Microsoft Teams gets new features and updates regularly, which makes sense given that it's one of the most used online communication and collaboration tools available. At the end of each month, Microsoft publishes a detailed changelog of all the new capabilities added to Teams and now, it has done the same for January 2023.
Starting off with meetings enhancements, we have a paginated view for videos. This basically means that if your screen is not large enough to display the video streams from all the meetings attendants, you can utilize pages to see other attendants. Moreover, teachers and students can access meeting recording directly inside their Learning Management System (LMS). On the other hand, enterprise customers can stream Teams meetings and webinars directly to Meta Workplace Live. Dedicated buttons have also been added to the toolbar for raising hands and switching viewing modes.
Over on the webinars front, there is a better management experience with more customization options such as details, presenter bios, themes, and more. In terms of calling upgrades, we have federated group calling with screen and video sharing capabilities without PSTN usage charges.
Switching gears to Teams Rooms and Devices enhancements, a Whiteboard can be started in a Teams meetings through a Teams Rooms on Windows device. Meeting chats can be shown or hidden in various gallery modes and there are improvements to the notification experience as well. Since we're talking about Teams devices, it's worth mentioning that the Poly CCX350 IP desk phone is now Teams-certified.
In terms of improvements to chat and collaboration features, full chat conversations can be viewed when clicking on a message in a Teams search result for additional context.
On the management side of the fence, developers can now access events in user-to-bot chats. Moreover, files uploaded through the Power Automate portal will show up in approval requests within Teams. Teams admins can also leverage Intune to control how much content is shown in a notification on a phone screen managed by the company.
Last, we have some improvements for frontline workers and Government customers. For the former, those on shared devices can now utilize Outlook and Power Apps on Android alongside Teams. Meanwhile, Government customers can make use of the following functionalities:
- Teams calendar now includes scheduling form pop-outs for GCC-High and DoD
- View attendance report on Microsoft Teams for Android and iOS for Government clouds
- Express yourself (using emoji) in Teams meeting for DoD
- Disable or Enable all Attendees' Video for DoD
- Automatically view up to 49 videos (7x7) in Teams meeting for GCC-High and DoD
- Manage attendee audio permissions for DoD
As usual, this is quite a hefty changelog overall. We already have a decent idea about what Microsoft is planning for March but it'll be interesting to see what we get next month too.
