Microsoft Teams vs. Polycom RealPresence Group Series

Microsoft Teams is ideal for organizations where employees regularly collaborate by sharing files, working on the same documents, updating the progress, etc. This is because different file formats are supported for online editing and collaboration with the help of Microsoft Teams. Additionally, for every file which is shared among the team members, emails are not sent again and again which helps in easily managing and organizing files. It is less appropriate where the team members have to instantly reply to an urgent task as sometimes the notifications are not sent properly which may lead to a delay in the work.

Incentivized

While expensive, you can't compare the cost and time of people flying all over the globe to have in-person meetings when 95% of the time they can be done between a RealPresense.... even more so in today's post-pandemic world. You just get such a better video and audio experience than a Teams meeting. We were also able to connect our RealPresence to Teams so that you can join a meeting and choose whether to join it from your desk with Teams or from a conference room with a Real Presence. This solved 2 issues for us in that there's now a simple link on the Real Presence to join a meeting instead of making a direct phone call to another RP device, and for meetings with 1 or 2 people from a site, they can now join this meeting from their desk and free up the conference room for a large meeting.

Incentivized

• Video calls are great with Microsoft Teams. They've made big improvements over the last year and I rarely have issue with getting on. It's nice when things just work.
• The most used functionality is, of course, the chat feature. It does what it's supposed to do and you can create chat groups from whoever you'd like. We use it a lot when there is a special project and a team from various groups get together for a short period of time to get things done.
• An overlooked function is the ability to search anything within Microsoft Teams. Any photo, document, or chat can be searched and found pretty easily. I can't tell you how many times this has saved me from having to rewrite something or start over.

Incentivized

• Polycom are still a high-end videoconferencing manufacturer and it shows. The build quality is very high, with quality components provided. In the current environment where 'huddle-room' systems are taking over and are a mix of solutions from multiple manufacturers, you can tell the difference when you open the box and get dedicated hardware that is designed to work as a single package.
• The audio quality is very good. May sound like an odd thing to consider audio quality before video quality, but if the sound is poor, it doesn't matter how good the video is - you wont stay in the meeting.
• Great video from the dedicated cameras. The image quality is high and the camera is silent when it moves to presets.

Incentivized

• I sometimes have a hard time viewing both the meeting screen and chat window at the same time.
• There have been times when someone in a meeting will totally lose their connection.
• At times the sound quality is not what it should be which makes it hard to hear each other.

• Install was a bit fast with a tech that was not the best, this lead to a round of support issues, fixes, and training.
• Much of the internal learning was on our own with trial and error, and the Outlook integration was not really 100% (abandoned that as users could not understand and remember the shortcomings when meetings changed. Moved to reservation-less.
• Stability was better after a major upgrade(only 1 year old) and a better Polycom tech.

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

We love the product and is totally integrated in our company.

Incentivized

The overall functionality of the product is incredible in that it provides a one-stop solution for organization and communication. The product is also very well integrated into Microsoft Outlook and other Office apps. Visually pleasing and very easy to use interface. New features are constantly being added to enhance the user experience.

The directory is slightly dated and unless you have a Skype for Business integration license, dialing users into a call is difficult. The Group Series Remote whilst minimalistic is actually more difficult to use than the previous HDX remote. Having to recharge the battery on the group series remote is both annoying and difficult as if you do not keep on top of it, you will be faced with a situation where the remote is not working and then have to try and find another one. Not ideal if you need to start a video call (assuming auto join has not been enabled in the admin portal).

Incentivized

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

I think Microsoft Team is overall good application for communication, track Project work inter the teams and also intra teams. I have 7 out of 10 because it needs improvements in certain features like video sharing call, call drop, audio quality and connecting problems even after having good internet connection.

I can't say I've needed support more than a handful of times. One was for trying to connect a Polycom Conference phone and a Real Presence together. After a few months, we came to the conclusion it wasn't possible, that was the only frustrating occurance with support. Any other time if we needed to RMA a device, it was very smooth.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

We chose primarily because of the promised integration with the Microsoft Business Suite - which it mostly delivers on. That does give Teams an obvious advantage over competitors. IMHO Teams has a richer, more mature feature set, and the experience is more reliable and stable. Although like any of there there is room for imporvement.

Incentivized

Polycom Group Series was very good for what it used to do for its time, however newer technology that provides a more simpler method to configure, join and host video conference meetings has come in the form of Zoom and [Microsoft] Teams which is hard to go back from and therefore means the Polycom codecs of yesteryear are rapidly becoming phased out. The Polycom Trio is a more forward thinking technology which can be configured for the likes of Teams, Zoom and Zoom Phone and with the Poly Studio X range of codecs, this is ultimately the way forward.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• 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 organisational communications. This in turn has a positive impact on the overall business outcome.
• Scheduling meetings have never been so easy in the past. We can schedule meetings on the go without any hassles
• Since Teams is accessible from multiple platforms like Laptop, Desktop, Mobile phones, etc it has been very convenient from a Mobility perspective.

Incentivized

• We have been able to increase productivity by spending less time navigating through a phone directory to call someone, and to find out if and when they are available.
• We can determine if someone is available through the notifications on the phone screen itself or use the instant messaging function, which are both linked to our Outlook calendars.
• We are able to more quickly connect our students to resources and other professionals on campus by being able to anticipate who is available to meet with them or speak with them over the phone, before even having to make a call.

Incentivized