Microsoft Teams has gone from strength to strength since it launched in 2018. There’s no denying the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has spurred Teams to new success, as it has many digital services focused on communication. However, it’s too simple to say the pandemic is the sole reason behind the growth… Teams was thriving anyway. Of course, COVID-19 and the resulting stay-at-home measures employed by most countries have had a profound effect on Microsoft Teams. In fact, the platform’s daily active users jumped from around 20 million to over 80 million in two months. One of the lessons from the coronavirus outbreak is that perhaps people don’t need to work on-location as much. There is a suggestion the pandemic has created a new work-at-home generation. Companies and even governments may embrace the idea of more people working remotely.
Taiwan Embracing Work-from-Home
Only time will tell, but it’s clear some organizations are embracing the idea. In Taiwan, the nation’s legislature says it will now use Microsoft Teams to drive a new stay-at-home work generation. Legislators will leverage a specialized version of Teams that taps into Power Platform. “PowerApps are used to create sign-in forms with MFA as an extra layer of security. Once signed in, members enter their personal data and meeting information into the system. PowerApps uploads this data to the SQL server, using Power BI to visualize and plug data into Teams. This secure and thorough process allows all legislators access to all the latest information in real-time,” Microsoft says. Whether we are entering a new era of work-at-home or this is just a moving trend remains to be seen. Certainly, while Microsoft benefits from such a scenario through Teams adoption, it is not something the company is actively pursuing. Indeed, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said he wants employees in the workplace as soon as it is safe. He argues the dynamics of people working together will be lost in a remote environment: “What I miss is when you walk into a physical meeting, you are talking to the person that is next to you, you’re able to connect with them for the two minutes before and after,” Nadella in an interview with the New York Times.
