Microsoft Teams is Microsoft's collaboration platform that combines persistent chat, video meetings, calling, and file sharing, integrated with Microsoft 365 and extended through apps and Copilot AI.
Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform developed by 📝Microsoft and offered as part of the Microsoft 365 suite. Launched in 2017, it organizes work into teams and channels that bring persistent group chat, threaded conversations, video meetings, telephony, and shared files into a single workspace, available as a desktop application, in the browser, and on mobile.
Teams supports one-to-one and channel-based messaging, video meetings with live captions, recording, and transcription, and built-in calling. It integrates closely with Microsoft 365, allowing co-authoring of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and storage through SharePoint and OneDrive, and it can be extended with third-party and custom apps. Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant, generates meeting recaps and summaries, drafts and manages messages, and automates routine tasks through workflows.
Teams competes most directly with 📝Slack in team messaging and with 📝Zoom in video meetings. Its bundling with Microsoft 365 accelerated adoption but drew antitrust scrutiny in the European Union, leading Microsoft to begin selling Teams separately from its main suites in 2023 and 2024.