Microsoft is making another move to make more people want to use Teams, the company’s Slack competitor.
As reported by The Verge, the company has revealed that Microsoft Teams, the popular chat and collaboration platform from Microsoft that has been a rival to Slack since its launch, is coming to Outlook calendar.
With this integration, users will be able to see an existing or start a new chat with attendees of a meeting in Outlook’s calendar experience.
“This feature provides an easy Teams chat experience from Outlook in the context of a meeting for participants to send a quick message or review the chat,” reads an item on Microsoft’s roadmap for its productivity and cloud services.
The company says that the feature, which is currently on the roadmap for development, should be launching to all users in March 2023. The report also notes that Microsoft is looking to bring Teams messages into search results for users working with Outlook on the web. That will be launching in February.
Microsoft is also planning to include Teams messages in search results in Outlook on the web. This feature is planned for February, alongside AI-based file suggestions in Teams chats. An expanded view for the Teams profile cards is also arriving in February, with a view that includes a person’s profile, contact data, LinkedIn information, and more.
Microsoft launched Teams as a competitor to Slack back in March of 2017. The communications app has been gaining steam over the years, especially for businesses that already pay for packages of Microsoft Office that include the app.
Slack, which is owned by Salesforce, is still one of the most popular communications platforms for businesses. However, both Microsoft and Google continue to try and take away market share from the platform with their own business chat solutions.
