When Teams is Better Than Email

Threaded Conversations

There’s lots of debate as to whether Teams can dislodge email inside corporations. I don’t think that Teams will because there are too many functionality deficiencies in Teams today (like protected email and the ability to send email from Teams). However, I do think that Teams can and should replace much of the internal email traffic that bounces around within companies.

Take this example of a discussion in a Teams channel. The original topic and 123 replies among 53 members would have generated 6.572 separate messages if the conversation had taken place in email. Indeed, the total would probably have been higher because of the inevitable out-of-office notifications that probably would have been received.

Life’s too short to wade through 124 messages to get to the final message, especially when the messages are full of the text of previous replies and large autosignatures proclaiming that someone works for the same company. For conversations like this, a threaded debate is much better.

For more information about Teams, see Chapter 13 in Office 365 for IT Pros.