** Apologies for the video and audio being slightly out of sync, Microsoft Teams reduced the frame rate for some reason which resulted in a glitchy session recording – best enjoyed as a podcast this time **
In this session we discuss:
- Microsoft policy-based recording API
- Microsoft Teams news from Build (online event this year, extensive use of Microsoft Teams)
- Microsoft buys Metaswitch
- Facebook buys Giphy
- Microsoft events – Commsverse Online July 6th – 9th
This month’s Microsoft Teams News Update is sponsored by Ribbon Communications.
If you’re looking for more Microsoft Teams opinion and news visit TomTalks.
Thanks for watching, if you’d like more like this, don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel.
You can also join in the conversation on our Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages.
What to Expect in Microsoft Teams June 2020 Update
With WFH the new normal for millions of offices around the world, remote collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams have shot up in popularity.
The company has taken every opportunity to refine its product for this time of crisis – regularly releasing new features, partnering with your favourite UC vendors, and acquiring rising stars. Close on the heels of Microsoft Teams updates for May 2020, we looked at what’s next in June as well as the next few months. UC Today’s Rob Scott sat down with Tom Arbuthnot, the Principal Solutions Architect at Microsoft Collaboration specialists Modality Systems, as well as the brains behind the tomtalks.blog.
Here are the highlights from the conversation:
A big win for compliance recording
The last few months have been extremely busy for the Microsoft community, with a continuous stream of updates and end-to-end virtualization of all events. As Rob put it,
“Microsoft doesn’t seem to have taken any time out recently!”
The first one on our laundry list is the new policy-based recording API for Teams.
“This is what you would probably refer to you more in the industry as compliance recording. I think Microsoft called it policy-based because the “compliance” word can mean different things in different areas – but it is the recording of screen-sharing, video, and voice in Teams calls or Teams meetings,” Tom demystified the concept and the unusual taxonomy.
As policy-based or compliance recording comes as an API, you would need another platform to actually record and collect the data. For now, 7 vendors including AudioCodes, Redbox, and ASC Technologies, have signed up. Tom tells us that a few bigger players are on the way, like your Ciscos and Avayas. Interestingly, we recently sat down with Phil Fry, VP of Product Strategy at Verint, to talk about Microsoft Teams recording in a special session.
“I think I mentioned it in the session, but it really provides a full-fat, proper compliant offering now doesn’t it, on Microsoft Teams – across all interaction types, whether you’re messaging or recording voice or video – the job lot,” recalled Rob.
Tom hit the bullseye on why compliance recording makes such a big difference right now.
“ Lots of compliance products traditionally work on tapping the line or having a VLAN. That’s great when you’re in the office on a physical phone. But when everybody’s working from home or working on iPads or mobiles or whatever, that doesn’t work. So, because this is service-side, it works with any Teams endpoint, anywhere. It’s happening in the cloud as opposed to happening on the endpoint. So, for lots of companies who’ve suddenly gone to remote working, this is a way to have compliance recording for those users,” he explained.
You can read more about Tom’s thoughts on Microsoft Teams policy-based compliance recording here.
Reimagining Microsoft events for a social distancing world
First-party events like Microsoft’s Build almost always happen in person, with hands-on sessions, workshops, and a host of other activities that simply aren’t possible this year.
Build 2020 happened without a hitch in May entirely virtually – we asked Tom about how this impacted the event experience: “In some ways, it felt like a bit of a giant advert for Microsoft Teams because all the really important people at Microsoft are doing sessions from their houses!”
The company unveiled 4 important updates at Build:
- New bot templates – for developers creating bots for their Teams compatible apps, this could be pretty useful
- Pop-out for apps – Teams is the hub for teamwork and Microsoft wants you to do to have a single pane of glass to do everything. But when you’re working a lot, you want to be able to bring those apps on to a second screen – now, you can pop those apps out, still part of Teams,” said Tom
- Third-party subscriptions – Tom hinted at a third-party subscription store inside of Teams, letting you manage all your SaaS licenses from within the app
- Power BI functionalities – Aimed at citizen developers, this update allows users to build apps for managing specific lines of business right now Microsoft Teams
Microsoft’s entire calendar for 2020 is all virtual, and this includes third-party or community events.
“One event that stands out for me, which is right in the middle of the Microsoft Teams conversation, is Commsverse – due to debut this year,” Rob pointed out.
