Microsoft Teams announcements recap

Microsoft Ignite 2020 recap articles

• Microsoft Teams announcements recap
• SharePoint Online announcements recap
• OneDrive announcements recap
• Stream announcements recap
• Microsoft Search announcements recap
• Adoption enhancements recap

Intro

One word. WOW! Unbelievable how Microsoft brings value and features that will certainly help everyone become more efficient in their day-to-day work. For sure we will have to wait a couple of months before we can put our hands on some of these but there is no doubt that Microsoft’s investment in Teams has become a one-stop-shop apps in our day-to-day collaboration.

You'll have to bare with me, being a francophone living and a french environment my English still needs work.

Try to do my best by doing something a bit different, so I hope you will enjoy it!

Meeting – Breakout Rooms

This long-time waiting feature is coming in October and will let organizers to split in multiple breakout rooms the current meeting. Every breakout room behaves like a normal meeting where you can chat, record, share files and presents.

Feature ID: 65332 / Release date: October CY2020

Here a brief list of what to expect.

• You can create up to 50 breakout rooms and give them a unique names
• Attendees can be assigned manually or automatically
• You can start/end each room individually and give directives or start/end all rooms at once
• When breakout room starts, users are automatically moved to that new meeting.
• When breakout room ends, a warning is sent to users to let them know that the room will close.
• During the meeting breakout room can be reused
• Make an announcement to room.

They also tease us on what is coming later.

• Pre-configure breakout room (organizer and participant view)
• Share breakout room content directly in main meeting
• Assign breakout room by using tag
• Meeting option configurable directly within meeting

Meeting – Before – During & After

Meetings are more than having a single discussion for 30 minutes. We must plan and organize meetings, we want to be efficient by sharing meeting related information and nurture interaction. Well, Microsoft has listened and will bring great features that will help us achieve this.

Pre/Post meeting we will be able to add additional tabs that can be linked to other apps in context of the meeting. This will help in bring together everything in one place that is easily accessible.

During a meeting we will be able to customize the side panel and send notification such a real time poll!

Ho! Developers will also have the opportunity to build integration with this new features. Developers will also have the ability to define views based on current user roles such as attendees or organizer.

Feature ID: 68733 / Release date: October CY2020 (meeting extensibility)
Feature ID: 68729 / Release date: December CY2020 (meeting recap)

Meeting – Recording saved in SPO & OneDrive

Meeting recording associated with users will be now saved in OneDrive and those related to channel will be saved in SharePoint associated team.

This will bring nice features such as searched by video names, metadata and also transcript of all recorded meetings. You will be able to share videos like you share any file with people inside and outside your organization. Furthermore, the same analytics you have with documents will also be available.

Finally, this will also bring some important governance enhancement features such as automatic retention labelling or even automatic deletion of meeting video files after 90 days. This will help manage storage quotas and keep related information at the same location.

More than ever, it is the time to book meetings from Teams with channels instead of Outlook.

Feature ID: 67138 / Release date: November CY2020
Feature ID: 68761 / Release date: December CY2020 (recording)

Meeting – PowerPoint Live Presentation

Like PowerPoint, presenters will soon have a “Presenter view” which will let you know what is seen by users, the notes taking and the following slides.

Attendees will have the opportunity to easily catch up on missing slides and easily jump back to the live presentation.

Feature ID: 65947 / Release date: December CY2020

Meeting – Multiple Layouts & Spotlight

From together mode new layout, presenter spotlight and multiple layouts Microsoft brings a lot more flexibility to the table. Presenters will have the option to “Spotlight” aka force what attendees will see while attendees will have the options to define how they want to see the attendees and presentation. Finally, Dynamic view will let you personalize your view to show specific content side by side participants.

Feature ID: 67090 / Release date: September CY2020 (Spotlight)
Feature ID: 65943 / Release date: October CY2020 (Dynamic view)
Feature ID: 66587 / Release date: December CY2020 (Custom layouts)

Meeting – Control the attendees microphone

As for now any attendees can open and close their microphone. This may sound great but when making an event with a large audience it may be hard to keep control. Meeting organizers will now have the option to mute everyone by default, preventing them to unmute and allow per user microphone when needed or allowed everyone at any time during the meeting like for an Q&A period.

