Key Takeaways
- Stay organized in Teams with new chat features like multi-turn conversations with Copilot, custom profile pictures, and hidden channels.
- Take advantage of calendar notifications for meetings, live translated captions for webinars, and more control over Copilot in meetings.
- Teams Phone gets AI voice isolation, call history sharing, and hardware enhancements.
Microsoft adds new features to Teams on a regular basis, which makes sense considering that the online communication and collaboration tool is heavily used in enterprise environments. Last month, the Redmond tech firm introduced a ton of AI-based capabilities in Teams, and now, it has revealed a new set of features for its online communication solution.
What’s new in chat and collaboration?
On the chat and collaboration front, you can enjoy multi-turn conversations with Copilot while maintaining context of the currently discussed topic. Furthermore, you can now hide general channels in order to reduce clutter in your channels list and even set custom profile pictures for groups so that it’s easier to identify conversations on the fly. It’s also interesting to note that if you now select the Attach file option, Teams will automatically surface the top five options. Additionally, you’ll also be able to sign in to Teams through multiple accounts, including government accounts. Lastly, users can now create teams from scratch by default and also use the same menu to create a channel instead.
What about meetings, webinars, and town halls?
Teams users can now see calendar notifications for upcoming meetings in their activity feeds without having to interrupt their current workflow. Teams admins will also have more granular control over how Copilot is leveraged during meetings.
Meanwhile, those who leverage Teams to communicate with large audiences through webinars and town halls will be happy to know that the latter now offers live translated captions in up to six languages for regular customers and up to 10 languages for those with a Teams Premium license. Additionally, people attending a town hall will now see a red dot on the Q&A icon to indicate new activity in this area.
Teams Phone and other hardware got a bunch of enhancements too
Teams Phone enjoyed a lot of attention from Microsoft this month. It netted AI-powered voice isolation, shared call history for call delegation, busy on busy configuration for end users, more incoming call options for Teams Phone Mobile users, and management of call forwarding settings through the device’s home screen. Teams Phone customers can also redirect incoming calls directly to voicemail through the incoming call notification, call on behalf of the call queue, and enforce a device lock.
Source: Microsoft
On the hardware end, the Huddly Crew, Yealink UH35 headset, Dell WL7024 headset, and Bang & Olufsen Cisco 950 MS earbuds are now Teams-certified. In the same vein, the following features are now available on the Teams Rooms and Devices side of the fence:
- Devices store in Teams app
- Require meeting ID and passcode to join a Teams Rooms meeting
- 4K display support for Teams Rooms on Windows
- New Teams available on Teams Rooms on Windows
- Change language in Teams Rooms on Windows
- Meeting chat shown by default in Gallery View for Teams Rooms on Windows
- Home screen refresh for Teams Rooms on Android
- Give feedback for Teams Rooms on Android
- 4K-quality local HDMI content sharing for Teams Rooms on Android
- Automatic device updates via Teams Rooms Pro management
- User reported events in Teams Rooms Pro Management
- Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) meeting rooms admin experience
- Room remote in Teams desktop app available for GCC
That’s not all, though. Microsoft added a ton of features for other niche audiences like frontline workers and IT admins too, you can find out more details in the dedicated blog post here.