Could Teams be used for a 24/7 Emergency Response team?

[Todd Worzella]

We have an emergency response team at our office that handles calls for help with cleaning up spills of hazardous materials all around the state. Currently everyone on that crew uses groupme to receive notifications after hours. A call comes in our answering service texts a message to the groupme number then all of our people get the message and start determining who and what is needed.

Groupme has been inconsistent with messaging no getting to everyone in a timely manner, etc. Could Teams somehow be used in this scenario?  Not sure how answering service would get message to the Team though. Any thoughts on this?

I was intrigued, since I could add the documents they use frequently to the Teams site, everyone could work on the same document from their device, etc. 

Thanks,

Todd

[#2]

It could be your answering service provides a Connector for Microsoft Teams or you could replace your answering service by one that does. Alternatively you could consider implementing your own Connector based on / together with your answering service or one that's easier to integrate with.

So I suggest you to have a look at the Apps currently in the Microsoft Teams Store or investigate the possibilies on developing your own:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/

[#3]

Is the answering service 'people'? In which case I would suggest adding them to a team, and getting them to post into the team and @team to notify everyone.

[#4]

Hi Todd

I agree with the others, it's possible that you could use Teams in your scenario based on the following:

* Centralise what you do both via desktop and mobile app
* Tag individual members or the entire team if you need to
* Attach/make available important files to a channel
* Make audio/video calls to people or groups of people via the mobile app or desktop app
* Teams will have proper telephone capabilities soon (if not already for some organisations) where you can also leave voicemail.

In terms of the answering service sending a message to your team, you could maybe customise a Connector (or use an existing suitable one if there is one out there) to send a message to the team.

Lots of potential but a bit of work to line up. Benefits could certainly be realised.

Best of luck with your case study!

Cheers
Damien

[#5]

Could you not use a Text / SMS to email service, which could then email the team channel address & would notify the team ?