Feature ID: 66575 / Release date: October CY2020

Meeting – Enhance live caption and transcripts

Transcript will have much more than only text. You will now be able to see who said what and go back to what has been previously said while in a meeting. This allows you to easily catch up on something you may have missed.

Feature ID: 65949 / Release date: September CY2020

Meeting – Live reaction

Having remote meeting might be hard to give people insights about what you just said during a presentation. As for now attendees have to open their microphone say "thanks" or add comments in the chat. Soon attendees will have the option to send their live reactions, like thumbs up, at any time during the presentation to let the presenter know what they are thinking about or how they feel regarding what has been said.

Feature ID: 65946 / Release date: December CY2020

Meeting - Large audience and webinar

n the past we had to rely on Microsoft Teams or Stream for events with a large audience, but this also came with some draw backs and complexity. Soon you will be able to use Microsoft Teams with interactive attendees up to 1000 and the view-only attendees will be up to 20k. It will also come with an event registration form and email confirmation that will be customizable to fit business brand. This will also come with a downloadable Excel post meeting report to get advanced insight on who attended the meeting.

Don't forget that you can enable NDI in Teams and use Skype TX / Teams in addition with OBS to produce professional events without the need to hire an external firm.

Some of these features will require an add-on called Advanced Communications add-on for Microsoft Teams and will be given with a 35% discount until January 31, 2021.

Feature ID: 66586 / Release date: December CY2020 (attendee registration)
Feature ID: 66585 / Release date: December CY2020 (engagement board)
Feature ID: 65951 / Release date: December CY2020 (large meeting support)
Feature ID: 65952 / Release date: December CY2020 (large meeting support)

Search powered by Microsoft Search

Finding content in Teams is not as powerful as Office.com. Microsoft will soon bring all the power of Microsoft Search inside Teams and add additional features. It will be easier to retrieve and filter files and messages and preview will be much more convenient.

Feature ID: 66583 / Release date: December CY2020

Templates

When creating new teams, we will have the option to create one from blank or existing one. Now in GA, we can create a team based on pre-defined or custom templates to help us standardize team structures. Let's hope that Microsoft next step is to bring SharePoint customization has part of the Teams template.

Feature ID: 67110 / Release date: October CY2020

Pinned post in channel

We can easily be lost in the flood of messages in our channels and some post may be more important and easily accessible. Soon we will be able to Pin important message and easily access them from the info panel.

Feature ID: 64334 / Release date: October CY2020

SharePoint Home site app

Let's users navigate your intranet without leaving Teams. The app will let you have a custom name and icon that match your organization brand.

Feature ID: 66584 / Release date: March CY2021

Wellbeing and productivity insights

Personal insights, insights for managers and for the leaders will be available at your fingerprint right from teams.

Productivity and wellbeing insights for managers and leaders
   Feature ID: 68746  / Release date: December CY2020

Personal productivity insights in Teams
   Feature ID: 68747 / Release date: December CY2020

Personal wellbeing insights in Teams
   Feature ID: 68748 / Release date: March CY2021

Mobile experiences

The Mobile app will also have bunch of new features. Here are some that caught my eyes.

• Calendar view larger than 7 days
• Simply transfer your call from mobile to desktop and vice-versa.
• Joining breakout room
• 2x4, 3x3, large gallery and together mode
• Losing cellular data without losing in call quality
• Suggested reply
• Cortana integration

There is so much more!

• By invitation meeting only
• Create apps, flow and chatbot without leaving Teams.
• Easily ask for approval on documents right from Teams
• Enhanced experience on document sign-in with Adobe & DocuSign
• Enhanced PowerBI apps
• Better audio quality on bad network.
• Consistent sharing links experience inside Teams.
• Enhancements for Microsoft Teams room devices
• Custom app store branding
• ... yup ...

Wrap up

This is a brief overview of Microsoft Teams announcements this year at Ignite.

Don't forget to have a look at the other articles of this series.

Hope you enjoyed and feel free to share!

Credit to Microsoft Ignite sessions & Microsoft Tech Community blogs where I've taken my picture and inspiration for this post.