In this episode which is similar to Episode 36 & Episode 57, we cover a massive amount of features in Microsoft Teams that have been launched, rolling out or announced in the past 90 days. We've pulled all this information from Office 365 message center, Microsoft Tech community, Office 365 Roadmap with Teams filter.
New End User Functionality
Microsoft Lists in Teams
Microsoft Lists is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize your work.
Track issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more using customizable views and smart rules and alerts to keep everyone in sync.
This is brand new so not yet released but will be interesting to see where it plays well with respect to Planner and To Do.
Updated Feature: Invite a group or distribution list to a Teams meeting – previously you needed to do this in Outlook but now available when scheduling a meeting in Teams client.
Microsoft Teams support for Egnyte as a Third party which is cloud storage provider that do secure enterprise file sharing
Screen recording available in Microsoft Stream – create up to 15 minute videos using your mic and PC in Stream and then trim and publish the video. Edge and Chrome are supported for now.
Microsoft Teams - Increasing team membership limit to 10K from 5K. Just a note that Org wide teams still only support 5k users
Inline Edit Toggle for OneNote in Teams – you now edit OneNote content just like can a word or excel file in Teams.
Contextual search is coming to Teams – this is great as it allows you to do a (Ctrl F) to search for content within a specific channel now.
Last but not least, MS is releasing a change that allows you to set a policy where you can force users in Islands Mode to only have the Teams Outlook Addin available to them forcing them to schedule all meetings in Teams.
Personal Apps available in Teams mobile client
Feature Update: Reverse number lookup in activity feed, call history, and voicemail
Option to create all meetings online for Outlook on the web and Outlook mobile
(Updated) New Feature: Teams/Skype Consumer chat and calling interop
New Teams meeting setting - require meeting participants to use the lobby
Feature Update: Teams meeting call and meeting chat size to increase to 300
Office 365 Groups will become Microsoft 365 Groups
Manage which accounts can log in to Teams via enrolled mobile devices
Making it easier to build and publish apps - Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code Extension for Teams
App Studio Update (v1.4.0)
With the latest update (v1.4.0), App Studio now has new enhancements such as, support for app manifest schema 1.6, “advanced section” in app details to easily support advanced features, app package validation tool to run tests that extend outside
Bringing low-code bots to Teams, with Power Virtual Agents
Simplified Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents “Add to Teams”
Enhanced workflow automation with Power Automate + Teams
New Shifts + Power Automate actions
Improved Power BI sharing to Teams
Activity feed notifications for apps
Granular Permissions
Mobile device capability for apps
New Microsoft Graph APIs for subscribing to notifications for new app messages
New Teams Graph APIs in v1.0
Graph APIs for Shifts
Management
New Feature: Microsoft Teams room management within Teams Admin Center
Call Quality Dashboard (CQD) V2 data to be retired
General availability of automatic classification with sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365 services
Improving IT Admins’ ability to manage apps
New 3rd party subscription purchase experience
Grant Consent to Graph API Permissions
New controls to enhance the Teams app discoverability experience
In this episode, the team discusses our lives during the past 2 weeks and our experiences supporting remote workers. Additionally, Microsoft Teams has been incurring additional load, listen in on what services and features have been throttled down temporarily.
Chat read receipts disabled in some regions, huge load on chat backend service
Azure voicemail Service - not playing greetings at times
Call Queues and Auto Attendants failing to receive calls
To best support our Microsoft 365 customers worldwide and accommodate new growth and demand during these unprecedented times, we're making temporary adjustments to select non-essential capabilities. We do not expect these changes to have a significant impact on the end-users experience but wanted to make you aware.
Examples of changes we may make include:
How often we check for presence
The interval in which we show when the other party is typing
Video resolution
OneNote:
OneNote in Teams will be read-only for commercial tenants, excluding EDU. Users can go to OneNote for the web for editing.
Download size and sync frequency of file attachments has been changed.
We are rescheduling specific backend operations to regional evening and weekend business hours. Impacted capabilities include migration, DLP and delays in file management after uploading a new file, video or image.
Reduced video resolution for playback videos.
Stream:
People timeline has been disabled for newly uploaded videos. Pre-existing videos will not be impacted.
Meeting recording video resolution adjusted to 720p
In this episode, the teams talks about the guidance for remote workers during Covid-19 and beyond. Check out our discussion on the guidance and how our home remote sessions are setup.
Microsoft has made Teams available at no cost for 6 months
If you work for a business that isn’t currently licensed for Teams, we’ve got you covered with a free Office 365 E1 offer for six months. Contact your Microsoft partner or sales representative to get started today. (Note: the same offer is available in the Government Cloud, but not available in GCC High and the Department of Defense.)
If you work in education and want to set up teachers, students, and administrators on Teams, use Office 365 A1. This free version of Office 365 is available to all educational institutions. Sign up by following this link.
For Individual Workers
Home Office Etiquette
mute landlines or mobile ringers if your mic is going to be one
tell people in your house you are going on a call if you will have your mic on!
Lighting – play with different lighting to optimize your video. Lamps behind the camera. Try to minimize light behind you.
Minimize Distractions near you (tv, radio, others talking if possible)
This proof of concept (POC) tool runs tests that allow providing specific guidance about networking connectivity improvements that can be made between a user location to Office 365
will show your nearest ingress & egress point into Office 365 and
measures speed from your home desktop to O365 front-door
Resolving issues
If you have WiFi issues – look at moving to your main device to WIRED (laptop or desktop)
Sometimes a network router reboot is best
Use the online tools to find out where the issue is (your router, your ISP connection)
Firewall setup? Reboot Router can fix issues sometimes
Media - Audio and Video Guidance
Use a certified Teams (of SfB) device if possible. Certified USB wired headsets start at $42 Cdn so not terribly expensive
Try not to use Computer Mic and speakers as they are known to cause a poor audio experience for all other users in the meeting.
Most built in web cams on laptops or notebooks work well for video. If you have a home office for work you might consider a dedicated webcam that sits on top of your monitor or on a tripod.
Turn on your video if possible - The use of video repeatedly shows it increases the collaboration experience amongst co-workers
Don't force video upon people but suggest it if possible. Understand that it might not be appropriate at times. I.e. Children are home from school
TEST Audio and Video BEFORE YOU JOIN!
Teams Test Call Feature – allows you to record your voice and will play it back for you to hear how it would sound for others when you are in an actual call
In Teams goto Devices > Video to see what your Video Quality looks like – best to try and have camera level or just above your head.
In this episode which is similar to Episode 36, we cover a massive amount of features in Microsoft Teams that have been launched, rolling out or announced in the past 90 days. We've pulled all this information from Office 365 message center, Microsoft Tech community, Office 365 Roadmap with Teams filter.
Here are a list of features covered:
End-user
Read receipts
User Pin Apps, pin channels
Enhanced scheduling experience in Teams
Meeting Notification settings
Live Captions
Presenter and attendee controls
New Files experience
Teams conversation to Outlook
Tags in Teams (march)
Voice/Devices
Dial plans, emergency address, Dynamic emergency calling, updated AA & CQ in Admin Center
New device ThinkSmart View (collaboration bars have hdmi out, this doesn't)
Poly CCX
Administration
Chrome 80 issues
GA Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics Power BI (12 months)
Colleague joined teams notification
Policy Packages for EDU and Health (health released today)
In this episode, the team talks about the various ways to stay updated during a Microsoft 365 outage and service disruption. See below for reference links, documentation and twitter handles to follow.