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After the dramatic rise of Slack, Microsoft has been planning to provide users a much better option. It recently announced its communication platform Team in order to rival the Slack service.
The service by Microsoft comes with great additional features including mobile audio calls as well as video calls on Android. iOS and Windows mobile users will still have to wait to use this service but the company aims to make it available to everyone soon. With the help of Microsoft’s new service, users can email a whole channel, receive notifications regarding all posts in a channel, and can even send messages by using markdown formatting technique.
Team is now available and is free of any charges. Along with this, Microsoft has also announced 150 integrations with third-party services which give it the ability to chat, security services, customization options etc. But there is no indication when the company will be expanding Team’s capabilities.
For some, Microsoft is a bit late with its service as there are services already surfacing in the market in Slack’s competition. But Microsoft is banking on the low friction game. Team focuses on users from initial stages. And for people who are familiar with Word or Excel, they will find it a very much Microsoft approach. Team’s rival Slack has been dominating the market for a long time now and it has acquired a good place up till now. It is not strictly linked to Google Docs, Office, or any other services. Microsoft, on the other hand, does not want its service Team to be taken just for the benefit of heavy office users. Team is open to integrate with numerous services.
According to Microsoft, Team is rising since the start and around 50,000 organizations have already started using it. Now as this feature has been rolled out publically, it will be interesting to see how it progresses in future.
