Children are heading back to school, parents are returning to work, and the temperature outside is dropping. Fortunately, the momentum at Microsoft isn’t cooling down any time soon. Microsoft Teams, one of the leading enterprise apps for collaboration, recently revealed a selection of impressive new features that appeared in the app over the past month.
The updates range from improvements in the calling experience, to intuitive new methods of filtering your chats. Here are just some of the latest announcements from Microsoft Teams over the month of September.
Collaboration and Chat Updates
Dealing with many simultaneous conversations at once is the norm for most of today’s companies. However, this social environment can make it harder to find the right thread at the correct time. Fortunately, Microsoft’s new range of filters added to Teams and Chat will help you to find the conversations that matter most to you. Simply type a person’s name to filter for every meeting, group, or one-on-one chat you have with your employees. The “More” option adds additional filters, too, like unread messages. Users can type keywords to filter by group chats with specific names too.
Another update to the collaborative experience this month has been the arrival of options to mute conversations in a channel. When you need to follow a conversation that’s hidden from your list, you can turn notifications on again, allowing for more control over the amount of noise in your enterprise chat tools. Click on the “more options” tab and turn on or turn off your notifications.
Changes to the Calling Experience
Today, many Microsoft Teams users have many different challenges to contend with. Secondary Ringer functionality means that people plugged into headsets will still be able to hear incoming calls from their computer so that they can jump between conversations quickly.
Another calling update to appear this month comes in the form of changes to the cloud voicemail experience. Users will now be able to transfer calls directly to cloud voicemail. Additionally, several enhancements will enable end-users to configure features in the Teams setting options for themselves, including call answer rules, choosing greeting language, and customising TTS for the standard “out of the office” greeting.
Microsoft also introduced the option to find out who is calling you on Teams, even when the other person isn’t a Teams user. Designed to support the demand for caller ID, the Teams solution displays a PSTN caller’s name based on information from the Azure Active Directory data, or the Telco’s provided a display name. This feature is currently available on Teams desktop and will appear soon on Teams mobile.
Other updates to the Teams calling experience include the arrival of Teams Calling via Chrome on the web. You can now add Google Chrome to the list of browsers that support calls from your web browser by going to the “Calls” tab on the left of the Teams UI or typing /call into the command bar. Additionally, Microsoft is also delivering several phone system updates to the Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud, including call handling enhancements, team calling improvements for VoIP customers, phone number blocking, group call pickup, Call Park, and Shared Line Appearance.
Updates to Microsoft Teams Meeting
Alongside the changes to Microsoft Teams collaboration and calling, meetings have had a few updates too. For instance, the “Meet Now” functionality on Teams desktop will now allow users to skip invitations to instead access a new meeting directly. Users need to click on the Calendar on the left side of the Teams UI and select Meet Now.
There’s also the option to customise meeting layouts by pinning meeting participants to choose which attendees appear in your personal view. Just right-click on a participant and select the pin or unpin option to create the perfect layout for participants. Microsoft has even introduced a way to reduce the number of meetings that go missed with a “missed meeting-add” set of notifications. You will now see a notification in your Teams activity if someone has attempted to add you to a meeting.
Finally, Microsoft is now providing a lightweight meeting join experience for Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. This means that users can quickly and easily jump into Teams Meetings from a range of browsers, with meeting audio delivered through audio conferencing.
What are your favourite updates to Microsoft Teams this month? Join the conversation on social media, or in the comments below!
