Microsoft and Meta, formerly Facebook, announce professional partnership with apps ‘Teams’ and ‘Workplace’

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has announced a partnership with Microsoft to integrate their work collaboration software. The integration between Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Meta, formerly known as Facebook’s Workplace gives users access to Workplace content inside the Teams app and Teams video in the Workplace app, enabling content sharing and engagement with one another.

Workplace was launched in late 2016, followed by the launch of Microsoft Teams in 2017, instantaneously becoming key players in the market that was, up until then, dominated by players like Slack. The partnership expects to benefit both the companies as well as accelerate the move towards a completely remote workplace, with the two companies recently announcing a shift into the ‘metaverse’.

“One thing I’ve learned… there’s not going to be a one and only communications tool on the planet,” says head of Microsoft 365 collaboration, Jeff Teper. “People are going to choose a number of tools, so I think it’s on us as responsible vendors to make sure they can integrate and interoperate.” 

The two partnering companies also have different end goals in mind. Meta’s focus is to create a platform that spans consumer and business applications with Microsoft’s goal being to create an enterprise metaverse. However, a partnership between the two creates a platform of offerings for consumers and increases the number of options available at their service. In addition, this collaboration also has turned future competitors into collaborators.

For employees of customers like Flight Centre Travel Group, Lockton, and Vodafone, the integration has been a reality for a while as the companies have already been trialing the integration. Flight Centre Travel Group report using Workplace to foster a community across the company and Teams for cross-company collaboration, benefitting greatly from the integration as it ‘helps staff access information quicker’. Head of Workplace at Meta, Ujjwal Singh, says that the integration had been specifically requested by Workplace customers Vodafone and Accenture. “The way our customers end up using it is customers use the complementary features, not the competing features,” Singh says. “There are customers that are just Workplace shops, and then there are customers that are just Teams shops. So this is really for those customers that use both.”

The partnership between Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Meta is the latest addition to a broader partnership between the two tech conglomerates. Workplace already integrates into Microsoft’s Office 365 suite, OneDrive, and SharePoint, while Meta has integrated Workplace into Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory. This collaboration solidifies both companies’ dedication to remote work transition and scales upon Meta’s commitment to developing a metaverse that creates a truly immersive virtual reality both at home and at work.