This year, at Microsoft’s thrilling “Ignite” conference back in late September, the company demonstrated their commitment to making Teams the most popular collaboration tool around. Microsoft announced that now 329,000 organisations are using Teams, including 87 of the Fortune 100. To celebrate the success of Microsoft Teams, and keep the application rolling in the right direction, Microsoft unleashed endless new updates including:
- Screen sharing during private chat
- Immersive reader for the chat tool
- Calling plans for everyone who is VoIP-enabled
- Access to Yammer through Teams
- Enhanced Developer Tools
- Deeper integration with Microsoft Graph
- SharePoint and Teams Integration
- Range of new Microsoft Teams Certification courses
- New Surface Hub 2
Here are just some of the most significant updates coming to Teams:
New Productivity Tools for Microsoft Teams
Microsoft revealed at Ignite that they wanted to make Teams a tool explicitly designed to promote more productive workforces. This meant giving people more support through every stage of the meeting experience. Major announcements for productivity included:
- Background blur for your video meetings and conferences
- Meeting recordings so that people who missed the conference can easily play back content from earlier
- Cloud video interoperability through partner offerings from BlueJeans, Polycom and Pexip
All that, and Microsoft is making the everyday meeting more secure with Data Loss Prevention in teams to ensure that administrators can monitor staff productivity and protect sensitive information.
New Support for First-Line Workers
Microsoft wants to ensure that anyone can have an unforgettable Teams experience. That means empowering people in a variety of different roles. For the first-line worker community, Microsoft announced the new “Home” and “Shifts” settings for Teams.
Home allows firstline workers to see the most essential information for their team at a glance on their Microsoft Teams dashboard. Alternatively, Shifts ensures that firstline managers can plan schedules for employees and update and distribute schedules to groups on the move. Home and Shift features will be coming to Teams soon, replacing the Microsoft “StaffHub” service.
What’s more, any admin will now have more control over their team environments directly from the Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business Admin Centre. The system now provides options to manage memberships, remove channels, and change settings all from a single environment.
New Compliance Options
Finally, for companies with specific compliance and security needs, Microsoft also announced the release of two new security features for messaging in healthcare. Image annotation and priority notifications are HIPAA compliant and designed to support clinicians dealing with patients on-the-go.
Image annotation captures images in a secure platform and allows experts to work together on those details, without having to worry about dealing with private data. Alternatively, priority notifications keep recipients up-to-date on urgent messages.
Additionally, Microsoft revealed that they’re expanding their device portfolio to ensure that you can bring Teams to all of your devices, no matter where you are. Just some of the partnerships Microsoft is supporting include Jabra, HP, AudioCodes, Lenovo, Crestron, Plantronics, Polycom, Logitech, Yealink, and more.
