I’m sure most people who work in IT are aware that Microsoft, in the light of the current COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis, have offered Teams for free for 6 months.
If you already use Office 365 you will already have access to Microsoft Teams but may not be aware of it.
I quickly want to look at ways people can gain access to Microsoft Teams depending on their current situation.
Individuals
If you want to get started with Teams, and have an O365 email address (maybe through work or school), sign in here. This will take you to you O365 login page and give you the opportunity to connect to Teams via a browser or download the Desktop App.
If you are not sure if your company has O365 this is probably where you should start.
If you use another email service whether it is Gmail, Outlook, Telkom or any others, and know you don’t have Teams currently, then you can sign up for a personal copy of Teams here.
Schools and Teachers
Office 365 Education includes Microsoft Teams, Office on the web, and OneDrive. If you have a school email address you can check if your school has signed up or sign up your school using this link: https://signup.microsoft.com/signup?sku=education.
Full details of the free O365 A1 offering as well as other offerings are available here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/academic/compare-office-365-education-plans?activetab=tab:primaryr1
Businesses
If you work for a business that isn’t currently isn’t licensed for Office 365 you can sign up for the O365 E1 free offer for six months. You can contact your Microsoft partner or sales representative to get signed up.
Additional Infomation
You can read more information about this offer from Microsoft on the following web pages:
- https://news.microsoft.com/covid-19-response/
- https://news.microsoft.com/en-my/2020/03/17/our-commitment-to-customers-during-covid-19
- https://altronkarabina.com/microsoft-teams-free-for-next-6-months/
Please feel free to comment below if you have any questions or require any assistance getting started with Teams and I will do my best to help.
If you haven’t used Teams before you can get a good demo of what it can do at https://teamsdemo.office.com