Microsoft has welcomed us all into the new year of 2021 in style, with a host of new features designed to give you more out of your work and collaboration experience. The latest selection of enhancements covers everything from meeting notifications to live event real-time language translation, and new security enhancements too.
If you’re already checked out the new Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms experience for virtual meetings and you’re keen to check out more 2021 features, here’s what you can expect.
Microsoft Teams Meeting and Calling
Microsoft Teams now has new end-of-meeting notifications that remind you when there are five minutes left on your scheduled meeting time. This notification appears for 10 seconds and disappears, helping you stay on track and wrap up fast without causing the meeting to end automatically.
There’s also a new pre-join experience for Teams Meetings that enables easier video, audio, and device configuration before a conversation. You can easily adjust all of your settings in the pre-join environment. Additionally, Microsoft is also supporting new languages for real-time event translation. You can translate Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French Canadian, Spanish Mexican and a host of other languages too. There’s up to 50 translation languages available.
Up to June 30th, 2021, Microsoft will also continue to support customers with live event limit increases. Events can host up to 20,000 attendees, and companies can run up to 50 events simultaneously on one tenant. There’s also an event duration limit of up to 16 hours per broadcast. Events for up to 100,000 attendees are available through the live events program.
Microsoft has introduced multiple number dialling with a split button in the chat header for video and audio. This will display various number options for a single contact, making it easier to initiate a call. There’s also the arrival of 1:1 call live captions to look forward to.
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Multiple Number Dialling[/caption]
These captions, available to enable or disable with admin access, make it easier to keep track of what people are saying in calls.
Microsoft Teams Devices
There are new features rolling out for Microsoft Teams Rooms for Windows devices this year too. The latest app version (now available in the Admin centre) comes with:
- Cortana voice assistant (in preview): Available to create, join, and end meetings without touching the Teams app.
- Control spotlight: Control the meeting Spotlight feature with the Teams Rooms console
- Share HDMI audio: Users connecting to Rooms via HDMI can share PC audio in the meeting
- Enhanced Teams phones: Phones for Microsoft Teams now have new video layout options, including 3x3 gallery mode, large gallery view (up to 49 participants) and Together mode
- Proximity join: Conference phones equipped with Microsoft Teams will now support proximity-based meeting join using the BLE beacon transmitted by the phone
- UC workstation factors with Audiocodes and Yealink: Yealink recently introduced the WH67 and WH66 unified communications workstations with a wireless phone charger, USB hub, speakerphone, and multi-touch screen, as well as a dedicated Teams button. Yealink’s MP58 deskphone also comes with collaboration features like a 7-inch touchscreen and support for Bluetooth wireless handsets. The Audiocodes C470 Teams desk phone is another new addition, with a full touch interface, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth support
Microsoft Teams Chat and Collaboration
One of the most recent updates to the Microsoft Teams collaboration and chat features is the arrival of improved search relevance. The new relevance model allows Teams to learn the important elements of messages that matter to you based on passive and active signals, including who you interact with most.
The Teams iOS mobile app allows access to files when you’re offline or in bad network conditions now. Just select the files you need to keep handy, and Teams will maintain a downloaded version for you. Microsoft also announced improvements to video playbacks, with a sec25% reduction in the time it takes for embedded videos to load, and a 90% reduction in the time it takes to start playing.
Yammer communities and conversations are also getting an update in Teams. You can search for conversations in the Communities app and add a tab with Yammer styling in your channels. Additionally, Microsoft updated the “add a team to site” functionality in SharePoint. The enhanced wizard allows people to use SharePoint team site pages with dynamic web parts as dashboards for content, including links, news, pages, and group activity.
Team members can also access the SharePoint tab to pin any news, page, list, or document library separately within their Teams channel. Clicking the “+” option will allow users to start pinning resources instantly. Plus, the SharePoint migration manager now allows users to select OneDrive or Teams Channel usernames when setting destinations for content migration.
Microsoft Teams Apps, Security and Management
The integration between Microsoft Teams and Power Apps helps organisations to build apps suitable for any business channel. The Power Apps Teams App will allow users to develop low-code custom tools to use in Teams, and deploy them across their entire tenant, backed with Dataverse. When celebrating the new app development features, Microsoft drew attention to the Yasoon Smart Connect Jira app, that offers cross-tool conversational support for Teams users.
From a management perspective, businesses will now have the option to restrict Teams sign-in for managed Mac and Windows devices. This stops employees to sign into another tenant using the credentials of the other tenant from the device they use for work. There’s also the option to manage Teams Display as one of the device categories within the Teams admin centre
