Blog Post

Microsoft Teams Blog
3 MIN READ

Update! An AI assistant that funnels critical information to you, before you ask

ClintWilliams's avatar
ClintWilliams
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 13, 2018

 

While our ability to achieve more increases - thanks to technological advancements - so too does the volume of digital information. Now, more than ever, many employees feel that it’s impossible to keep up. How do you stay on top of all information related to your current projects, clients, competition, prospects, the market (need we go on…?) It should come as no surprise that the information overload that may be plaguing your organization could also be having an adverse effect on your employees.

 

We are relentlessly working on solving this challenge, and we are proud to announce today that we have a solution for you. Meet Q, the AI assistant for your work life from ModuleQ. Q is like a co-worker who knows what you need and always has your back.

 

Q is different from other news alerts assistants because it understands what you are working on, and then sorts through millions of articles and sources to pull in only the most relevant ones. When you integrate Q into your daily work through Teams and Office 365, Q’s unique AI evolves as your business priorities change. News from Q is always relevant and timely, with no need for you to enter or update data.

 

When you see something you like, just click “Useful,” or “Share via email” to update colleagues. Otherwise, simply click “Not useful.” The more you tell it, the more Q learns.

 

 

In fact, Q is so valuable and so easy to use, we’ve made it a Top Pick in the Microsoft Teams App Store.

 

With Q, Critical Information Finds You

Was there a big acquisition related to one of your projects? Did your client’s stock make a sudden jump? Did a key industry analyst release a new report? ModuleQ can make sure that critical information finds you. Your company can make Q more powerful by enabling connections to leading industry databases, as well as your organization’s own curated content in SharePoint, so you get the business insights you need to work smarter.  With the Teams mobile app, Q’s timely insights will reach you anytime, on the device of your choice.

 

The AI Behind the Scenes

ModuleQ’s patent-pending Personal Data Fusion AI is powering the brilliance behind Q. The AI will monitor your business interactions and then proactively send you relevant organizational and market information, with industry knowledge from Thomson Reuters, to keep you on track with the news you need, when you need it.

 

What’s new in Q v2.0?

 

Tell Q which companies to track for you

 

Q’s People-Facing AI automatically identifies companies that are important to you by analyzing your work email and calendar. Now, with the new ‘track’ command, you can also tell Q directly which companies you’d like to track in your daily news updates. These companies will appear in your My Priorities tab alongside the companies Q has automatically identified for you.

 

 

Smarter news recommendations

Q now understands the industries companies belong to and uses that knowledge to deliver more customized news updates for you. Your news updates will now be selected for you based on their relevance to the companies and industries you’re interested in. 

More content from high-quality news sources

Q now scours a much larger set of high-quality business news sources to find and deliver the most relevant content to you.

 

And many more UX refinements ...

  • The onboarding flow for new users has been completely redesigned to be more intuitive and flexible.
  • Changing to the latest adaptive card format means that your news updates are now richer, easier to read and support more actions on both the desktop and on mobile. In particular, our AI-assisted news sharing feature now works seamlessly on mobile clients.
  • You can now choose to use Q without AI personalization, so Q can start working for you even without access to your email and calendar data.
  • With the new pop-authentication flow, you can sign in to Q without leaving Teams and you don’t have to authenticate separately for every personalized tab you visit.
  • The new ‘delete account’ command lets you easily delete your account by sending a short message to Q.

 

Getting Started with Q for Teams

Follow this link to open Microsoft Teams and install Q.

 

Updated Jan 26, 2021
Version 5.0
  • Sean Ellis's avatar
    Sean Ellis
    Steel Contributor

    Interesting, but who was asking for this? You've asked us to provide feedback on UserVoice, so that you can prioritize improvements to Teams and deliver changes that users want and need.

     

    Please prioritize the requests for basic functionality from thousands of real users on UserVoice. Of the top 10 "working on it" items, over half have been in that state for over 600 days, and many have had no updates in months.

     

    The #1 UI request for Teams is a simple compact mode, so that the UI is smaller and more focused. It's been live for over 2 years now, and it's been in "working on it" state for over 18 months, with zero progress. Multiple people have posted workarounds using CSS injection in the web client to deliver it to themselves, in a few days, with no knowledge of the product.

  • It's worth noting Sean that our partners will continue to drive new innovations using the Teams platform while our core engineering teams works on items submitted from UserVoice.  I think its important to decouple the two conversations since they run on different "tracks" in our massive train station.  Overall though of course we hear you and continue to use feedback from UserVoice as a core input to our feature planning process.  

  • Sean Ellis's avatar
    Sean Ellis
    Steel Contributor

    Thanks for the reply, Karuana.

     

    The two conversations may organizationally be different, but to us users they boil down to very much the same thing: What do we want to see in Teams that will make us more productive? And 13000 people are asking for private channels, 6800 are asking for a compact mode. For each person who has found the UserVoice forum and voted, there are doubtless dozens more who are suffering in silence or who have sought an alternative solution.

     

    It's unfortunate that we have to point these things out "in public" as it were, but the engagement model within UserVoice does not feel like it is working. Microsoft has asked for feedback via UserVoice to prioritise features. But when half of the top 10 requests that are in "working on it" state have been that way for over 600 days with no progress, and in most cases no feedback beyond repeated "nothing to report" messages, it's easy to assume that these items are not being prioritised, or even being worked on at all.

     

    So when we "play by the rules", give feedback on what is most important to us using the channels that you ask us to use, and then see them passed by while large complex features are being added, it's difficult to stay quiet.