5 Reasons You Should Use Microsoft Teams Instead Of Email

Ever returned from a holiday to find hundreds of emails waiting, forcing you to sift through them, jumping from one topic to another? Or encountered a complicated email thread, with the expectation to be instantly up to speed? Or simply needed to clarify something quickly with a colleague? If so, you’ve encountered the limitations of email. Perhaps it’s time to consider Teams instead.

We’re not suggesting email is obsolete or without its merits, but if the scenarios above resonate with you, the benefits of shifting to a more collaborative platform like Teams are worth exploring.

In today’s remote-centric world, the push for smarter, more efficient collaboration has led Microsoft to continuously enhance Teams, transforming it into a central hub for all work-related activities.

So, here’s why we think choosing Teams instead of email can work smarter for you:

1. More focused communication

All conversations are centralised, removing the need to switch platforms. Chats unfold in a single thread, offering a unified stream of discussion, organised by topic for straightforward review by project. This method sidesteps the chronological and topic-scattered nature of email chains.

Outlook tries to group conversations by subject line, but adding people to the thread or reusing subject titles frequently results in disarray.

2. Files are all in one place

Files are easy to find and can be seen and edited by anyone in the Team, who has permission.

Email attachments are so last decade. There’s no more sending files back and forth or struggling to edit a document to incorporate various people’s comments. All files can be shared and linked in Teams and edited while in a meeting.

Simply upload the files into the channels Files tab so all team members can collaborate and co-author on one single version. You can also attach a file to a post, from your PC, OneDrive or other Sharepoint location and it’s automatically copied into the Teams Files tab.

It’s collaboration at its best and promotes a sense of trust and co-creation between team members. And what’s even better is that there is no need to worry about version control, as you’re always working on the most updated version of the document.

3. No more ‘read the email trail’

New to a project and need to get ‘up to speed’? How often have you received a long, confusing email chain and been expected to understand exactly what’s going on?

Gone are the days of having to trawl through these to make some actual sense of what’s been happening. Add a new person to a Team and they can see all the previous conversations and documents. They can even access call recordings and all important project documentation and decision points in the Teams channel.

4. Targeted conversations

Actions and instructions can easily be missed in emails. In Teams, if you want to direct a comment/question to a particular person, you simply @ mention them.

This will automatically drop in as Activity and will flag as a red @ (as above) in the chat so you know you’ve been mentioned. Other members of the Team can see this and can add to, like or contribute to.

5. Efficient working

The inefficiency of sifting through emails in chronological order and constantly switching between topics can significantly affect your productivity and increase stress levels.

Teams won’t reduce your workload but does reduce the need to go in and out of different applications. By staying within the platform, you reduce the chance of distractions.

Focusing on a single topic with chat, files, tasks, and meetings all in one place allows you to catch up efficiently.

With add-on task management apps like Planner, you can organise not only your tasks but also those of your team. Planner gives team members a visual and collaborative space to manage their tasks.

We know email isn’t going to go away any time soon, we believe Teams can open up a whole new collaborative way of working. One that reduces time spent ploughing through endless emails, reducing inefficiencies and even stress. It’ll require a cultural shift in some organisations that have email ingrained in their way of working but we think it’s worth a try.

 If you want to learn more about Teams, get in touch. As Microsoft experts, we are here to help you! To get in contact with us please press the green ‘Contact’ button on the right.