Microsoft has released a host of updates across the Teams portfolio at Microsoft. You can view our round-up of the biggest news from the event here – including 3D meetings in Teams and new Teams Phone features – but we’ve also picked out the best of the rest below.
Copilot Takes Center Stage
Copilot in Teams Meetings Evolves
One of the most exciting updates from Ignite 2023 is the enhanced capabilities of Copilot within Microsoft Teams Meetings. Users can now utilize Copilot during meetings without retaining a transcript afterward. Admins have the power to grant meeting organizers the option to enable or disable this feature, offering a flexible and dynamic meeting experience. With no transcripts retained, users can freely interact with Copilot during the meeting, asking questions and seeking assistance in real-time.
Crafting Messages Made Effortless
Copilot has extended its support to compose box writing assistance in Teams chat and channels. Now, users can receive suggestions and refine their messages using Copilot’s assistance directly in the compose box. Whether in a chat, meeting chat, or channel, Copilot helps users express themselves more effectively by offering rewriting options, adjusting tones, and modifying message length before sending it out.
Navigating Busy Conversations
Chat and channels can quickly become overwhelming, but Copilot is here to help users stay on top of the information that matters most. New pre-canned prompts from Copilot assist users in identifying crucial decisions and open items in the midst of lengthy conversations, ensuring they can catch up effectively.
Seamless Copilot Integration in Calls App
Copilot in the Calls app within Teams Phone now offers a post-call experience, allowing users to focus on collaboration rather than administrative tasks. By leveraging AI, Copilot captures key points, task owners, and next steps, enabling a more efficient and streamlined communication process. The integration supports both VoIP and PSTN calls.
Intelligent Recap Meets Copilot
The integration of Intelligent Recap with Copilot brings a new dimension to post-meeting engagement. Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license and Teams Premium License can now ask specific questions about a meeting and receive clear answers, ensuring everyone in the organization stays on the same page.
Real-Time Collaboration with Copilot in Notes
Copilot in Teams meetings now extends its capabilities to collaborative notes. Users can enable Copilot before a meeting, allowing it to take real-time notes shared among all participants. These notes, added to Collaborative notes, sync across all shared spaces, enhancing collaboration and ensuring a comprehensive record of discussions.
Bridging Copilot with Whiteboard
In a groundbreaking move, Copilot will soon combine its power in both Teams meetings and Whiteboard. This integration enables Copilot to visualize spoken discussion points and organize them on Whiteboard. Meeting participants’ ideas and topics become a visual collaboration space, shared across all attendees. Copilot’s generated summary of the Whiteboard can be shared across various Microsoft platforms.
AI in Teams Takes a Leap
Voice Isolation for Enhanced Meetings
Teams introduces voice isolation, a revolutionary feature that recognizes a user’s voice and suppresses other noises during unscheduled calls and meetings. This ensures that the user’s voice is the only one heard, providing a more focused and personalized meeting experience. The feature will be available in Teams Phone and Teams Meetings in early 2024.
Elevating Virtual Meetings with Background Decoration
Decorate Your Background introduces generative background effects in Teams, allowing meeting participants to enhance their real-world surroundings. Whether cleaning up clutter or adding virtual elements, this feature leverages AI to create a more professional and engaging meeting environment. Teams Premium users can expect this feature in early 2024.
In addition to the Copilot and AI enhancements, Teams is rolling out several other features to enhance collaboration, communication, and productivity.
Collaboration Features
Loop Components in Channels
Loop components in channels allow users to co-create and collaborate with tables, lists, progress trackers, and more directly in a channel. This feature ensures that content stays synchronized, promoting a more efficient workflow.
Simplified Notifications
The pace of conversations and notifications can be overwhelming, but Teams aims to simplify this experience. Users can now clear notifications with a single click in the activity feed, streamlining the process of marking notifications as read. Additionally, intuitive notification settings with granular controls are introduced to tailor the notification experience.
Code Blocks Made Easier
Enhancements to code blocks make it easier for users to send code in Teams. Starting a code block is simplified through format options or markdown, and users can choose the code language for syntax highlighting.
New Keyboard Shortcuts
Save time with new keyboard shortcuts in Teams, including quick status changes and rapid replies to the latest received message. These shortcuts aim to enhance the user experience and analysis and integration with third-party systems. These APIs provide insights into attendee names, attendance duration, registrations, and cancellations, allowing businesses to leverage this data for various purposes, including CRM, marketing automation, LOB, and workflow apps.
