Since March of 2020 when Social Security offices closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic Social Security has been conducting disability hearings by phone instead of in person. This required the claimant, the judge, the representative and any experts all to be on the connection, but recently Social Security has been attempting to hold hearings over video through the Microsoft Teams platform as there is no indication when Social Security might reinstate in-person hearings.
The MS Teams platform requires all participants to use either a computer or mobile device that has high speed internet capabilities and a camera. At the time of the scheduled disability hearing the participants will be sent an email link where they can join the hearing. Because any increased use of technology can create problems connecting it is beneficial to understand how the MS Teams platform works prior to your scheduled hearing. Below is a description and some history on MS Teams to brush-up on prior to a scheduled hearing.
Description
Microsoft Teams is a proprietary business communication platform developed by Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. Teams primarily competes with the similar service Slack, offering workspace chat and videoconferencing, file storage, and application integration. Teams is replacing other Microsoft-operated business messaging and collaboration platforms, including Skype for Business and Microsoft Classroom. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Teams has gained much interest as many meetings have moved to a virtual environment.
History
Microsoft announced Teams at an event in New York, and launched the service worldwide on March 14, 2017. It was created during an internal “hackathon” at the company headquarters, and is currently led by Microsoft corporate vice president Brian MacDonald. Microsoft Teams is a web-based desktop app, developed on top of the Electron framework from GitHub which combines the Chromium rendering engine and the Node.js JavaScript platform.
