From all your emojis and GIFs in one handy place to live translated captions and more immersive meetings, Microsoft is spoiling us with its latest round of Teams updates.
Fresh from reports of its hugely successful Q4, take a look at everything that’s coming to the platform in August, and a few things expected later on in the year.
New Microsoft Teams Features for August
Admin Policy for Collaborative Annotations to control them for an individual user, a group or entire organization.
AI-based file suggestions in chat giving users the ability to surface files through AI, when it detects the intent to share a file.
Call delegation feature enhancements to allow users to share and switch delegator lines.
An improved search experience in chat and channels helping users to search in a specific chat or channel, with new features like “highlighted keywords” making it easier to scan results.
Channel meeting invitations that give meeting organizers the ability to share invites with the personal calendars of channel members.
Cloud IntelliFrame for Teams Meeting Rooms on Windows creating an immersive and engaging experience for all participants, with enhanced visual and audio features that make remote attendees appear the same as in-room attendees.
Deploy Teams at Scale for frontline workers using Dynamic Teams, ensuring they’re always up to date.
Extended real-time telemetry retention for Premium users, allowing admins to identify and fix quality issues using granular telemetry for up to seven days after a meeting is finished.
Face enrollment on Teams Desktop to support facial recognition and video labels in Teams Rooms on Windows.
Front Row AI enhancements for Teams Rooms on Windows that have Teams-certified stereo speakers with right and left capabilities, aiming to provide a more natural experience, making it feel like remote and in-person participants are together in one room.
Graph API for Teams Meeting Recordings allowing developers access to Teams meeting recordings in an MP4 format once the meeting is finished.
Graph API for Teams Meetings Transcripts allowing access to Teams Meetings transcripts once the meeting is finished.
Intelligent camera support for Teams Rooms on Windows allowing multi-stream video, facial recognition of in-room participants, active speaker recognition, voice-based transcription, and panoramic video.
Third-party meeting access from Teams allowing participants to join a Zoom, Google Meet or other third-party meeting application from inside the Teams calendar.
Microsoft Teams Premium for GCC-H and DoD helping to make meetings more personalized, intelligent, and secure with branded meetings, intelligent recap and search, and live-translated captions.
Live-Translated Captions in Meetings for Android and iOS, bolstering accessibility features but only as part of Teams Premium.
On-demand recordings in Webinars that allow organizers to publish webinar recordings and send automatic emails to attendees so they can watch them.
Proactive monitoring of meeting quality using real-time telemetry for Premium users, allowing admins to define the desired monitoring parameters in TAC, which they can then use to investigate poor meeting quality for users.
QR code to reserve a room on Teams Panels allowing users to book meeting rooms by scanning a QR code on the scheduling panel, using an Android or iOS app.
Teams Rooms Pro Management Insights Report that summarizes issues, remediation steps taken, time savings, and proactively alerts IT to issues before they become a problem.
Unified Fun Picker letting users find emojis, GIFs, and stickers in a single hub.
Coming Later In 2023
There are plenty of features in the works, but these are our top five to watch out for:
Ability for all participants to start collaborative annotations, to be available only in the new Microsoft Teams experience. Expected October 2023.
Collaborative notes on Teams mobile allowing attendees to co-create and collaborate on their meeting agenda, notes, and action items. Expected October 2023.
Mixed grid view in Meetings that places all participants in a 16:9 ratio and gives users the ability to change their grid size to one of the predefined options. Expected October 2023.
The new Microsoft Teams app which will deliver a performance bump up to two times faster while using 50% less memory. Expected October 2023.
Two-way lobby chat in Virtual appointments with an interactive lobby that allows participants to send messages ahead of the meeting. Expected September 2023.
