While Microsoft has been adding a lot of new features lately to the paid version of its Teams service, it is not forgetting the many users who access the free edition of Teams. Today, the company revealed several new features that are rolling out today to the Windows 11, iOS, and Android versions.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated that one new feature is adding direct support for the public preview version of Microsoft Designer into the free version of Teams. Designer allows users to create things like blog posts, websites, digital postcards, and more with just a few text prompts and generative AI.
Microsoft is also expanding its support for its Discord-like communities feature in Teams, which launched in December 2022. With this new update, communities are coming to Windows 11 devices in addition to the Teams mobile apps. The plan is to add support for Mac, Windows 10, and the web versions as well. Microsoft also stated:
Rolling out in the coming days, and beginning on Windows 11, iOS, and Android, you can join communities focused on topics like parenting, gaming, gardening, technology, remote work, and more. Community owners will be able to set their community to be visible, starting on iOS and Android, enabling it to be discovered on Teams.
Other new Teams community features include the ability for users to launch polls. Also posts in the communities features can be shared via emails, and owners of communities can either approve or reject people to join their group.
The Teams mobile apps will now allow users to record videos as well. The iOS app will now let users scan a document with any emails or phone numbers and invite people with that info into the Teams communities. Microsoft has also updated the GroupMe app so it can now create Microsoft Teams calls from within the app.