Since February 2020, things as we knew it, have never been quite the same. That's around the time most of the world went into lockdown to combat the spread of the novel Coronavirus. This forced massive shifts in every way, shape, and form imaginable for businesses, especially for those that found themselves without a contingency plan. From the early months of 2020, it was clear, business resiliency and continuity would enter the mainstream vernacular. And the enterprises that had plans in place, as well as organizations that already enabled hybrid or full-time work from home options - likely stayed afloat.
Other categories of businesses include those that refused to get with the program and folded due to the pressures of refusing to migrate critical collaboration and other workplace communications to the cloud for purposes such as scale, ease-of-use, deployment, and self-service options - the list goes on. Nicole Herskowitz, Microsoft Teams, General Manager, said:
"During the response to the pandemic, many organizations leveraged group meetings first, this is evident by Microsoft Teams reaching 200 million participants in a single day during the pandemic"
Microsoft's spent time preparing for scale, which requires both structure and admin control, to achieve a proper user experience. "We're excited to announce a new Advanced Communications set of capabilities to support scaling Teams up to 20,000 participants." The collaboration giant said, when building this capability, it focused on the meeting experience, adding in a statement, "We wanted to make sure that even as the meeting scales it is still easy to manage and listen to the speakers." As such, they've limited the size of interactive meetings participants to 1,000 participants, telling me there's "A seamless shift to a ‘view only’ mode after the limit's met."
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Nicole Herskowitz[/caption]
Enhanced admin control, another new and helpful feature out by Microsoft Teams. The feature could add more structure to your meetings, enabling the company’s branding on meetings. In the coming months, you can even brand your meeting lobby. At a later date, users can extend their branding to the core meeting experience," I'm told. You'll also be able to integrate popular with business apps to manage (at scale) and automate formerly-manual workflows. If you have an Advanced Communications plan for Microsoft Teams, you can add to any Microsoft 365 or Office 365 paid subscription, an offering now available. There's even a free 60-day trial via the Teams Admin Center or on the Microsoft Teams website in mid-August.
Microsoft introduced a fresh new device called Microsoft Teams displays, a dedicated Teams end-point with an ambient touch screen, high-quality calling, and video, along with a hands-free Cortana experience. Harnessing the power of built-in Cortana, the Lenovo ThinkSmart View and Yealink will deliver Microsoft's first-ever Teams displays in the US, later this year, a spokesperson for Microsoft shared. The collaboration giant too announced extended support for Skype for Business (3PIP) phones beyond 2023, so those won't retire in July 2021. "Users can continue to use existing Skype for Business phones as they move to Teams." Microsoft Teams will soon support core calling features on SIP phones from Cisco, Yealink, Polycom, and others via Teams. SIP support's set for availability during the first half of 2021.
There's even a new line of Microsoft Teams phones with physical buttons, high-quality audio, and core calling features. AudioCodes, Poly, and Yealink, will introduce devices starting early in 2021. The company's portfolio now includes new USB peripherals with dial pads and a Microsoft Teams user interface. The USB phones work out-of-the-box, feature a Teams button, and can connect with both PCs and Macs, resulting in a high-quality Teams audio experience. "These will be available in late 2020, the first of which will get shipped with Yealink," Microsoft said in a statement.