IT Administration and Security Enhancements
Advanced Collaboration Tools
Teams introduces Advanced Collaboration Tools, a suite of features designed to address critical needs in collaboration. Two key capabilities include Priority Account Chat Controls, allowing users to control unwanted internal communications through policy settings, and Advanced Collaboration Analytics, offering deep insights into external collaboration behaviours. Both features empower IT admins to maintain a secure and self-regulated environment.
Increased Capacity for End-to-End Encrypted Meetings
Teams Premium users can now enjoy an increased participant capacity for end-to-end encrypted meetings, from 50 participants to an impressive 200 participants. This enhancement ensures a robust and secure meeting experience for larger groups.
Virtual Appointments for Seamless Scheduling
Additional Tenant-Level Analytics and Insights
The Virtual Appointments app now provides new insights at the tenant level, offering data on average lobby wait times, percentage of appointments completed after the scheduled end time, and the percentage of appointments with a late start. IT admins can use these insights to evaluate and enhance their virtual appointment programs.
Virtual Appointment Graph API for SMS Notifications
Developers can now utilize the Teams Virtual Appointment Graph API to programmatically send confirmation, update, reminder, and cancellation SMS notifications to customers. This feature enhances communication and engagement with customers participating in virtual appointments.
Frontline Workers Empowerment
Deploy Frontline Dynamic Teams at Scale
Teams introduces a dynamic deployment tool for frontline workers, ensuring team memberships are always up-to-date. This tool simplifies the setup of consistent channel structures, optimizing frontline collaboration from day one.
New Planner in Teams
In Spring 2024, Teams will launch a new Planner app, combining the simplicity of Microsoft To Do, the teamwork features of Microsoft Planner, and the capabilities of Microsoft Project for the web. This comprehensive Planner will offer task management features tailored for frontline organizations.
Walkie Talkie Support on Jabra Perform 45 and Klein Headsets
Frontline workers using Jabra Perform 45 on Android and iOS, as well as all Klein wired push-to-talk USB-C headsets on Android, can now initiate Walkie Talkie in Teams using the push-to-talk button. This feature enhances real-time communication for frontline workers.
Improved Shifts Privacy Settings
Frontline managers gain control over shift information visibility among their teams, enhancing data privacy and control. This includes controlling visibility of time-off reasons, notes, break duration, and more.
Import and Export Time Offs and Open Shifts via Excel
Frontline managers can import schedules created or generated to an Excel file into Shifts through Shifts web and desktop applications. This simplifies the management of employee assigned shifts, open shifts, and time-offs.
Marketplace Controls in Shifts Settings
Frontline managers can now manage shifts marketplace settings, enabling or disabling capabilities such as swap shift requests, offer shift requests, and time-off requests based on business needs and policies.
Deploy Shifts at Scale
Teams Admin Center introduces the ability to deploy shifts across multiple locations centrally, streamlining the management of scheduling groups, schedule owners, and permissions.
New Entra ID Shared Device Mode Support on iOS and Android
Teams announces the general availability of Intune zero-touch provisioning of Entra ID shared device mode on iOS and iPadOS. This feature facilitates seamless deployment and management of shared devices for frontline workers.
Simplify Authentication with Domain-Less Sign-In
For shared and company-managed devices, frontline workers can sign in to Teams faster using the first part of their username, eliminating the need to type out long domain names and accelerating the sign-in process.
Walkie Talkie in Teams: Listen to Multiple Channels
Frontline workers will soon have the option to automatically hear incoming transmissions from any of their pinned favorite channels. This new feature enables easy and automatic connection to multiple channels without the need for manual channel switching.
Accessibility Improvements
Captions Customization
Teams introduces new customizations for captions in calls and meetings. Users can configure font color, size, visible lines, and caption positioning, offering a more personalized and accessible experience.
Updated Keyboard Interactions
Keyboard interactions in Teams are now more simplified, allowing users to navigate between lists and content effortlessly. Context-sensitive help is also introduced for quick access to keyboard actions.
Screen Reader Updates
Teams implements updates benefiting screen reader assistive technologies, reducing verbosity and improving clarity across various areas of the app.
Windows 11 Contrast Themes Support
Teams now fully supports Windows 11 Contrast themes, allowing users to choose colors that work best for them. The app automatically adjusts to these preferences, providing a more inclusive and visually comfortable experience.
Landscape Mode on Phone Devices
The new Teams app supports landscape mode across the activity feed, chats, channels, and the meeting stage, enhancing usability on mobile devices in both portrait and landscape orientations.
