What is Microsoft Teams?

What it is

Microsoft Teams is the collaboration platform — chat, voice, video, screen sharing, and team file access in a single application. It’s where most internal conversations happen in modern Microsoft 365 organisations, and it’s the front end most users see day-to-day.

Teams is organised around teams (groups of people who work together) and channels (conversations and content within a team about a specific topic). Every Team has a SharePoint site behind it. Every channel has a folder in that site. Files shared in Teams chats end up in SharePoint too. Teams is the conversation layer; SharePoint is the storage layer.

In 2026, Copilot is deeply integrated into Teams. You can ask Copilot to summarise a meeting, generate action items from a chat thread, prepare a briefing on someone you’re about to meet, or extract decisions from a recorded conversation. The Copilot experience inside Teams is one of the strongest in the whole Microsoft 365 suite.

Why it matters

Teams is where the conversation happens. If you’re not in Teams, you’re not in the conversation.

• Understanding the Teams-SharePoint relationship saves a lot of confusion. Files aren’t ‘in Teams’ — they’re in SharePoint, surfaced through Teams.
• Copilot in Teams is one of the highest-value AI features in Microsoft 365. Meeting summaries alone save hours per week.
• Knowing when to use Teams chat versus when to use email is a daily decision. Get it right and communication scales.

When to use this

• When you need real-time collaboration with colleagues — chat, meetings, screen sharing.
• When you want to work on a project with a defined team and shared files.
• When you need to record and later summarise a meeting (Copilot in Teams).
• When you want a single app for video calls, internal chat, and team file access.

How to do it

1. Open Teams — desktop app, mobile app, or browser at teams.microsoft.com.
2. The left sidebar shows: Activity, Chat, Teams, Calendar, Calls, Files, Apps.
3. Teams (the section): your teams. Each Team has channels. Click into a channel to see conversations and files.
4. Chat: direct messages and group chats. Faster than email for quick exchanges.
5. Meetings: click Calendar, schedule a meeting, send invites. Teams creates a join link automatically.
6. Files: see files shared with you across chats, channels, and OneDrive — all in one view.
7. Copilot in Teams: available in meetings (summarise, get action items), in chat (recap a thread), and as a side panel for general assistance.
8. Remember: when you share a file in a chat, it’s stored in your OneDrive. When you share in a channel, it’s stored in that team’s SharePoint site.

Best practices

• Use channels for project work, chat for quick exchanges.
• Use Copilot in meetings — recap and action items are huge productivity wins.
• Pin frequently-used channels and chats. Pinned items stay at the top of the sidebar.
• Mute chats and channels that don’t need real-time attention. Notifications fatigue is real.

Common mistakes

• Treating Teams as a separate file storage. Files are in SharePoint or OneDrive — Teams just surfaces them.
• Using @everyone in large teams. It’s the fastest way to lose colleagues’ trust.
• Having important decisions only in chat. Chat is informal; document decisions elsewhere (email, decision log).
• Not using Copilot in meetings. The minute you start asking for summaries and action items, you stop taking notes manually.

FAQ