Tech Trends
C D A J O U R N A L , V O L 4 8 , Nº 5/6
A look into the latest dental and general technology on the market
Microsoft Teams (Free, Microsoft)
Discord (Free or $9.99 per month, per user for premium)
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 respiratory disease this year, federal, state and local governments mandated shelter-in-place orders, which have caused many organizations to enact work-fromhome policies. Physical meetings have been replaced by online meetings, resulting in a large-scale dependence on reliable virtual conference technologies. Microsoft Teams is a technology platform that combines many Office 365 services to provide an ultimate hub for meetings, collaboration and communication for small and large businesses, organizations and institutions.
Suddenly, online communication tools have become the primary means of keeping people together. The events of previous months have seen applications like Zoom, Teams and Hangouts normalize as the world implements social distancing and isolation. In this moment of crisis, every means of staying in touch is valid and worthy of being explored. In the sea of communication tools lies Discord, a free-to-use, platform-agnostic, gamer-focused voice chat application with a host of useful tools for small groups like dental practices, families and study clubs.
Getting started with Teams requires a free Microsoft account to take advantage of its features. Users begin by creating a few teams, which are groups of people or members within and/or outside the organization. Dedicated sections within teams called channels are then created. Team members can take advantage of core features within a channel, such as chat messaging, file attachments and sharing and Office document collaboration. Additionally, integrations with 250-plus apps and services can be added to any channel, providing additional tools for teams to complete tasks. Audio/video calls and screen sharing can be initiated with any individual or group that has Teams installed and logged in with a Microsoft account. With eligible Office 365 account subscriptions, users can schedule online Teams meetings ahead of time and send Outlook calendar invitations. Subscribers can also record meetings to be viewed/downloaded later from Microsoft Stream, which is a video-sharing platform similar to YouTube. Channels can be made private, limiting activity to a select number of team members. Guests without a Microsoft account can participate in chats and channel conversations by getting an invitation link from an owner of a team. This platform has taken the best features of popular services such as Slack, Zoom and Skype and integrated them into a unified product that is robust and responsive without being too complicated.
Discord originally started as an add-on to a game to help facilitate player voice and text communication. It was meant to be more secure, less resource intensive and easier to use than its competitors of the time like Skype and TeamSpeak. Discord boasts features like push-to-talk, granular user-level management and video screen sharing for up to 10 members. Accounts are free to create, the webpage does a great job setting up user devices for immediate use and the user community has active troubleshooting forums that address Discord’s most common issues. The application interface is on the juvenile side, and diving into any of the open, unsecured Discord servers can be confusing and often offensive with some of its unregulated content. While Discord was never meant to store or discuss protected health information (PHI), its user-centric approach coupled with excellent mobile integration, push-to-talk functionality and a free price tag make it a viable option for those practitioners looking to keep communication channels open with a small group of individuals in this tumultuous time.
Working from home and social distancing have become the new normal as the entire world responds to mitigate the COVID-19 outbreak. Microsoft Teams is a scalable platform that can meet the demand for a group of any size to connect, collaborate and communicate in an online world. — Hubert Chan, DDS
298 M AY/JUNE
2020
— Alexander Lee, DMD
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Dentists interested in contributing to this section should contact Andrea LaMattina, CDE, at andrea.lamattina@cda.org.
