#microsoft-teams

#microsoft-teams

Recent polls from Gallup and Pebl suggest 90% to 98% of employees want to continue to work from home, or at least in a hybrid setup, but many employers are pushing back. Popular or not, businesses are tightening the reins on remote work-and it's about to become even easier for your company to track whether you're at the office. That's because there's a new feature being released on a program that millions of workers use every day to communicate.

Researchers at Check Point this week revealed four flaws in Teams that, if exploited, could have fundamentally broken the trust that underpins communication inside organizations. Together, they made it possible to alter messages without the "Edited" label, spoof alerts to make them appear from trusted colleagues, rename chats to change who they appeared to be with, and even forge caller identities in audio or video calls.

Microsoft has smooshed together three of its most popular productivity tools - the personal task manager To Do, the team-focused Planner, and the robust Project for the web - into a single, intelligent workspace now known simply as Microsoft Planner. Those tools still exist separately, but you can think of Planner as an overlay of them all, a unified view that can handle everything from your personal grocery list to managing a company-wide marketing reboot.

Dependence on American cloud services entails significant risks. Minister Paul of Social Affairs warns of the consequences of a sudden denial of access. "An abrupt denial would affect essential support processes such as email, collaboration via Teams, document exchange, and security monitoring." In such a scenario, the Social Insurance Bank would face disrupted services and an affected communication structure. This vulnerability highlights the profound integration of American technology with government processes.

PUMA has embarked on a programme to deliver in-country public switched telephone network (PSTN) replacement and localised support, replacing legacy systems with a fully integrated Microsoft Teams installation.

Microsoft Teams continues to gain ground as a business collaboration tool, in part because Microsoft has tied the meeting and messaging app ever more tightly to the rest of its Microsoft 365 productivity suite over the years.

Support for Microsoft Teams Classic disappeared a year ago, with the app set to be completely discontinued on July 1, 2025.

Microsoft Teams serves as a comprehensive digital office space, bringing essential communication and collaboration tools into one platform with seamless integration and advanced features.

Zoom offers strong-name recognition in videoconferencing but its free tier limits session length to 40 minutes, prompting users to explore various free alternatives.

"Microsoft has suffered a run of backend changes affecting functionality recently, leading to multiple outages. We need to enhance our detection and response to similar events."