Microsoft Corp. today released a number of new features for its Teams workplace collaboration service as it continues to grow in popularity against rival Slack Technologies Inc.

The announcement started with an update on Teams growth numbers. Microsoft Teams is claimed to be the fastest-growing app in Microsoft history and now boasts of having 329,000 organizations using the service, up from 200,000 in March, including 87 of the top Fortune 100 companies. Fifty-four companies using Teams have more than 10,000 users.

Not resting on its laurels, Microsoft also announced a number of new features to improve meetings in Teams.

A new background blur feature allows Teams customers to remove distractions from a video, giving that video a more professional feeling that previously required an expensive lens. There’s also meeting recording, which introduces the ability to record a meeting. Finally, cloud video interop adds support for legacy meeting room devices such as those from Polycom, BlueJeans and Pexip.

The Microsoft Teams mobile app is getting some attention too, as the service continues to offer support for more features. A new feature called “Home” is claimed to allow firstline workers, those tasked with producing or bringing products and services to customers, to see at a glance the most important and relevant info for their day, including the ability to clock in and out of shifts/breaks, receive important notes for the day or shift, find out who is working during the shift and save time by easily reviewing information and schedule.

Shifts, a complementary feature to Home, allows managers to plan schedules for employees, including the ability to create, update and distribute schedules for teams as well as broadcast open and unfilled shifts so that other employees can cover them.

Pitched at the medical sector, Teams is now getting built-in support for image annotation, allowing medical professionals to capture, annotate and share images securely while priority notification alert recipient to urgent messages.

The new features see Teams evolving into something far more than a simple workplace collaboration tool, now offering additional features not matched by it competition. Facebook Inc. with Workplace and Google LLC with Hangouts Chat compete with Teams, but it’s not clear how many users either has.

Slack, though, is by far the main competition. Like Microsoft, it has not rested on its laurels, signing a deal with Atlassian Corp. LLC in July and only today acquiring email app provider Astro Technology Inc.

Slack has always been popular in Silicon Valley, but the battle between the two is David versus the Microsoft Goliath. The software and cloud giant has a huge existing user base to pitch Teams to and with the release of a free version in December, a product that offers more for less versus Slack.

The numbers released by Microsoft seem to show that it’s winning a lot of new customers, and with the new features announced, it could see more growth for the product.

Image: Microsoft