The Microsoft Teams user interface (UI) is like other team collaboration software as it shows a ribbon of workflow icons on the left-hand side of the desktop screen along with a list of teams. Chat collaboration takes place in the center of the desktop screen. Most team collaboration tools use similar terminology to identify certain parts of the UI. For Teams, the terminology includes the following:

Teams.

Teams are groups of people who connect and collaborate on work and other projects.

Channels.

Within each team, users can create channels to organize their communications by topic, like news items, monthly reports or more lighthearted chats. Within channels, users have meetings, conduct conversations and work on files together. Channels can be either public or private. Each channel can include a couple of users or scale to thousands of users.

Tabs.

At the top of each channel are tabs, which link to files, apps and services. Some common tab names include Posts for the messages people have sent and Files for the documents people have shared within the channel.

Mentions.

Users can use mentions to message and alert other users. Mentions use the @ symbol followed by the person's name. Users can also use @ to mention entire teams and channels.

Feeds.

The activity feed provides a summary of messages, replies, mentions and other activities happening within team channels. The activity feed can be filtered by unread messages, mentions and other categories, as well as the user's own activity.

Threads. 

A series of messages creates a thread. Users replying to a message should select the Reply option instead of creating a new conversation and thread. Threads can become quite long as colleagues chat back and forth. Users can schedule voice and video meetings within threads, which helps to provide contextual communications.