** 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.
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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.
