With so many different collaboration tools on the market, it can be hard to find the right one that allows your team to be more productive and efficient. Whilst there are many applications available, two collaboration tools stand out the most: Microsoft Teams and Slack. With the recent announcements that Microsoft Teams is taking over Skype for Business and Teams has overtaken Slack with 13 million daily users, let’s find out what Teams does better!
If your organisation is already paying for Office 365 or you’re thinking of migrating to Office 365, that should make your decision easier because Teams is offered free of charge for most Business and Enterprise subscriptions. Because Microsoft bundles Teams with its Office 365 subscriptions for businesses and Slack is a separate paid service, it should make your decision easier. Read on to find out why Microsoft Teams has an ever-growing edge over Slack.
5 Things Microsoft Teams Does Better Than Slack:
1. Office 365 Integration
The first thing that sticks out to us is the seamless integrated Microsoft Office 365 experience. Using Microsoft Teams brings every app in the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 suite into Microsoft Teams in a custom tab format. There is no problem adding such services as SharePoint, OneNote, Power BI and Planner as well as third-party apps including project management tools. Team members don’t need to switch between applications, like Outlook, to access their email. This is a major plus if your organisation has an Office 365 subscription You get the entire collaboration spectrum of Office 365 with this tool, which can boost productivity by not having to switch from one app to another.
2. File Sharing and Communications
Being able to communicate effectively is the most important of all collaboration skills. Both tools come with many platforms for messaging, including threads. However, Microsoft Teams has a few additional features which hugely improves various topics of conversation, allowing users to reply directly to comments or questions. For example, inline message translation for Team users using a foreign language can be added as an app via the Team store.
Microsoft Teams also allows you to share Office files, collaborating with colleagues in an easy, streamlined way. Slack on the other hand does not come with any built-in tools to allow collaboration at a single point like this. In order to edit a document in Slack the user must download it and open another tab to edit. Also, Slack heavily relies on 3rd party integration for both collaboration and file sharing.
3. Mobile Device Management
One can access both Slack and Teams from any mobile device (iOS, Android, Windows Phone). The advantage of Microsoft Teams over Slack is that you can get the desired control over your mobile device using Intune in Office 365. This service lets you keep your corporate data protected whilst providing several capabilities such as:
- Managing the devices used by employees to access company data
- Managing the mobile apps used by your workforce
- Ensuring that devices and apps are compliant with company security requirements
- Data access management to control the way your workforce accesses and shares information
4. Security and Compliance
Teams provide data loss prevention to help reduce sensitive data leaks under Office 365 Security & Compliance scope. Therefore, Teams users enjoy privileges like Threat Management and Data Loss Prevention (DLP). Content shared within Teams is automatically classified and labelled for sensitivity and appropriate actions are taken using DLP.
Whilst Slack offers security features, many are 3rd party solutions and do not have the same level of tight integration at every process step as Teams.
5. UX Design and Navigation
Microsoft’s developers have put a lot of thought around how to make Teams user-friendly. Features like Tabs allow users to collect interactive content inside the platform. Users can separate the different types of content shared to reduce unwanted information in a conversation. Teams also has a custom meme and sticker editor, whilst Slack uses meme bot integration.
Bottom Line: Teams or Slack?
Microsoft Teams and Slack are very similar. Whilst the latter is customisable and has nice features, Teams provides seamless integration with the rest of Office 365, allows for increased collaboration, and has stricter security features, keeping your sensitive data protected. Plus, if you have Office 365, you get Teams for free!
Is Slack good enough for your organisation? It depends. If you aren’t looking for a business-wide, full suite solution and don’t have any regulations, perhaps. However, Teams is closing in rapidly and is now used by over 500,000 organisations, including over 90% of the Fortune 100. Microsoft calls Teams its fastest-growing business app ever so we expect new features in the months to come!
Thinking about making the switch to Microsoft Teams? Get in contact with our IT Experts today!
