About: Teams VS Zoom

Hello Colleagues! As some of you may know, CNC is moving away from Zoom and prioritizing Teams for our video-conferencing needs. This transition will certainly have some questions, but will overall improve the experience of video-conferencing at the College! This article is dedicated to comparing Teams and Zoom, and should hopefully provide valuable information around how similar they are, and how (somewhat) different they are.

Similarities: Firstly, lets take a look at the similarities between Teams and Zoom, and how they will affect how we use each!

Creating Meetings: Both Teams and Zoom can be used to create meetings. Teams can be used to automatically invite people that are within the organization, or you can create meeting links for external users. Zoom requires an external invitation for each invite, but either way, you can send an invite to anyone for either!

Joining Meetings: Teams meetings will often use your CNC Teams account when joining, but you can use a Guest account with the article linked here! Zoom meetings can be joined with a CNC account, or a guest account as well!

Screen Sharing: Want to share something important in a meeting? Don't worry! Both Zoom and Teams allow for screen sharing to ensure that all meeting attendees are receiving the same information.

Differences: Great, now that we have looked at some of the similarities, lets look at how the experience may differ between Teams and Zoom!

Messaging: Did you know Teams allows for messaging? This means that communication will be much more seamless, and should allow for more effective methods of sharing information!

Customization: Setting up a Classroom? A webinar? Or maybe a working group? Teams has multiple templates to allow for your Teams channels to be more customizable and a better fit for your use!

Channels: What is a Team? What is a Channel? Teams are core groups within Teams that allow for more diverse methods of providing instruction or communicating with other people. Channels are found within a Teams and allow you to sort information. For example, do you want classroom discussion in only one specific channel? Teams can make that happen! Please see this article for a bit more information on Teams and Channels if you are eager to learn more.

Overview: Moving to a new platform can be difficult, and we get that. We are dedicated to providing the best experience possible, and this starts with having information available where needed! Have any feedback for this article? Or looking for further instruction for Teams? Feel free to reach out to helpdesk@cnc.bc.ca, or visit our extensive Knowledge Base!