In times when people are still working remotely, the need to stay connected has become more important than ever. With in person meetings limited, video conferencing systems have become the lifeline to organizations everywhere. Microsoft Teams is one of the leading video conferencing platforms on the market today. With its robust, reliable remote meeting solutions for team collaboration and communication, Microsoft has made it easy to communicate and collaborate with others.
Through its chat and voice calling features, team sharing, editing files in real time and shared virtual workspace, Teams has made collaborating with others seamless . Harry Brelsford of SMB Nation sits down with Denis Wilson to discuss the recent updates to Teams.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
A nation nation back with Dennis Wilson from Southern California Denis with one n how you doing?
Denis Wilson
Just fine, Harry, how you doing? Good. Yeah, you
Harry Brelsford
are the easiest person to find on LinkedIn with that unusual first name spelling. The hardest person. The hardest person is Miss P and our audience at a Denver Colorado named Jack Smith. And I'm like, oh, no, I'm never gonna find him on LinkedIn. So, hey, let's talk teams. You know, I started out Microsoft Teams, I started out not liking teams, I was assisting the client. Yeah, must have been key six years ago, five years ago. It's come a long way. What's, where do we sit today with teams?
Denis Wilson
Well, teams just came out with a new update a couple of weeks ago, that that really, you know, did some stuff that is unique to Microsoft and looks really good in comparison. Because zoom you know, Microsoft continues to gamely try it, you know, and stay up with with the Zoom type applications, and they seem to be doing a good job of that. They just on this on this list. last update on a quick overview basis, they had they've added teams to Microsoft Store. So it's quickly available for download and and by you and your users so they can go get what they need to have to participate in. And these team type calls, they have, in addition to that, the windows 11 now has included chat into Windows 11. For so they got the team chat, although it's got a downside to that is now they've got more than one application that has teams. And it's one thing that Microsoft didn't want to do. So I'm not sure where what's happening with that, that will we'll see over the next couple of months and and where that goes. But in addition, they've they've they're improving the video quality, they've added together mode, like you can have an entire auditorium full of faces that you're you're talking to and and it's it's easy to get into that's one of the problems that Microsoft has had in the past is the team's was not as easy as zoom. And I think that that they're doing a good job and fixing that issue. And and the other thing that surprised me was because it was something I hadn't seen yet is is the the ability the ability to to be compatible with VDI. So, you know, there's so many VDI users today, you've got to assume that they're going to do some zoo stuff. And they're making it much easier to do pop out chat and take control and move the control around. So you know, the VDI is starting to look very much like you're just sitting at you know anywhere and and making things happen. So yeah, it's looking really good. Yeah,
Harry Brelsford
yeah, I Jennifer Hallmark well known to the listening audience, she discovered she's been spending some time with teams much more than myself and I probably need to fix that but she discovered we could run our webinars off of teams and we actually did one we learned you know, we learned two or three things along the way but but that's okay. And Dennis what that does is we have the baseline Zoom account just for zooming right like like this particular call with you. But it's fairly expensive to add the webinar module to to zoom right and that's why we left GoToMeeting and go to webinars it's like wow, we're gonna save all this money well zoom figured it out a separate module. But we did up did again a webinar with with teams and is essentially free. Like that's, that's great. And I'll put
Denis Wilson
up more powerful than then then the typical zoom type of functionality you know, you can use the simplicity and and that works in certain environments, but boy when you're trying to do the kinds of things do you do? You need to have some of those controls.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, Dennis let's wrap on this. You and I off camera we're talking about you know, events are slowly slowly but surely coming back. They In many cases look different than they did pre pandemic. Are you going to go to anything in the next quarter? Will? Will? Is there an Ask era channel Pro? Or this?
Denis Wilson
What do you go to fact that? I told you, I was just talking to Joshua Lieberman, about the same subject here last week. And, and both of us had decided that, that, and then he loves to travel. But the cost of travel was within me. That's hard to do. But that's yeah, the cost of travel has now reached astronomical levels. And so I'm taking a look at there's there's quite a number of things that are available to me locally. And, and, and in Las Vegas, and both of those are our driving distance. And I don't even need to screw around with with the Air Air flight that the one thing that does that is a negative about that is that we do a lot of ConnectWise and ConnectWise has all their stuff out in Florida. And I'm not sure when I'm going to I mean, I've got to go to Florida. But but I'm not sure when it's going to be. It's not going to be this year.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I'll tell you, I gotta tell them myself, in the listeners have heard this, I relocated Austin, Texas, and I promised myself, I would not spend the month of August here. It's horrible. It's absolutely horrible right now in the heat dome. So it's horrible now that at one point, Dennis, I was going to go back home to Alaska for much of July, and then Seattle for all of August. And I can't justify Alaska. I just the airfare and my car. I have a car in Seattle, I don't have a car in Alaska, you know what I'm saying? And, yeah, musk in and of itself is already expensive, right? It's like Europe. And it's like, Guys, I I mean, I could I could dig into savings. But Dennis, it's not prudent. It's I prefer to pay out of cash flow and be comfortable with with what I'm paying.
Denis Wilson
That's what I think a lot of us have decided, is that we've been doing virtual get togethers for two years. And you know what it works, it gets, you know, I'm having all the information that I normally would get, I've been able to get the principle issue has been the one on one meetings, always that sort of thing. And defer that stuff, you know, you do a local Las Vegas show or LA show. And that that's fine. It's fine. And I think I think that, you know, we have made that, you know, we've been the MSP industry has made that decision and has found that reality is that I don't need to go do these all these shows.
Harry Brelsford
Well, I'll end on that I, and we'll get you back next quarter. But the look in the mirror I've had both personally and professionally is, you know, what was I doing traveling to these shows where there really wasn't business benefits for me, and I mean this kindly but you know, channel pros been a strategic partner, I would be invited to their show in Newark, New Jersey, Dennis, I go to the show, and there's not really anything I can sell. Right? I mean, it's and the thing is, I knew all the attendees. And I mean, it's nice to see, you know, Frank coalhurst and people I know and care for, but I just had this look in the mirror and say what was I doing? Track? So, hey, I gotta make a decision. All right, man. You take care. I'll pass. We'll catch you next quarter
Denis Wilson
by now. All right. Bye.