Microsoft Teams vs. Socialcast (discontinued)

Positive: The virtual workspace created for a work team within the same company, for the resemblance of information and communications in one place.Negative: The access for members of a non-profit organization who have external emails from the host but need the same access as an internal person since their volunteer work is part of the very core of the federation.

Incentivized

Socialcast has been a great tool for FactSet. I would recommend it to any firm looking for an easy-to-use tool to centralize communication and collaborate on a global scale.

• Virtual meetings - ease of set up and execution
• File sharing! We build channels for projects, and being able to invite only project members is huge!
• Peer-to-peer communications - being able to "ping" one of my colleagues, either text, video or call-only, on-demand, is what runs our business.

Incentivized

• Socialcast has an exceptional user experience. With very few idiosyncrasies, it works well on every platform I've tried.
• The platform has such a high level of ease of use, it becomes somewhat addicting.
• Social analytics are superb.
• The platform is highly intuitive and requires zero training or coaching in order for network members to become productive with it.
• It's extremely reliable. Only once in 4 years, was the product not available, and that was only for about a half-hour. In that half-hour, we realized how dependent we were on it. (Very.)
• The multi-device and deployment options are excellent. On-premise, Private Cloud, and Multi-tenant SaaS all available.
• The mobile apps for iPhone, tablets, and Android render well with a beautiful UI/UX. The desktop AIR app is equally highly usable.

• The feature of notifications in the mobile application could be improved. Sometimes notifications of different teams are not visible and are only visible when the application is opened.
• It uses lots of computational resources while running and thus, slows down the system sometimes.
• It allows a few channels per team. The number of channels could be increased for better productivity.

Incentivized

• The software is a little bit pricey because it is charged by user/month and depending on the deployment method.
• For companies with a lot of workers the price can increase significantly.
• The mobile app usability and notifications are poor. Need to be improved.
• If there were more administrative features available the product would be improved

Incentivized

Microsoft Teams is included with our Office 365 subscription and we have no intention of migrating off of Office 365 and Microsoft products. Since Microsoft Teams is included for free with our Office 365 subscription, and since we enjoy all the features, benefits, and functionality, there is no question that our team will continue to use the product

Incentivized

Beyond the value FactSet derives from using the platform, Socialcast (the firm) has been a good partner to FactSet. We've experienced very little downtime with the service and they have been responsive and fair with enhancement requests and questions

User experience has been much better than the previous Skype for Business app. It has an easy-to-use interface with persistent chats. The search feature is very fast and useful. MS Teams has mostly focused on Collaboration and team building features which are very useful for organizational communications. Since Teams is accessible from multiple platforms like Laptop, Desktop, Mobile phones, etc it has been very convenient from a Mobility perspective.

Incentivized

The UX is its best feature

Rare, but outages do happen

Incentivized

Sometimes about once a week I get a message that says "Sorry, there seems to be something wrong". But it goes away in a few minutes.

Incentivized

Using Microsoft Teams has resulted in much faster business communications with both co-workers and consultants. There has been little need for support with this software as the interface is very intuitive and the product is overall very well designed. We did encounter an issue with the built-in phone service, however, this was quickly resolved by the support team.

Excellent support; of course not perfect. :-)

I find everything I need for my day-to-day work.

Incentivized

Not applicable, as it is a SaaS platform with minimal implementation

Our company and IT department previously used Skype for our communication needs. Skype was not dependable in my opinion, because it seems each time I used it during a call and/or a meeting, I and several other team members would get disconnected more than once. This caused a great interruption of our meeting, caused team members to have to ask others to repeat themselves and caused a general lack of interest in employee attendance during meetings.

Socialcast is great for collaboration & light project management, but anything complex doesn't work well.

Using it as an email notification curator works nice for us.

Incentivized

Honestly, this tool is worth every penny. Yes, it's not free and you pay for the quality of services and the license. But the ROI and the benefits are all there. Also, the renewal, negotiation, and contract terms are all very well explained by our Microsoft account manager, and she's a charm.

It does not appear to have a limit to how many teams and employees we can have using it

Incentivized

I used Skype for Business to take calls, hold conferences, and provide remote assistance to users. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, is superior to Skype for Business in my opinion. My job entails a lot of screen sharing.

• I'm not sure I can point to a specific ROI, but it has improved our ability to communicate and work more effectively together.
• It's also nice to have records of every interaction, photo, and document that has been shared. Less chance of something completely disappearing.

Incentivized

• Definitely more organized project management and team collaboration.
• Efficiency in carrying out tasks.
• Creates a spirit of collaboration and friendliness among colleagues.

Incentivized