Ever since Microsoft announced that they’d be shifting away from Skype for Business to focus on their flagship communications product “Microsoft Teams”, the company has rolled out countless new features and updates. After a productive April, we’ve moved into May with yet another stream of developments taking place within the app, designed to help people communicate and collaborate more efficiently in the workplace. Microsoft’s “Tech Community” page has rolled out a blog explaining the latest updates.
For instance, users can now send messages directly from their command box by typing the ‘@’ symbol and someone’s name into the top of their screen. You can also send chat messages from a person’s contact card, and dial into our out of a group call. All these features are helping to make Teams a more unified solution for communication and collaboration as companies migrate away from Skype for Business.
Updates to Collaboration Tools
Aside from the updates to the communication tools mentioned above, Microsoft is also introducing additional support for collaboration features too. For instance, you can get a reminder sent to your Teams application that tells you your team is expiring in the next 30 days, so you can proactively renew before you lose your resource.
Users also have the option to auto-favourite their most important channels. Doing this ensures that the channel automatically shows up in the favourites section for every team member, making it easier for them to discover and use that channel.
For organisation, there are new updates to the UI of Microsoft Planner, designed to help the system integrate seamlessly into Teams. Using the “schedule” view, customers can get an overview of their upcoming tasks, and drag and drop them into the right dates. In the “Charts” view, they can check on the status of their plans.
What’s more, with the Group by, and “Filter by” options, users can group tasks by titles like “Progress”, “Assigned to” and “Due date” to make managing projects easier.
SharePoint and IT Admin Updates
Microsoft has also added a range of SharePoint updates into the mix which allows users to access their SharePoint component to place important tabs, articles, and pages into their own channel. This ensures that people can interact with these data-driven pages within their Teams workflow. Users can also bring their SharePoint news into team discussions with the “SharePoint News Connector”, wherein each article generates a new thread in a Microsoft Teams channel automatically.
For IT administrators, Microsoft has also announced the new “Admin Centre” to support Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business. This centre provides users with a simple unified experience for managing the Skype for Business and Teams dashboard, with features like call quality insights and call analytics. The portal gives admins the additional insights and functionality they need to enhance their Teams performance.
Microsoft Teams App Updates
Finally, Microsoft has unveiled a range of updates to the Microsoft Teams Android and iOS apps. For instance, you can now:
- Request a call to your phone from Teams to help you connect to meetings
- Dial into meetings with your phone connection
- Share PowerPoint files from your phone into a meeting
- Turn a 1:1 call into a group call
- Create teams from your phone with Teams EDU for students and teachers
As part of their update on smartphone apps, Microsoft also announced that the Windows Phone app for Microsoft Teams will be retired on the 20th of May this year. Though Microsoft claims to support Windows 10 Mobile, they will not be building any additional features for it and will be focusing their efforts on Android and iOS instead.
