The 45 New Features Arriving to Microsoft Teams
Many updates to various Microsoft products were announced this year at Microsoft Build 2023, with Microsoft Teams seeing the addition of 45 new features! Let’s go over some of the most noteworthy recent enhancements to the leading collaboration platform.
Spatial Audio
One noteworthy Microsoft Teams update is an upgraded audio experience in meetings. Spatial audio will spatialize the voices of attendees across the visual meeting stage in gallery view to make conversations sound more natural, increase the sense of audio presence, and make conversations easier to follow when multiple people are speaking simultaneously.
Together Mode
Together mode in meetings is seeing new usability improvements, including name labels with status icons like microphone, active speaker, and spotlight, raised hands and reactions within the together mode view, and removing users’ own video from the gallery to prevent duplication of the self-preview. These updates are designed to make Microsoft Teams together mode easier to understand.
Meeting Captions
When in a Teams meeting with captions turned on, users will now have the ability to customize the size and color of the font, the height and position of the caption window, and the option to scroll and review captions from up to 1 minute prior. By optimizing the provided captions, this update should make it easier to follow along in meetings.
External Call Routing
Microsoft Teams admins will now be able to help minimize distractions for users by setting up different routing settings for calls from authorized users in Microsoft Teams Phone. Through Teams admin center, admins will have the option to either allow all incoming calls, redirect calls to voicemail, or let users decide what to do with unanswered calls.
Activity Feed
A simple but efficient Microsoft Teams update, all items in activity feeds will now be able to be marked as read all at once. This will help users save time as they will no longer need to mark each notification or unread message as read one by one, especially if some of the messages from chats, channels, or meetings are no longer relevant.
Work Location
Users will have the flexibility to easily change their work location for the day in Microsoft Teams, without impacting the rest of their week. For example, if a user decides to work from home in the afternoon after spending the morning at the office, they will be able to switch their location from any device and Scheduling Assistant in Outlook will reflect their updated location.
Teams Security
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 will provide enhanced security and protection for Microsoft Teams, including automatic remediation of malicious entities and support for end user reporting. In addition to this, Teams-specific insights will be included in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal, so security teams can gain a clear view into Microsoft Teams security.
Collaborative Stage View
Available in public developer preview on the Teams desktop app, Collaborative Stage View will allow users to open and view app content inside a new Teams window, while having meaningful collaboration from the same window. Collaborate Stage View is designed to improve user engagement with the Teams app by unlocking multi-tasking scenarios.
App Search
Significant improvements are being made to the Microsoft Teams App Store to make it easier for users to discover apps to enhance their Teams experience. Users will be provided with a more accurate and comprehensive search experience, with the support for additional keywords specified in the app description, app name, publisher name and additional app metadata.
Distribution Lists
Previously, if your Teams lobby policy was set to only allow invited users to webinars and events, and you had a distribution list, only the first 1000 users from that list were recognized and let through the lobby, and the rest were placed in the lobby. Now, up to 10,000 users from a distribution list can be recognized and let through the lobby into your webinar/event.
Learn More About Microsoft Updates
Microsoft unveiled updates to most of their products recently, and this list is only a brief overview of a few updates we found noteworthy for Microsoft Teams specifically. To learn more about how you can leverage these Microsoft Teams updates to improve internal communications, and other updates across the Microsoft ecosystem, get in touch with our digital workplace experts today.
