Boasting more than 145 million daily active users, Microsoft Teams is well on the way to achieving its goal if being the number one tool for team collaboration. Over the last year and a half, countless companies have made the shift to Teams as their number one solution for keeping people connected, and Microsoft wants to ensure that Teams continues to lead the way with powerful innovations.
This year’s Microsoft Inspire event paved the way for revealing various new products, services and experiences for the Teams landscape. From new Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 connections to an exciting “Windows 365” solution, there’s plenty to look forward to this year.
Here’s your overview of the biggest announcements from Microsoft Inspire 2021.
Microsoft Collaborative Apps with Dynamics 365
One of the most exciting new innovations from Microsoft aims to support the future of hybrid work in the modern landscape. According to Microsoft, the future of work requires a new class of apps to enrich the way we interact. These “collaborative apps”, as Microsoft calls them, prevent an incredible opportunity for new productivity and efficiency in the workforce.
Going forward, Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 will work more seamlessly together to deliver new ways for everyone in an organisation to seamlessly capture and exchange ideas in the follow of the workday. Microsoft also removed the licensing tax that would otherwise make this integration harder to access.
Dynamics 365 users will now be able to invite anyone in their organisation to collaborate on customer records within a Teams channel or chat. Sales teams will even share information on different sales opportunities, customer relationship health, customer history, and more. Users of Dynamics 365 will also be able to add Teams meetings when creating appointments, allowing access to information within a Teams call.
Users will even be able to capture notes directly within the Teams call, which is saved automatically within the timeline of the Dynamics 365 record.
Connected Workflows and Collaborative Apps
As more employees come together to collaborate on records, it’s important for stakeholders to know when colleagues make key changes as they occur. Automatic notifications keep stakeholders aware of updates, and users can select specific channels and chats through which notifications can be sent. The new integrated experience between Teams and Dynamics 365 is just the beginning.
Microsoft also used Inspire as a platform to announce a new host of independent software vendor apps from companies like SAP Sales Cloud, Atlassian Confluence, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Workday. ISVs will also soon have the option to sell apps directly in Teams, offering new opportunities and providing simplified experiences for IT admins to purchase subscriptions and apps from the Teams admin centre directly.
Introducing Windows 365 Cloud PC
It’s not just workflows and collaborative apps making a major difference to the Microsoft ecosystem. According to the Microsoft workforce, PCs play a crucial role in keeping people connected while they work and learn. Microsoft recently introduced Windows 11 to update the PC experience. At Inspire, they revealed Windows 365, a new cloud service which changes the way users experience Windows.
The solution will give users the ability to connect data, apps, and settings from any endpoint and device. This will create a new Cloud PC category, which uses the power of the cloud and device capabilities for a more personalised experience.
Windows 365 will allow users to log into their solution from any device, with an instant-on booting experience from any environment. You can pick up from wherever you left off, no matter which device you’re using. This functionality will also allow companies to provision Cloud PCs in minutes without any virtualisation experiences.
