Previously bundled with Office 365, Microsoft’s latest collaboration platform Teams is now available in a free version in 40 languages.

The free version of Teams can include up to 300 participants and provides all of the Office Online tools as well as 10GB of team file storage plus additional 2GB per person for personal storage. (An Office365 subscription is required in order to obtain the Office desktop apps)

Both free and paid versions of Teams also offer integration with a range of apps including Adobe, Evernote, and Trello. Inline translation in 36 languages is now available in the paid version of Teams and coming to the free version later this year.

According to Microsoft 365 Commercial director Evan Williams, more than 200,000 businesses across the globe use Microsoft Teams for chat, meetings, video and phone calls and file sharing.

Korda Mentha was one of the first Australian businesses to adopt Microsoft Teams. By February this year it was the most prolific per capita user of the platform in Australia with around 75 per cent of KordaMentha employees using Teams regularly.

With eight offices and almost 400 staff across Australia and Asia Pacific, KordaMentha offers a broad range of corporate, forensic and investment services.

“Analytics, financial platforms, CRMs, news feeds – all this data becomes very messy. Teams allowed us to aggregate all that information in one spot – that’s been a real benefit,” said Ryan Wadsworth, chief information officer.

Wadsworth says that today Teams is ingrained with KordaMentha’s workflow. “It also speaks to the modern workplace. Everything lives inside Teams – people don’t recognise they are leveraging Skype or SharePoint, or Word or Excel, or Power BI. They are organically using the platform, discovering new ways to do things … new analytics, new visualisations to deliver to clients relatively easily.”

https://products.office.com/en-au/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software

Microsoft has also announced that its Whiteboard app is now generally available for Windows 10 and iOS, and in preview for web. It allows users to collaborate in real-time to create tables, freeform drawings, insert images, or write down notes in one space.

Microsoft says that in the future, we will deliver Whiteboard integration in Teams as well as an app for Android.  

Starting July 13, the app will be available for download from the Windows Store on any Windows 10 or Windows 10S device, via the App Store on any iOS device, and via the web at https://whiteboard.microsoft.com.