With 44 million daily users and numerous business collaboration benefits, Microsoft Teams presents a promising opportunity as a business collaboration tool. Some of the benefits offered by Teams are
- Enriched communication
- Wide range of app integration
- Ease of meeting and scheduling
- User enablement using bots
- Anytime anywhere access from any device
- Real-time document collaboration
- Audio-video calling
- Robust security
- Effective notification mechanism
- Quick app implementation using Teams Developer Platform
Further, Teams keeps evolving with new and useful features for making collaboration experience more user-friendly, innovative, and effective.
What Are the New Features In Microsoft Teams?
- Increased Simultaneous Video Streams – Now, Microsoft Teams supports nine simultaneous video streams as compared to four earlier.
- Raised hand feature – In Teams meeting, you can now raise or lower hand to grab the attention of other participants or the presenter. This feature is great for impromptu polling or asking questions. Further, you can see other hands raised in the People tab.
- Enhanced pre-join experience – You can change your audio/video settings and change your background before joining the meeting. For instance, you can decide to enable or disable the camera from your device settings and select background filters and effects such as blurring the background or using a built-in room configuration from the various options available in Teams.
- Settings enablement for ad-hoc/channel meetings – Now, for an ad-hoc meeting, you can change the options such as setting only you as the presenter to prevent participants from muting or removing each other during the meeting. This feature is handy for educators.
- Capability to create and modify templates for team creation – Creating a team is now a whole lot easier using the existing templates with predefined channels and apps. The newly formed team will have the channels and apps that are existing in the template. What you need to do is add the members or manage additional customizations rather than building your team from scratch. You can also create your templates using existing teams or modify the existing templates from the Teams Admin Center.
- Ability to search through Teams messages – Now, you can search through a Teams channel or chat. Teams displays results that will take you to the different chat items in the channel containing the text in the search criteria.
- Pop-out windows – This feature supports the chat, meeting, and app window to be popped out of the Teams app as a separate resizable window. It offers better visibility.
- Microsoft Lists – Now, Teams uses Microsoft Lists. A new Microsoft 365 capability that helps you track information and organize work efficiently. It offers a simple, smart, and flexible way to stay on top of your priorities like tracking inventory, issues, routines, assets, contracts, and more using customizable views. Smart rules and alerts
- Schedule Meetings Efficiently even with individuals external to your organization – The ‘Approved Contact’ application for Microsoft Teams automatically syncs calendars and contacts that are external to your company, whether they use Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, or most of the other email solutions. It makes scheduling a meeting extremely easy. You can compare available times right from Teams and schedule meetings at a time that is suitable for all participants. It also takes care of different time zones. You can make your available meeting timings viewable for easy scheduling and schedule a meeting from the Approved Contact app in Teams. All you have to do is select the video conference provider and send it to the participants. It’s an effective way to work and communicate with your suppliers, customers, and partners.
Planned features
Besides these features, there are some which are planned and are expected soon.
- Connect through Microsoft Teams with People Outside Organization – With Microsoft Teams mobile app, you can connect with people external to your organization at a personal level. It includes your friends and family members. For this, you can either use your personal Microsoft account or create a new one with your phone number, invite people, create groups, and start collaborating by sharing documents, files, and even locations.
- Microsoft Teams for Education and Training – In the new normal, Teams is incorporating special features for the education domain that support the 7×7 class meeting view and breakout rooms. It will also offer valuable information in the Class Insights tab about how students are learning and engaging in communication, meetings, and assignments by using intelligent data analytics
Microsoft Teams is offering an increasingly engaging and collaborating experience to its users to make it more exciting and productive. With the right expertise and comprehensive Microsoft Teams services, WaferWire Cloud Technologies can help your organization get most out of your Team’s adoption. Get in touch today, and our representative will be happy to help.
