key part of Trek's get-things-done-fast culture," said Koch.