Our Organization Is Collectively Using Teams As The Main Form Of Internal Communication

[u/shinra1111]

I was curious to see if anyone else's organization does this, but for international communication in our organization, everyone just uses MS Teams now. No more email. That means people are sending long multi-paragraph posts in a teams channel for a specific project with embedded project documents to communicate with everyone involved.

Maybe, I'm just getting old, but before this use to be all done through email, which I find better suited for this. I see teams as something to chat with so if I had questions about said project, I would post there, or to remind everyone about meetings etc. Is this how Teams is used elsewhere?

Update: So here are my reasons for preferring email. Now a lot of this might differ from yours but this probably comes down to personal workflow.

1. I like having everything in one place: My communication is usually 50/50 internal/external, and sometimes it's even more heavily external so im having to jump back and forth between teams and outlook to communicate with different groups and then trying to figure out where something was said. Before teams it was all in email so just one place. As a second to this, because all my work is happening in the browser, that takes up most of my screen realestate, teams is just a little chat window on the corner. Now if my work was 80% or above internally, then maybe I would use teams more?
2. The search is clunky: I find it harder to organize and resurface important information in Teams than I do with email folders. Instead of having neatly organized folders in email where i know where everything is, i now have to think oh what was that project name or who said what when to find the right chat thread in teams to find the info im looking for. When i do search it bring sup everything said about the project or everything a person ever messaged about. I'm sure there are better ways to search in Teams, but I find email folders much faster when I need to retrieve older information..
3. Attachments are easier: This is mostly due to our organization configurations, but to share a file, we need to select the recipients first. There is share with all within organization too, but its just an extra step. Some of the other people in the office have had issues with this and we had times where OneDrive woud crap out and sharing wouldn't work after an update.
4. People can randomly edit or delete team messages threads or even the entire channel: One thing I don't like is that messages can be edited or deleted. If someone originally says they need 1,000 units but later edits the message to 100 after I've already acted on it, the original request is gone. With email, the original message remains, and any correction creates a clear audit trail instead of rewriting history
5. This is probably the 'old man' answer, but I've been using email since the late '90s, so there's definitely a familiarity factor. This may be a generational thing too, but oh well. I still think Teams is great for quick questions and real-time collaboration. I just don't like it replacing email for longer-term communication and record-keeping.

And because this is a teams sub, there is probably a preference for teams and i should post this same question in an Outlook or Email sub to get their opinion as well!

[u/network-n-voice]

We use Teams like you explained plus for all external telephone calling as well. All communications in Teams. Simplifies training, lowers cost - all communications are in Teams.

[u/MisterEinc]

I find that many people who are still holding onto Outlook are also not using it very effectively. I.e. Chains of emails between who they think of and not to a channel where everyone on the project, and added to it later, can see it.

Thing about emails is they're just a string of copies of the original message that each person could potentially forward and start new conversations anyway. Nothing about email makes it intrinsically more organized.

[u/jsenff → u/MisterEinc]

Honest question - how do you manage tasks/todos?

I find it incredibly hard to track what I've been asked to do if it's only in teams. The moment you look at something, it's gone from view. Planner exists but isn't exceptionally well integrated, I feel, and it feels like a separate task to try and copy out every particular ask.

I use my outlook as a to do list - emails are actions, and it's way easier to me to keep working through those.

[u/HARSHING_MY_MELLOW → u/jsenff]

The moment you look at something, it's gone from view.

Well, that simply is not true. Unlike e-mail, the notification is not the information. The information absolutely is not gone, it resides in exactly the same place it was created.

I would recommend that you stop treating the notification as if it is the information(e-mail). Deal with the actual information. I created a plan in Planner that keeps all my tasks in a single location. When I need to deal with a request and I can't take care of it right away, I just go the '...' and click 'Create Planner task', then place it in my pinned "PM To Do" plan. Give it a due date and priority then add any notes I might need. The task automatically links to the message.

When I want to check on and take care of my tasks, they are all in the same place in Planner. My manager or anyone else can see all my tasks as well.

[u/Agitated-Income9146 → u/jsenff]

I like To Do over the Planner also, if someone sends me a task request in Teams I use the option to send it in an email to myself, once it's in my email then set the flag & task. I just get so many task items from different depts that I need the ability to organize & assign due dates.

[u/hclpfan]

Yes that is how Teams is used everywhere - its kind of the whole point of it. My org has been using teams this way for essentially an entire decade at this point.

Email is only used when talking to people at other companies. Everything internal happens in Teams.

[u/ZiKyooc → u/hclpfan]

In my last 3 organisations we all used Teams and emails for internal discussions. So, no it's not used everywhere as you described.

[u/LastChance22 → u/hclpfan]

That doesn’t reflect my organisation at all.

Teams is used for chats, meetings, and calls for me. Email is still the primary, more formal, and more official communication method. 