Tom spoke about Mark Vale and Jeff Teper. “Jeff Teper, a real senior in Microsoft (CVP of Teams) is coming to keynote at Commsverse. This is more of a trend, that the important people and vendors are coming to community events as well as doing first-party events. So, you’re getting really serious content at these community events now,” he added, highlighting how social distancing and digital connectivity is changing our notion of events altogether.
Tom will be at Commsverse as well, speaking about governments and best practices on Microsoft Teams – so, be sure to tune in on July 6 and 7 (register here).
A slightly confusing app, and two acquisitions
Next, Rob mentioned one of the biggest highlights for Microsoft this quarter – Lists.
Microsoft Lists is a cross between a daily planner and a to-do/checklist app, that’s easy to confuse with Microsoft To Do. Understandably, we were eager to know a little more about it.
“Microsoft gives overlapping options all the time. They let projects spike and see how they go, rather than having a top-down or authoritative plan. The company’s corporate mission is empowering the entire world – so, what’s one person’s planner is somebody else’s list or somebody else’s to-do. There is definitely overlap in these abilities.”
“Think about your business use case and then play with the features as to which one might fit you,” Tom decoded the intentions behind Microsoft Lists
This makes perfect sense, and once Lists hits the Office 365 (now reimagined as Microsoft 365) suite, we expect it to be smoother sailing.
Coming to Microsoft’s acquisition run, the company has picked up Metaswitch – a company that already has Session Border Controller (SBC) certification for Microsoft Team. On the surface, it might look like this SBC integration is why Microsoft picked up Metaswitch. But Tom suggested that this might not be the case.
For those new to Metaswitch, the company is an industry giant, used by 900+ telcos around the world and $190 million in revenues. Microsoft could be eying its IP skills and technology in order to back its own cloud business.
“it’s really more about 5G and Azure growth. Even though they are a Microsoft-certified SBC, I don’t think that’s the primary reason for the acquisition. It’s about the massive growth in 5G and Microsoft wanting to push Azure cloud for service providers. It’s not like Microsoft suddenly wants to become more of a carrier than they already are. I think it’s more about them being able to provide 5G services to carriers with their tech,” Tom shared his views.
Another acquisition that caught our eye recently is Facebook buying out Giphy. Could this impact Microsoft Teams usage in any way? Initial reactions seem to suggest YES.
“Lots of people have very strong opinions about Facebook. Do they want our data? What are they going to do with the data? All that kind of stuff. The acquisition caused an immediate uprising, like “let’s disable Giphy” because Facebook has got it,” said Tom. In fact, Tom saw a massive spike in interest on his blog on this particular topic.
Some companies could be uncomfortable with continuing to use Giphy for Teams now that it is part of Facebook’s arsenal. But this has its own risks. Tom explained further: “Do you block Facebook at work? No, right? So, you’re disabling a feature that people like in your messaging platform, while they probably have Facebook open in a browser. And Facebook can do infinitely more tracking with cookies and browsers than they can with an image loading from a URL…you’re just going to drive people back to any other platform that has the fun stuff.”
Ultimately, it comes down to the vertical you are in, the kind of data you share via Teams, and your risk appetite. If you think the Giphy + Teams duo is bad news in the context of Facebook’s acquisition, please visit the full podcast here and share your thoughts in the comments.
Integrations that could make our life easier
All of these updates seem to point in one direction: How to turn Microsoft Teams into one space for every task.
You can plan projects using Lists, you can pop out an app you’re currently working on, and you can build your own bot more easily. What if you could manage key business processes from the app as well? The new mobile integrations help in this regard.
Microphones, cameras, and mobile devices will now enjoy tighter integrations with Teams, opening up some really interesting business use cases. Let’s say you work in retail, where a third-party app can be used to report a sale issue with supporting media from a mike or camera. “You can run the app in Teams, get to the camera, get to the mic, and all that data is secure. It’s not your third-party camera going to Apple or Google,” Tom said.
We asked Tom about Microsoft’s plans to integrate the Metaswitch MaX, which is a mobile-native carrier-grade communication platform. This could give a leg-up to Microsoft’s relatively sluggish telephony business, where the phone system element of Microsoft Teams has slowed down a little in terms of in-dev features.
Well, the ink is fresh and wet on the Microsoft-Metaswitch coupling, so only time will tell. As Tom put it, “If you’re waiting for one answer from Microsoft on how to do things, you’re going to be waiting a long time!”
This month’s Microsoft Teams News Update is sponsored by Ribbon Communications.
If you’re looking for more Microsoft Teams opinion and news visit TomTalks.
Thanks for watching, if you’d like more like this, don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel.
You can also join in the conversation on our Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages.
