Welcome to the August edition of What’s New in Microsoft Teams! As Teams continues to evolve, this month’s updates bring a fresh wave of innovation designed to help you work smarter, collaborate more effectively, and stay connected across your organization. Whether you’re catching up on conversations or preparing for your next big meeting, Teams is here to support your productivity with intelligent, user-friendly features.
Among the standout releases this month is a feature that expands how you can express yourself, another feature that helps to streamline your workflow, and multiple enhancements to desk booking. First, “Multiple emoji reactions” lets you combine several emojis to share more complex reactions in a quick and concise way. Second, IT administrators can now upload custom dictionaries for Copilot in Teams, ensuring that meeting transcripts and Intelligent Recap reflect your organization’s unique terminology. Finally, your desk booking experience just got easier, with features that let you book a desk from a map and near a colleague. Together, these enhancements make Teams smarter and more personalized, helping you unlock deeper insights and collaborate with greater clarity than ever before.
Take a look at the details of those features, and all the others we’re launching this month!
New features released this month:
Chat and collaboration
Meetings, webinars, and town halls
Teams Phone
Workplace: Places and Teams Rooms
Fundamentals and Security
Frontline Worker Solutions
Certified for Teams Devices
Chat and Collaboration
Filter for messages with files in contextual search
Finding shared content in Teams just got easier with the latest enhancements to the Find in Chat/Channel experience. Users can now quickly locate documents and media shared across conversations without scrolling through long threads. The updated experience enables filtering messages to show only those with attachments, and search results now include file chiclets—making it easy to identify messages containing files at a glance. These updates improve productivity and reduce friction when searching for shared content in conversations.
Search with SQL-like commands
When searching in Teams, you can now efficiently narrow down your search results by using SQL-like commands in the search bar. This allows you to quickly filter messages, files, or conversations with precise queries such as from:username or in:channel. This feature provides users with a familiar and structured method to find information swiftly and accurately.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Customize your keyboard shortcuts in Teams to work the way that’s most intuitive to you. Whether you want to set your own shortcuts based on your workflow preferences or you're used to shortcuts from other tools like Slack or Zoom, Teams lets you set up commands that match your habits, helping you work efficiently. Create your own custom commands or choose from preset layouts inspired by other apps. Just head to the top bar menu (•••), select Keyboard shortcuts, and use the dropdown to pick a layout or edit any shortcut to make it your own.
Saved message view
Quickly get back to important information without scrolling through long conversations. You can save messages in chats and channels and find them later in the saved messages view in your chat list. From the saved view, click on a saved message to open the full conversation in the right pane, where you can review or reply directly.
Multiple Emoji Reactions
You can react to messages and posts with multiple reactions per message, enhancing your ability to express a wide range of emotions effectively. Now you can respond to your manager’s leadership update with a "check” and “thank you” emoji, showing you understand the update and are thankful for their transparency. You can use combinations of emojis like those for a richer and more nuanced response, quickly conveying your feelings and thoughts, like agreement, urgency or sentiment, without extra replies—keeping discussions focused and efficient, while expressing yourself comprehensively.
Meetings, Webinars, and Town halls
Personal meeting templates [Premium]
Efficient collaboration begins with a seamless meeting setup. With personal meeting templates, users can create and customize templates tailored to their frequent meeting types—such as one-on-one connections, client engagements, or support sessions. Simply select your template, and all the pre-saved options are automatically applied, allowing meetings to start promptly and with confidence. Personal meeting templates save users time and effort in resetting meeting settings and ensure consistency across your organization. This capability is available with a Teams Premium license.
Custom dictionaries now available to Copilot in Teams
IT administrators can now upload custom dictionaries for their tenant in English, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Chinese (Simplified). This capability is accessible through the Copilot Settings page in the Microsoft 365 admin center. By integrating organization-specific terminology, custom dictionaries help the AI model produce more accurate and meaningful meeting transcripts. This enhancement benefits both Copilot and Intelligent Recap, ensuring your unique business language is recognized and reflected. Organizations can reduce misunderstandings and improve productivity by tailoring the AI to their needs. Take advantage of this new feature to unlock deeper insights from your meetings.
Meeting organizers can send messages to attendees in the lobby with lobby chat
Now meeting organizers can send one-way messages to attendees in the lobby via the lobby chat. The lobby chat is intended to optimize the lobby experience for all participants, ensuring that organizers are better equipped to run external meetings, have more control over meetings with external participants, and external attendees are well informed about the meeting upon meeting start.