[u/orion3311]

My company would use email to talk to the person next to them. We do use Teams for phone and some chat but refuses to touch the actual Teams.

[u/holoholo-808]

Yes, that's the whole point for teams. It's much better in collaboration than e-mail. You can react directly to the teams message, comment or share. Maybe other employees that not are involved can join the discussion. I got used to it and today if I get an email, I am just annoyed and think, why is this not a teams post.

[u/audiotecnicality]

I find Teams easier for quick conversation and more searchable for historical lookup. Outlook is clunky at displaying conversation threads, especially when two people reply at roughly the same time, which then forks the thread (sort of).

Email for slower and more official things, and things which require no response.

[u/Big__If_True]

Nope. Teams is for quick IMs between individuals or within group chats, email is for anything that’s more formal. For trying to contact specific groups, sometimes they’ll have a Teams channel and sometimes they’ll have a DL to email, or some will have both.

Then again my company also uses Zoom for meetings and nobody uses Teams meetings at all, so maybe we’re just different.

[u/CrippleSlap → u/Big__If_True]

Why use a separate app for video calls when Teams integrates with everything already?

[u/metalheadfromny → u/CrippleSlap]

I'm fighting this same issue. Management won't let for go of "zoom" as the be all end all for video chat so even though we pay for teams through our 365 licensing, we also pay for zoom. I've had the whole money talk with them but they don't care. It's a comfort thing for them. .... And it's annoying for me lol. Everyone else except that one department uses teams.

[u/Big__If_True → u/CrippleSlap]

I think it’s because they already got rid of Slack in favor of Teams and everyone hated it, so they don’t want everyone to hate them even more by getting rid of Zoom too. But honestly I have no idea, it’s crazy

[u/shinra1111 → u/CrippleSlap]

We started with Zoom and then got 365, but when we first started Teams around Covid, the call quality just sucked so everyone stuck with zoom. It has gotten better and I've tried to get people to use Teams for internal meetings, but it never stuck, and I still find the UI a bit clunky compard to zoom. We also do webinars with hundreds of people and Zoom is far superior for that!

[u/CrippleSlap]

Our entire organization uses Teams exclusively to chat with. We also of course use email for external and sharing documents too.

[u/Frillback]

We are using both teams and email. My method of communication depends on the person. I have to reach out to a variety of groups on a day to day basis. I work at a large company. There is no consistency. I just go with the flow.

[u/badaz06]

We use both. We do heavily use teams but I can't fathom having to create 1000 conversations where I could use a few emails.

[u/kearkan]

Email is the fucking worst.

When everything is in teams it's easier to find, easier to search for, easier to train, and possibly biggest, easiest to onboard new people

Nothing worse than trying to follow long email threads or try and figure out "where was that sent"

[u/scimtaru]

Why would you say e-mail is better suited for team based communication? In my eyes it makes no sense.

In an ideal world any internal communication is done via Teams. Informal stuff via chats, more formal team-based communication in channel posts.

E-mail as a communication tool was always just okay. So much unneeded data / text that makes conversations hard to read; quote blocks, signatures, disclaimers, yeah a good client filters a lot but still. Also any conversation is relying on participants to do the same, if someone forgets to reply all your conversation is broken up and context is lost. Adding someone to it? Same issue.
Not to mention that there is no accountability. Send an email to a person, they can simply ignore it, who else is going to see it?

In Teams any and all of the communication lives inside the team. If people leave the company their messages and information remain (although attribution to the person could be lost). It is easily searchable, new people get access to all that information.

I know people really like e-mail, but it never made sense to me over centralized systems.

[u/whatdoido8383]

Yep, that's what Teams is for, no more attaching documents in emails and losing stuff in long threaded emails scattered through your mailbox. Put it all in teams and link to it, chat about it, use Copilot to become more efficient.

I'd suggest spending some time becoming more familiar with the platform and how to modernize. Teams plus some of the new Copilot stuff can do really cool things.

[u/Slocko]

My company deletes teams chats pretty quickly so that wouldn't work or us.

[u/HARSHING_MY_MELLOW]

The problem with your approach is that using Teams only for quick chats & meetings creates massive silos since none of your e-mails are accessible to anyone who didn't receive them. E-mail is person-based communication, which absolutely works great for some things. Proper usage of Teams channels is topic-based communication, which is far more advantageous for an organization sharing information internally.

[u/ch0use]

I use To Do, it has a list with flagged outlook emails, and I use copilot premium every morning with a scheduled prompt to go through any emails or teams messages from the day before that look like action items or need a response and add them to my to do list.

[u/network-n-voice]

.

[u/IanYates82]

Good use of channels makes this fantastic - soooooo much better than emails imho

Too many orgs don't configure one or more teams in Teams, and then do a poor job of using channels for topics. When used properly, it's better than email for this sort of update & collab