Microsoft's Slack competitor might be called 'Microsoft Teams'

We revealed Microsoft’s Slack competitor, Skype Teams just a few weeks ago. As we are nearing the official launch of Microsoft’s Slack competitor, Microsoft has given a new name to the service: Microsoft Teams. The service was, of course, called “Skype Teams” — but the final name seems to be “Microsoft Teams” which is certainly much better than the previous name. Along with the new name, Microsoft also has a new logo for Microsoft Teams which you can see above. Additionally, browsing teams.skype.com (previous URL for Skype Teams) now redirects to teams.microsoft.com. 

Here’s a screenshot of Microsoft Teams:

For those unfamiliar, Microsoft Teams will include features similar to what you’ll find on Slack. Microsoft Teams includes conversations separated by “channels” (aka groups), and users can directly message each other, too. Microsoft Teams includes a feature which is lacking on Slack — and that’s support for threaded conversations which a lot of Slack users have been waiting for.

Now, being a Microsoft service, Microsoft Teams will have deep integration with other Microsoft services. For instance, Office apps such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint will be integrated right into the app and users will be able to share documents very easily on Microsoft Teams. The service also supports OneDrive, which is also going to make file-sharing much easier. This is quite important for Microsoft as a lot of businesses nowadays use Office 365 — however, Slack doesn’t integrate with most Microsoft services such as OneDrive, so Microsoft Teams might be a very good alternative for those businesses.

Microsoft Teams will also allow users to perform video and audio calls right from the app, including the ability to video call multiple people at the same time. This is presumably powered by Skype, so it should be quite an interesting feature.

We expect Microsoft to officially launch Microsoft Teams next month at its Office event, but it could be introduced tomorrow at the Windows 10 event, too.