Haven’t Tried Teams? Use it without an O365 License for Free

Welcome to Day 1 of PixelMill’s ’12 Days of Microsoft Teams’ series! Hang on to your keyboards because we have some great stories and tips to share, starting with a freebie to get your Team’s adventure started. Enjoy!

Let’s face it, Teams is getting a lot of hype, and in our opinion rightfully so. After all, here at PixelMill we spend nearly 90+% of our time effectively communicating and collaborating solely through MS Teams. And we’re obviously hooked since we’re dedicating 12 days this month to sharing what we love about Teams. Are you interested in Teams but haven’t explored it because your organization doesn’t have Office 365? Experiencing a little FOMO? We don’t blame you—it’s a pretty sweet tool. But have no fear! Microsoft offers access to Teams without an O365 subscription, for free. This is a great way for you to run a pilot or trial and see if Teams is right for you. What do you get with the free version? Let’s break it down:
What MS Teams Free offers:

• Unlimited messages and search
• Guest Access
• 300 Maximum users (this is the same as paid – over 300 needs enterprise pricing)
• Limited amount of app integration – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote apps
• Channel meetings
• Screen Sharing

What MS Teams Free is missing:

• Scheduled meetings
• Meeting recording (available with MS Stream)
• Audio conferencing
• Enforced multi-factor authentication
• Single sign-on to all business apps

 
Teams is super simple to set up and begin using right away, but we do recommend you invest some time in pre-planning before you dive in. After all, proper planning prevents poor performance. Here are three tips from our Business Analyst for successful deployment:

• Pick a specific use case for a pilot (i.e. A team or department for a specific project)
• Empower users to be Teams Champions
  • These users can help drive awareness and adoption of your initiative. Learn more about creating champions here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-adoption-create-champions-program
• Before setting up the pilot, plan for governance in Teams
  • Teams offers many ways to accomplish your goals and it also offers many ways to control what is accessible and possible within the solution. You’ll want to answer some tough questions first and set guidelines around them to successfully deploy and manage Teams. Questions like: Who should be able to create Teams and what does that process look like? What applications and services will users be allowed to add? How will you structure and enforce property and naming conventions?
  • Learn more about planning your Teams governance here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/plan-teams-governance

 
Are you sold on Teams, but need assistance pitching this to your organization and getting buy in? Are you ready to launch, but need help planning, architecting and implementing? PixelMill is here to help! Contact us today!