When I first heard of Coronavirus, I didn’t take it too seriously. I thought it would pass within a short time. That was in November 2019. Now four months down the line, coronavirus has been declared a pandemic and this is worrying. With the continued rise in cases, fear has sparked not only in me, but in the entire nation and the world as a whole.
As of now, the death toll stands at 4,299 and the number of confirmed cases 119,233 according to Worldometers. This has created an atmosphere of fear, and even a complete shutdown in countries such as Italy and China. Aside from this, in many countries the movement of goods and services is limited, and working has almost completely stopped. However, Microsoft 365 now has a solution to this problem.
Companies have continued to explore different means to prevent the spread and contamination of Coronavirus. Microsoft is one such company that has chosen to explore remote working options. The company announced that it will avail its hub for teamwork in Office 365, Microsoft Teams, for free to the public to enable remote working.
Teams (Part of Office 365) is a chat-based collaboration tool that provides global, remote, and dispersed teams with the ability to work together and share information via a common space. With Microsoft Teams, users can utilize features like document collaboration, one-on-one chat, team chat, and more. By making Teams available to as many people as possible, they hope to support public health and safety by making remote work even easier.
The Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, Jared Spataro, says that the top concern at Microsoft is the wellbeing of its employees and supporting its customers in dealing with business impact during these challenging times.
The best thing is that the service is free. Teams is part of Office 365, which means that everyone with the program installed can easily access Teams at no extra cost.
Here’s how to get Teams. If you have an email address through work or school, click here to sign in to Microsoft.
If you are signing up using an email address like Gmail or Outlook, you can sign up for the freemium version of Teams here.
The free Teams version will give users unlimited chat, built-in group and one-on-one audio or video calls, 10 GB of team file storage, and 2 GB of personal file storage per user. Users will also get real-time collaboration with the Office apps for web, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
You can read more about how to protect yourself from the deadly Coronavirus here