Edit your display name in Teams meetings
Participants can now edit their display name during a Teams meeting — whether to reflect a preferred name, indicate a role (e.g., “Moderator” or “Interpreter”), or support inclusive self-representation. The change of display name is temporary and only visible during the meeting. The change is not permanent in any artifact like recording.
Customize the screen in Teams Town halls through ‘Manage what attendees see’ [Premium]
Organizers will be able to elevate their Teams Town hall presentations by customizing their screen with select layouts, backgrounds, and name tags using “Manage what attendees see” feature. This will result in a polished, high-quality, and engaging event experience. This feature is available with a Teams Premium License.
Immersive events, experience customization tools and presenter tools [Premium]
Microsoft Teams now supports immersive events, a new way to host large-scale, 3D virtual gatherings that hosts can schedule and attendees can join directly in Teams. Organizers with a Teams Premium license can design engaging spaces, customize event visuals, and host up to 300 attendees in a spatial audio environment that supports simultaneous conversations and cross-room interactions. This feature brings new and expanded immersive capabilities into the familiar Teams experience, making it easier to inspire ideas, foster inclusion, and build stronger connections.
With the new Experience Customization Tools, event creators can personalize immersive spaces using intuitive design options, no coding required. Add logos, theme colors, images, and videos to a shared 3D canvas, resize and reposition objects, and save layouts as reusable templates for future events.
In addition, improvements to Presenter tools make it simpler to host immersive, interactive 3D events with avatars in customizable 3D spaces. Improvements include:
- ‘Easy presentation start’, which consolidates required actions into a simple start flow
- Hosts can make sure attendees and speakers are in the right place by teleporting them to seating or presentation spaces in the 3D space
- Find-a-person gives the ability to search across rooms to find someone
- The simplified Control Panel provides a cleaner and simpler production experience with a pre-filtered content view
Teams Phone
Microsoft Shifts integration with Teams call queues
Teams admins can leverage Teams scheduling groups created within the Shifts app in Teams to dynamically manage call routing to agents in call queues. Once scheduling groups and associated work shifts are established in the Shifts app, call queues can be configured to reference shift data. Call queues will then pull in the associated shift schedules, ensuring that calls to the queue are routed only to agents who are actively on shift.
This integration enables:
- Streamlined workforce management by aligning call routing with shift schedules
- Greater flexibility in configuring call queues based on timing and team
Learn more about Shifts in Teams, how to manage the Shifts app, and configuring a Shift for your call queue.
Email notifications for phone number assignments
Admins can send a Microsoft branded email notification to end-users with their newly assigned Teams Phone number while assigning/unassigning the number through Teams PowerShell cmdlet. This feature helps provide a welcoming onboarding experience for new Teams Phone users.
User notifications include:
- The assigned or unassigned telephone number
- Activation timeline (up to 48 hours)
- Instructions for accessing the dial pad in Teams
- Links to learn more about Teams Phone capabilities
Learn how to assign a phone number to a user through the Teams Admin Center.
Device sign-in support for non-touch models
Organizations now have increased sign-in flexibility for non-touch devices. Users are able to log in directly, without relying on device code flow (DCF) authentication. For example, a T9 keyboard can be used to enter credentials, providing an experience better tailored to the device.
Workplace: Places and Teams Rooms
Find certified for Teams devices for all types of spaces and uses at aka.ms/teamsdevices.
Book desks using maps [Premium]
You can now book a desk using an interactive, map-based experience. The new maps-first interface shows office layouts and is responsive on mobile devices and smaller screens. Whether reserving an individual desk or a pooled desk, the experience is optimized within Outlook and Teams calendars and across the Places app. This feature is available with a Teams Premium license.
Book desks near colleagues [Premium]
You can now book a desk based on where your colleagues are working. When selecting a desk, you’ll be able to see who is occupying nearby desks or find where a specific colleague plans to sit on a given day, then book a desk close to them. You always retain control over whether to share your own desk location with others. This capability is available with a Teams Premium license.
Book desks for partial days and multiple days [Premium]
Desk reservations are now more flexible in duration: you can book a desk for a partial day (just a few hours) or for multiple days in one go, rather than requiring a separate full-day booking for each day. This change accommodates real in-office workflows – for example, if you only need a desk for a morning, or conversely want to keep the same desk all week, you can do so easily. This feature is available with a Teams Premium license.
Book desks on behalf of others [Premium]
Delegates can now book desks for their principals. If you manage another person’s schedule, you can reserve a workspace on their behalf through the familiar calendar delegation workflow. This desk booking process mirrors existing Outlook calendar management, so it fits seamlessly into delegates’ routines. This feature is available with a Teams Premium license.
