Do it All with Microsoft Teams

Cloud-based call recording & lots more features

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Do It All Microsoft Teams
Collaboration

Published: April 11, 2019

Rob Scott

Rob Scott

Publisher

In 2018, Microsoft announced a critical shift; Microsoft Teams was slated to become the primary driver for intelligent communication in the Office 365 suite, taking over from Skype for Business Online.

This January, the transition was completed and Teams was ready to address any messaging, meeting, and calling requirement. It also promises to offer in-line translation capabilities and space for over 250 participants in meetings, among other features.

Let’s glance through this timely update:

Meetings now support Call Recording

Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Stream allow you to record your meetings and store them in the Office 365 cloud. The recording will be available in the chat history for easy playback, during meeting reviews or when putting together meeting minutes/actions. The meeting recording comes with transcript functionalities as well as searching for keywords and phrases.

There’s also a meeting lobby for vetting dial-in callers and a dial-in fallback, letting you ensure members can come on board meetings, even at the time of network failure.

A small but important change to Messaging

There is now a unified presence, a federated chat, contacts and in-line conversations for members to communicate and collaborate in their native language.

Full-feature Calling capabilities

There are a host of calling features such as call queues, auto attendant, consultative transferring of calls, do-not-disturb breakthrough, forwarding calls to a group, and out of office support. Also, Direct Routing lets you bring in your own telephone service to Teams which works in tandem with Calling Plans for the additional choice of a dialtone in Microsoft Teams.

Other upgrades include add-ons to the devices ecosystem, such as Microsoft Surface.

How do you use the Call Recording functionality?

If this new facility interests you, Stream for Office 365 is how you get it. Stream is the engine driving the new cloud recording update, delivering storage, playback, and sharing capabilities, as well as indexing and transcription. Stream is available across two plans – Stream Plan 1 is part of Office 365 Enterprise, billed as standard, as well as Education E1 and E3. Stream Plan 2 is part of the Office 365 Enterprise and Education E5. It is also available as an add-on in plans E1 and E3, along with Kiosk. Currently, Stream isn’t available in Business plans, for example; Business Premium and Business Essentials.

A final word

The writing is on the wall. As the Office 365 suite expands and amplifies its roster of features, Microsoft is all set to strengthen the foundational capacity of Microsoft Teams.

This new calling, messaging, and recording function is a game-changer – not only does it push the peddle on Teams’ wider acceptance and usage, but it also seems to be ready to take on established players in the meeting/conferencing applications and solutions marketplace.

These are interesting (and possibly winning) times for Microsoft.

Let us know what YOU think in the comments below.

 

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