There have been plenty of new releases within the Microsoft Teams ecosystem in October.
Microsoft Teams has announced updates across meetings, calling, certified devices, chat and collaboration, custom development, analytics, frontline workers and education, and government
Microsoft Ignite was the talk of October with Microsoft Places unveiled, a new Teams premium package, Teams meetings available on Cisco meetings devices, and more. You can view our Ignite 2022 news round-up for an overview of the latest additions to Teams.
Teams Meetings
Meetings organisers can now assign seats in Together mode, helping to virtual meetings to feel more like in-person meetings.
Users are able to pop out shared meeting content in a separate window, allowing them to view both meeting participants and shared content at the same time. Previously, only individual Teams chat, meeting, and calling could be popped out into a separate window.
Live captions for Teams have been introduced to provide real-time translation from 40 languages, enabling participants to read captions in a language of their choosing. The new captions feature will be available for all customers. When Teams Premium is available, however, users will need a Microsoft Teams Premium license to access the feature. It only requires the meeting organiser to have Teams Premium in order for all meeting attendees to be able to use live translated captions.
Companion mode for Android mobile Teams users has been updated to provide in-room attendees with access to chat, live reactions, Microsoft Whiteboards, and other engagement features. Other updates include making it easier to access meeting and device controls and a single tap to join a meeting on user devices and Microsoft Teams Room. Users can also now enjoy easy access to chat, participant list, live reaction, and raise hands, as well as automatic audio switch-off to avoid an echo.
Teams Calling
A new detailed call history is being implemented to display how calls arrived if they were forwarded or transferred, and what happened when they were received.
Creation of Contact Groups has been made available via the Calls App. Users can create new groups and edit existing group memberships.
Teams Certified Devices
The Crestron Flex Display has been certified for Teams. It is a conferencing companion for Teams-based collaboration, providing access to channels, calendars, chats, files, and more Teams features.
The Sony YY2969 Earbuds have been certified for Teams. The headphones have been designed for multi-tasking and on-the-go work, and they include features such as receiving calls, joining a meeting and raising hands in Teams meetings.
The Neat Frame has also been certified for Teams. The portable, portrait, personal video device pairs with laptops and desktops. It caters to various environments like home, the office, focus pods, and hot desks. Users can sign into Teams using a Neat Fram and connect their files, chats, and calendar.
Teams Chat and Collaboration
Microsoft Teams templates are being combined with SharePoint site templates. If users create a new team using default templates, such as the Manage a Project template, the related channels, apps, and SharePoint template is automatically applied.
Currently in public preview, Adobe Acrobat can be set as the default app in the Teams admin centre, giving admins the ability to view and edit PDF files in Teams. End-users will be able to interact with PDF files without needing an Adobe Acrobat subscription or ID.
Suggested responses can be selected with a single click to incoming messages in group chats. This feature uses machine learning to generate suggested replies based on the context of the conversation.
Video clips can be created to help users express themselves more effectively. The video can be easily created by making a short recording, choosing the length of the video clip and pressing send. Recipients can reply with a chat message or their own video clip. This feature will be generally available in public preview for mobile by the end of the year.
Files can be deleted or renamed in a channel and in a OneDrive folder on Teams. To rename or delete a file, find the file you want, click on the three dots and then select whether to delete or rename it.
Users will be able to pop out an existing meeting in the Teams calendar via the pop-up icon in the scheduling form. This enables users to view meetings in separate windows while retaining access to chats and files without switching applications.
Teams Custom Development
Admins can now manage and view all third-party app subscriptions in a single place which they have purchased via the Teams Admin Center. They can add more licenses, cancel, upgrade or downgrade, and access invoices.
App updates are being simplified and made more transparent with users now only needing to approve an update one time per application.
Teams VoIP one-on-one and group calls will support tabs, meeting stage, in-meeting dialogue, bots, and other meeting app functionalities.
Users can view a preview card when a link unfurls, whether or not they have installed the app.
Teams Analytics
The Teams admin centre usage reports and end-user analytics have received updates with the same data source as Microsoft 365 Admin Center Teams usage reports.
Data consistency will be brought across individual usage metrics, end-user analytics in Teams, and Graph APIs. Teams admin centre usage reports and end-user analytics will have 180 days of aggregated metrics. The Teams app usage report will include a greater number of reporting metrics, usage Line of business applications, and data quality fixes for reported metrics.
Team App and Teams team usage reports will be visible in the Teams admin centre and the Microsoft 365 admin centre. The Teams user activity report and Team usage report are also being updated to include usage metrics related to shared channels.
New enhancements to the Teams app usage report include support for Line of Business (LoB) apps, enhanced quality of reported metrics, Tenant level install trend, 3P and LoB apps, and tenant-wide usage of Microsoft. These will help admins to measure and categorise the usage of the Teams app throughout the organisation.
Teams Frontline Workers and Education
Approval creators will be able to save an approval request to PDF, print it and transfer it. This makes it easier to transfer the approvals between systems or store them as a hard copy.
List users will be able to create and manage approval requests from within SharePoint Lists.
For approvals assigned to a tag, when the approval request has been submitted, the tag will expand and be sent to the correct members.
Tasks will support rich text in the notes field, allowing users to add detailed instructions using rich formatting, such as bold, underline, bullet point, and hyperlinks.
AI-based Student Support spotlight in Education Insights enables teachers to provide improved support for their students to prevent them from falling behind.
Teams Government
Enhancements to app usage reports with support for Line of Business apps are being rolled out to US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defense (DoD).
Music on hold for VoIP calls, call transfers, and consultative transfers are being made available for GCC, GCC-High, and DoD.
Live Share SDK support for meeting extensions, which enables collaboration features, media synchronisation, co-watching videos, inking, cursors, and more, is being rolled out for GCC, GCC-High, and DoD.
Text predictions for Teams mobile will be available for GCC, GCC-High, and DoD.
Teams Connectors, supporting webhook integrations, will be available in GCC.
The Firefox browser can be used to extend outgoing screen-sharing capabilities in Teams by GCC, GCC-High, and DoD.
The companion mode in Team mobile for Android users has been updated to provide attendees with access to engagement features. It is being made easier to access meeting and device controls, and there are also improvements to companion mode which will improve hybrid meetings. These will be made available for GCC, GCC-High, and DoD.
Last month, Microsoft also released its quarterly earnings results, which included positive signals about the growth of Teams PSTN numbers.
In case you missed it, the previous Teams news round-up was a two-in-one August and September update.
