As Microsoft Teams’ daily user numbers continue to climb, the company is eager to provide rich and feature-packed experiences to its customers. Teams is a 360-degree collaboration platform that integrates with third-party apps to enable connected workflows. Its features allow users to scale up or down, from basic video calling to complex contact centre setups.
1. Video calling experiences get better
Microsoft has several enhancements to the Teams video calling experience. Users can apply video filters that help adjust lighting levels and smooth out facial features in real-time during a call. Also, Teams has a new music mode where video calls with accompanying background music (e.g., when hosts are rehearsing a presentation) do not block the music as noise. Finally, users can pin or hide their video feed to minimise distractions during a call.
2. The metaverse comes to Microsoft Teams
Microsoft has been working on this one for a long time, and the feature is finally due for release in 2022. This might have something to do with Facebook’s announcement about the metaverse in Q4 of 2021, but Microsoft reportedly has a working prototype, nearly ready for GA. Dubbed Mesh for Teams, users will be able to work in a unified virtual reality space where they can meet with colleagues and interact with an “office” in 3D. Accenture already has a VR office campus called the Nth Floor using Mesh for Teams.
3. Microsoft introduces new work-life balance aids
Work-life balance is vital this year as work from home/hybrid working continues. Microsoft will release two new features to support this – local time visibility and quiet time settings. From January 2022, users’ local time will display on their Teams profile cards. Co-workers can quickly refer to this when working out of different locations and time zones, ensuring they do not breach regular work hours. The quiet time setting will use Microsoft Viva to silence Teams notifications and provide insights on how effectively users disconnect.
4. Teams admins get more control
Teams’ admin capabilities get more robust with every release cycle, and 2022 is no different. A host of new features will help those in admin roles.
For instance, administrators can now get an integrated, location-based map of Teams devices and peripherals through Workspace Management. The admin centre gets a universal search capability, and there will be special notifications every time someone submits a custom app. Another hot feature for 2022 is homepage customisation, where admins can move the widgets around in their admin centre home screen to create new layouts.
5. Discover two new productivity hacks
Microsoft will quietly launch two nifty features that will improve productivity by a mile. First, users can schedule the delivery of chat messages for later. This is essential functionality as Teams chat increasingly replaces office email. Another feature called “chat with self” is also available. Teams users can now send themselves text messages, files, images, videos, hyperlinks, etc., just like so many of us use email to send ourselves memos and reminders.
6. Teams finetunes its webinar experience
Webinars have always been a popular use case for Teams. The platform supports up to 20,000 participants to join in with a view/listen-only mode — ideal for large-scale internal events. Improving on this, Teams automates webinar invites so that all scheduled webinars automatically add to the attendee’s calendar.
Hosts can even customise the webinar domain using their organisation’s brand name. All webinar communication will then reflect the branding to drive recall. Teams also has a Question & Answer (Q&A) application in public preview, which allows moderated or unmoderated Q&A sessions during webinars. This could hit GA in 2022. Read more here about the Teams webinar changes announced at Inspire.
7. Good news for Power Automate users
Several new features in 2022 aid in automation. New automation users can start faster using the library of Power Automate templates now available on the Teams app store. This makes integration significantly more accessible as the workflows are predesigns and ready to deploy.
Slightly more advanced users can use Teams message extensions, and message actions as entry points to build a Power Automate flow.
Microsoft has also added new Power Automate actions and triggers to better control when designing automated workflows. This includes further actions like “Create a Teams meeting” and new triggers like “User leaves a team.”
8. The year of new emojis
One of the most ground-breaking innovations that first set collaboration platforms like Teams and Slack apart was the use of emojis. The language of emoticons provides a fun, visual way to communicate that’s very different from the usual “acceptable” office vocabulary — but it is also incredibly expressive and helpful for preventing miscommunication.
Microsoft is expanding emoji reactions to chat messages in, from the current basis set of six to the entire library of 800+ emojis. Teams has new emojis and reactions as per the style, now in use across most of Microsoft 365 and Windows 11.
