A new Microsoft Teams Premium package will be available in preview this December.
The latest Teams Premium packaging follows the rebranding and price hike on its Teams Rooms packages.
Teams Premium will provide “more personalised, intelligent and secure” meetings. Including one-to-one meetings, virtual appointments and webinars.
Microsoft revealed the news, along with many other updates and releases, at its Microsoft Ignite 2022 annual conference.
Nicole Herskowitz, Vice President of Microsoft Teams, said: “Virtual and hybrid meetings continue to take up the lion’s share of time spent at work.
“Now, more than ever, leaders need an integrated solution that combines all the advanced meeting capabilities, takes meeting culture to the next level, and allows them to do more with less.
“Today, I’m excited to announce Microsoft Teams Premium. Built on the familiar, all-in-one collaboration experience of Microsoft Teams, this new offering makes every meeting from one-on-ones to large meetings, to virtual appointments to webinars more personalized, intelligent, and secure.
“Unlike the disconnected experience and costs of multiple point products or add-ons, with Teams Premium you get everything you need for just one low price.
“Personalised” Premium Features
Meeting guides will enable users to select the appropriate meeting type. Guides can be managed and customised by IT, which allows employees to choose a guide, such as brainstorming meetings or initiating client calls, with pre-set options to speed up the process.
Meeting experiences can be branded with personalised backgrounds and logos with customisable scenes for Together mode to incorporate businesses’ branding into virtual experiences.
“Intelligent” Premium Features
Intelligent recaps will provide users with customised highlights from meetings to see the most important information. This allows users who may not have taken part in a meeting to still be able to catch up.
Compared by Microsoft to a virtual assistant, AI-generated tasks prevent action items from being missed by automatically assigning tasks from meetings.
Intelligent playback auto-generates chapters to make it easy to search through and process Teams meeting recordings.
Insights record key moments from meetings, such as users joining or exiting, a screen being shared, or a specific user mention.
Intelligent search makes it easier to search through transcripts with suggested speakers personalised for the reader to make it easier to find the information they need.
Caption translations will be available in 40 spoken languages in real-time using AI. This will help to create more inclusive meetings with fewer language barriers.
“Secure” Premium Features
Advanced meeting protection will enable businesses to secure confidential meetings, including financial discussions, board meetings, or product launch discussions.
New meeting options, such as limiting who has recording permissions, enable users to acquire extra protections to keep the conversations private.
Microsoft 365 E5 customers have the greatest security requirements and can use Microsoft Purview Information Protection labels to add meeting protections.
Business to Consumer (B2C) Features
Advanced webinars allow users to increase their engagement with internal and external audiences. As well as the webinar functionality in Office 365 and Microsoft 365, advanced webinars in Teams Premium will have virtual green rooms for hosts who will be able to decide what attendees can see, automated reminder emails, and a registration waitlist with manual approvals.
Advanced virtual appointments for B2C interactions will enable users to manage end-to-end appointments, including branded lobbies, pre-appointment SMS reminders, and post-appointment follow-ups. Scheduled and on-demand appointments, an overview of appointments, and pre-appointment chat capabilities.
Following the initial rollout of Teams Premium in preview in December 2022, it will become generally available in February 2023. New AI features will be rolled out in the first half of 2023.
Microsoft has shared the expected list price as being $10 per user per month. The official pricing will be released when the package becomes generally available, at which time the pricing per currency and programs will also be revealed.
Click here to view all the Microsoft Teams news from Ignite 2022. You can also check out all the Microsoft Teams news from Ignite last year.
