Chapter 1: Taking a Tour of Microsoft Teams

Welcome to Microsoft Teams – the new hub for collaboration in the modern workplace! Microsoft Teams is part revolutionary and part evolutionary – a whole new way to connect and integrate data, applications, and communications by bringing together familiar pieces of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem (and introducing some new ones).

Microsoft Teams is a collaboration and communications tool as well as a development platform. As a collaborative tool, it allows users to natively leverage existing applications such as Exchange calendaring or SharePoint document management. As a communications tool, it replaces the instant messaging and telephony capabilities of Skype for Business. And, as a platform, it provides internal and external developers ways to integrate data in third-party external applications (such as Salesforce or Adobe Document Cloud) as well as use Microsoft-based tools to connect to cloud-based services and applications (such as Dynamics 365, Power BI, or Planner).

In this chapter, we're going to review the foundational concepts of Microsoft Teams, including:

• Architecture
• User interface

Once you have those basics under your belt, we'll be getting into the more advanced features and capabilities.

Let's get going!