Microsoft today detailed all the features added to its Teams collaboration service in the month of April, providing information on updates made to the various features and capabilities. These include improvements to Breakout rooms, polling, Teams Rooms improvements and updates about new devices, mobile app updates, and much more.
Starting things off are updates to the Breakout rooms feature. The tool now lets organizers reassign users to different rooms even if they are open. These assignments also persist across multiple sessions, helping organizers save time on assigning users to various rooms. Other meeting improvements include the option to set invite-only meetings, where uninvited attendees are sent directly to the lobby. The tool is introducing new policies to limit users with revoked scheduling permissions from using old meeting links.
Polls in Teams is also gaining a few new capabilities, including support for mobile polls, new text-only or multiple-choice options, and more. These were announced yesterday as part of the Microsoft 365 monthly roundup. Other enhancements to improve meetings include better audio controls that allow organizers to mute and unmute individual attendees, support for non-AAD account holders in Live events, and new custom backgrounds on the iOS app.
Next up are changes made to improve the chat experience. Teams now finally supports native Windows notifications, as the tool now allows users to choose between Teams’ built-in style and the native OS prompts from the notifications’ settings. For the mobile versions of the app, the company is introducing some visual upgrades that include new headers, icons, and overall styling. It is also adding automatic dark and light theme switching based on system settings. Other minor additions include support for filtering chats or pinning them, which will roll out to Android devices soon.
The Redmond firm is also detailing a bunch of updates to Teams Rooms, which interested users can check out listed in the blog post. The company also recapped its new Teams certified accessories such as the Microsoft Modern USB & Wireless headsets, Surface Headphones 2+, Modern USB-C Speaker and Modern Webcam. There are also new devices from Poly, Yealink, and Audiocodes.
Lastly, there are a bunch of improvements for IT admins to help improve manage the service such as anonymous usage reports, branding and template improvements, and more. Features for Frontline workers and Government customers have also been detailed in the post.
25 Comments - Add comment