What’s New with Microsoft Teams (Summer 2020)

June 17, 2020

June 17, 2020

Team Collaboration, Teams

(Updated 7/31/20)

Preview Meeting and Call Experiences on Desktops

Now when you join a Teams call or meeting by using the desktop app, it will open in a secondary window. That way you can navigate around Teams without losing track of where your meetings or call is located on screen.

More Control Within Teams Meetings

Hosting a meeting, but need a few more moments to get ready? Now you can have the option of making everyone wait in a meeting lobby when joining a meeting that you have organized. To access this setting open the Meeting options and then select Only me in the Who can bypass the lobby? field.

(Updated 7/17/20)

Search within a chat or channel

Search makes our lives easier and not you can search within specific channels or even chats. Just like with typical Microsoft applications Ctrl+F (of Cmd+f on Macs) will bring up a search bar to search for whatever you need. Works great in any chat, one-on-one or group chat rooms.

Cortana Voice Assistance coming to Teams

While Cortana doesn’t have the most forward-facing role with Windows 10, the digital assistant is coming to Teams mobile app. In the coming weeks, expect to see Cortana’s voice functionality helping users to schedule and join meetings, send chat requests, share files and more.

(Updated 6/28/20)

Improvements with Safari

No longer will you need to use the dial-in audio conferencing options when using the Safari browsers to operate Teams. Your device’s built-in speakers and microphone will be available for speaking and listening to the other meeting attendees.

Apps in Chat

App and chatbot functionality has come to private and group chats within Teams. You can now update apps to be used in the various chat types.

Microsoft Teams introduces some important updates for the Summer of 2020. As everyone works toward the new normal, there’s new territory to conquer in the world of virtual meetings. There are several updates to Microsoft Teams. Here, we will cover just a few of them.

A Larger Group Chat

Those chats are expanding! With the new update, you can include 250 people on the group chat.

Phone Privacy

This update hides the phone number for people dialing into the meeting. The phone number will still show for people who are within your organization. This update provides important privacy protection for people who may be a guest or who is calling in from another organization.

Teams Now Have Meeting Options

There is a new button in Teams. It is labeled “Meeting Options.” This button appears after you have sent your meeting invite. Click on it to alter the settings for your meeting. Use it to change things like who can present or the lobby bypass.

Bookings

You can now book online meetings and in-person appointments using Teams. Use Teams to stay organized and on-time for education appointments, doctor’s visits, and more. You can book only meetings with Microsoft Teams as far as virtual meetings. This new feature allows designated schedulers to manage the schedules for entire departments as well as their staff.

A New Way to Manage

As remote work becomes more commonplace and people use more video in their workplace, it is important to try to centralize communication. These updates make a central calendar that includes all virtual communication, in-person appointments, and chats. Keeping things together has just become more manageable.

Larger Groups

There are several updates relating to meeting and group size. The inclusion of up to 250 people per chat is a big game-changer for large companies.

In the past, people using chats had to keep several chats going at once to manage large discussions. As people try to clarify details between groups, the chats could easily multiply. Multiple sub-chats emerged. The larger number of people per chat will help with this sprawl.

250 is easily the largest chat group size manageable for most people. With more people than that, threads become too much to keep track of.

Intuition and Ease of Use

These updates are small yet powerful additions to the capability of Microsoft Teams. Like the updates that usually come from Microsoft, everything is easy to work with and does not require too much thought.

This intuitive design and framework combined with the adjustments in numbers of participants should make it easier for larger companies to adopt Microsoft Teams.

Larger teams are a largely untapped market for this software, which started out with capabilities for smaller offices. There are potentially more updates to come regarding large businesses.

A More Powerful Software

These updates are helping Microsoft Teams pack a lot of power. This software does an amazing amount with a relatively simple dashboard. The question is really how complex people’s meeting schedules are. There is a lot going on with meetings that take place online. Be sure to check back for more updates as this software develops more features.