Earlier today Microsoft hosted a Microsoft Teams feature round up during their Enterprise Connect conference in Florida, and also celebrated the second anniversary of the Teams worldwide launch.
Lori Wright, the GM of Microsoft 365, and a number of other key Microsoft personnel used this occasion to provide an update on what’s new and great in Microsoft Teams. And I’d like to use this vNext IQ blog post to provide an update on what’s being released for Teams in the near future.
One of the most requested features in Teams Chat was the ability to create Secure Private Channels. And Microsoft has listened to their users and will allow you to limit which team members can see conversation and content within a specific channel, without the need to spin up a whole new team, later this year.
Also, a related chat feature – Information Barriers – will be released shortly. Using this feature, you can limit which individuals can communicate and collaborate with each other in Teams. Think ethical walls and related scenarios where different employee groups should not collaborate with each other for compliance reasons.
The new Teams Calendar App will be released next month and provides an overview of your daily or weekly meetings, just like you’re used to in Outlook. You’ll be able to Join, RSVP or Edit meetings from within the Teams client, and you’ll even be able to start a Teams instant message conversation with the invited participants by right-clicking the calendar entry.
A number of new features were presented for Teams Meetings: Live Captions can make meetings more inclusive for attendees with hearing difficulties or different levels of language proficiency. Coming soon as a public preview for English, this feature will allow attendees to turn on captions (aka sub-titles) in real time.
Blurring a background to focus on the speaker has been in the Teams client for a while now, but soon you will also be able to choose a custom background for your camera view.
Microsoft has also added the highly anticipated Whiteboard feature to Teams. You can use the whiteboard from desktop, web and soon mobile clients, and it will enable you to use rich collaboration features. An amazing technology called Ink Grab will transform analog content from a traditional whiteboard into a Teams digital ink whiteboard. Even if someone is standing in front of the physical whiteboard, the Microsoft Teams Rooms content cameras and intelligent capture will turn that person translucent so you never lose track of what your colleagues are adding to the whiteboard.
Last not least, an update on the multitude of new Teams Meeting Devices and related peripherals was provided, including the ability to host AudioCodes Virtualized SBCs in the Azure cloud.
You can view the full recording here: http://msft.social/si0dwb.