Question Time: Where do you stand on these new Teams features?

We all love Microsoft Teams. Day in and day out, you'll see us evangelising it on social. On forums such as the Tech Community we help others with enquiries and issues. We run user groups. We write blogs. We speak at events. We vote and create uservoices. We ask all the questions we can think of at that time on the community AMA's.

Question Time: Teams Turns 2 – What would you like to see before it turns 3?

My son is two and a quarter years old - two and a quarter already! I feel a bit like the subject in The Scream by Edvard Munch - where the hell did time actually go? And as any parent well knows, they grow up so fast. If you are a parent, I hope you experience the sheer joy of always being incredibly proud and biased of them; that every single day you find yourself waxing lyrical on what they have achieved - however small - and of all their possibilities and potential.

Question Time: What are your plans for Microsoft 365 Certification in 2019?

The announcement of the new Azure exams at Inspire 2018 signalled the beginning of a complete overhaul of the Microsoft exam and certification structure. We have entered a world of role-based certs as opposed to product based certs - and the ones we worked so hard to get, such as Office 365, will be retired soon. Of course, there is still a little time left if you want to get these for posterity.

Question Time: Are recent changes in Teams indicative of it becoming more than an Inner Loop collaboration app?

Teams is my favourite application within Office 365. Like the IT Pros in our panel today, it is a subject I'm very passionate about. As a hub for team collaboration it integrates people, content and tools to make the Team more engaged and effective. It has been a runaway success. Since it's introduction it has been the fastest growing app in Microsoft history. Back at Ignite 2018 we saw the numbers - 329,000 organisations using it (over 400,000 at the time of writing), 87 Fortune 500 companies and 54 companies with more than 10,000 active users (Microsoft, 2018). Yet it is also a young application and as such it is still evolving rapidly. Whilst positioned as an Inner Loop collaboration app, by introducing features such as the 5000 user limit or (soon to be) Private Channels, we ask - is it evolving into something different from it's original design and purpose?

Question Time: Can Kaizala end the use of WhatsApp within the Organisation?

Kaizala is a simple and secure mobile chat app for work. Described as the business version of WhatsApp (Web CMS, 2019) and designed as a Microsoft Garage (@MSFTGarage) project, it is now being used by over 1000 government and private businesses in India and has 1 million users in the country where it was first launched (Hindustan Times, 2018). It's recent success has prompted Microsoft to introduce it into all Office/Microsoft 365 tenants globally. Whether WhatsApp is being used as an informal communications app to bypass formal channels, or whether users they have been driven to use it through dissatisfaction with existing solutions, will we see Kaizala spell the end of the use of WhatsApp within organisations in the near future?