Microsoft Teams updates - Fall 2021

Have you followed all the latest Microsoft Teams updates? If you feel you have missed something, don’t worry! 

In this article, we have summarized the most important news, including the ones announced during the last Microsoft Ignite 2021, in November. 

CHATS

• Delayed delivery – Soon you will be able to easily schedule messages to be sent when you prefer. This feature will be useful if you write a message and you want it to be delivered at a specific time. 
• Enhanced research – Searching for information in Teams will be (finally- we were all looking forward to it!) faster. Thanks to new results filters and the possibility to toggle between tabs (messages, people, files), you will find what you need in a flash.
• Check people’s time zones – If you are used to collaborating with people based in a different time zone, being certain you are not messing up with meeting invites is not child’s play. The contact form will contain this information, helping you to optimize communication flow by decreasing response time. 
• Chat with self – We know that chatting to yourself may sound strange, but it could be helpful. Soon in Teams, you can have this opportunity to have a secure private chat where you can save quick notes, drafts, ideas, and reminders.

WEBINARS AND MEETINGS

• Role assignation – When organizing a meeting, you will be able to assign people roles, such as presenters and co-organizers, and set who can change meeting options, create polls, and manage breakout rooms. This option can definitely improve the way you o manage online events in Teams.
• Hands-up order tracking – When presenting a webinar or during meetings, it isn’t so easy to understand in which order participants have raised their hand. To overcome this and avoid unpleasant situations, you can soon view the hands-up order to let attendees talk in the right sequence. Moderating Q&A sessions will be easier thanks to this option.
• Intelligent camera capture – Soon what you write on a physical whiteboard or documents can be captured by an intelligent camera and displayed on the screen as a high-quality image during meetings. This will be an interesting mix of the physical spaces and the virtual ones to increase engagement with, for example, hand-made graphics during a live event.
• New avatars experience – Hybrid work is a trend that is here to stay: people will continue to work from different places and for several reasons not everyone likes to turn on the camera during virtual meetings. Microsoft has introduced Mesh for MS Teams, bringing a new generation of 2D and 3D meeting experiences with personalized avatars and immersive spaces. This solution will use artificial intelligence to simulate facial expressions, eye contact, human gestures, achieving to maintain engagement and provide a sense of real presence during events. With Mesh for Microsoft Teams, in addition to this opportunity, you can create a new virtual space, resembling the physical ones, where avatars gather to collaborate and communicate feeling like they are in the same place in the physical world, like sharing documents and presentations on the same multimedia whiteboard in a meeting room .“We allow you to connect with presence and have a shared immersive experience directly in Teams”, said Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft.
• Virtual green room – You can soon create a virtual room in Teams, not accessible to the attendees, where event organizers and presenters can socialize and keep in touch before and during the event. This will improve collaboration and also the organization and management of live events in Teams.
• New attendees experience – While attendees wait for the event to start, it will be possible to set a welcome image and let them use the Q&A chat. Moderators can also review their questions before they are published and they will have the possibility to flag and pin the most relevant ones- together with their respective answers- in the Q&A space to make them more visible to attendees. This will avoid the repetition of similar questions during the event.

COLLABORATION 

• Microsoft Loop – Working together will never be so easy: a new collaborative application will be available soon in Teams to help hybrid work models. This new feature will allow you to quickly create new workplaces with interactive widgets (e.g. tabs, notes, lists) and shared pages to collaborate simultaneously with other people, updating documents in real-time for all users across multiple applications. It will be easy to develop a joint project, with multiple apps data, and keep track of progress in a unique virtual space in Microsoft Teams.
• Teams Connect – This is going to become a new way to improve collaboration with people outside your company: you will have the capability to create a cross-company workplace to share files and channels with up to 50 teams, write documents, and chat also with people outside your organization.

What do you think about these new features? In the meantime stay updated by subscribing to our Newsletter here.