Configure auto-release for no-show desk reservations
Admins can now set desks to auto-release after a specific time frame if a user does not check in for their reservation. This frees up space for others, and helps maximize workspace utilization by ensuring no-show reservations don’t keep a desk locked all day. Learn more here.
Enhanced walk-up desk booking experience for users
Teams walk-up desk booking now features enhanced interface updates, showing reservation confirmation or notifications if desks are booked. The improved experience guides users on reservations, calendar syncing, and management. Learn more here.
Configure new desk modes: reservable, drop-in, assigned, unavailable
Administrators can configure desks in multiple modes to support different booking policies. Each desk can now be set to one of several modes, and this setting can be changed at any time to adapt to organizational needs. The available desk modes include:
- Reservable desks are configured to be booked in advance or on-the-spot.
- Drop-in desks are available for on-the-spot use and cannot be reserved in advance. You can use the capability from Microsoft Teams to link the peripheral devices present on these desks to the individual desk object in the directory.
- Assigned desks are permanently linked to a specific user and cannot be booked by others. Every assigned desk must always have a designated user.
- Unavailable desks are not available for reservation due to maintenance or for any other reason.
These modes give organizations flexibility in managing how each workspace is utilized – from hoteling desks that anyone can book, to dedicated desks, to informal touchdown spots. Learn more here.
New Places built-in admin role support
Places now supports built-in Microsoft 365 admin roles for delegation. IT admins can assign responsibility for Places management to other administrators using standard roles, allowing day-to-day management tasks to be handled without elevated permissions. In practice, this means administrators can delegate tasks (like updating office space details or approving changes) to team members with appropriate built-in roles, streamlining operations. Learn more here.
New Places admin dashboard
Administrators can now manage Places directory data through a dedicated, user-friendly dashboard that provides a central interface to easily view and edit workspace directory information (such as office locations, desks, and rooms) and set and manage booking policies. This simplifies day-to-day management of workplace data by putting all relevant controls in one place.
Fundamentals and Security
Microsoft Teams: Support Audit logs for Give and Take Control and Screen share
IT administrators will now have the ability to access detailed logs for both the "Give and Take Control" and "Screenshare" features. These logs will provide comprehensive information, including the names and timestamps of the individuals involved in each action. Specifically, the logs will indicate who initiated or received control, as well as who started the screenshare session, along with the corresponding timestamps and names. This enhancement ensures greater transparency and accountability for all control and screenshare activities. Accessible in Teams Admin Center. Learn more here.
Frontline Worker Solutions
New SharePoint Agent Integration in Teams Chats and Channels
Starting in August, SharePoint agents can now be added to Teams channels. SharePoint agents allow users to create agents grounded on SharePoint sites, files and folders. For example, you can create an agent that pulls from a SharePoint library with compliance information. Within a channel, users can then query against those documents. Additionally, users can now add multiple SharePoint agents to a single group chat – an upgrade from the previous limitation of one agent per chat. Each agent brings its own specialized knowledge, perfect for reviewing documents, planning content, or collaborating across specs.
Adding an agent is easy: just copy the link from SharePoint – just like you would to share any other file – and drop it into a post or reply. Then, interact with them by @mentioning the agent by name. These agents enhance conversations by offering tailored insights and support right when it's needed.
Deploy Frontline Teams in Teams Admin Center
We’re excited to announce new enhancements in the Teams Admin Center that make it easier than ever to set up and deploy your frontline teams with flexible membership. With our updated setup wizard, you can now complete configuration and deployment in one seamless flow—no need to navigate across multiple wizards to complete setup and deploy your first frontline teams. Whether you're onboarding a single team or scaling across multiple locations, the streamlined experience helps you move faster and with greater confidence.
We’ve also introduced incremental save, allowing you to pause setup at any point and return later without losing progress. Plus, you can now validate your location attributes directly within the wizard to ensure your deployment includes the expected number of locations before going live. These updates are designed to simplify frontline deployment and give IT admins more control and flexibility every step of the way. Learn more here.
Certified for Teams Devices
EPOS IMPACT 100 MS Stereo and Mono USB-C+A headsets
The IMPACT 100 is an entry-level headset that delivers exceptional value for money. With smart features that enhance efficiency and an ultra-lightweight design, it is an ideal headset for talk-heavy professionals. The soft headband and leatherette earpads ensure all-day comfort, while the in-line controller allows for easy call control. The USB-C to USB-A adapter eliminates connectivity concerns and certifications with Microsoft Teams and UC platforms guarantees seamless calls in any office setup.
The EPOS IMPACT 100 MS Stereo USB-C+A stereo corded headset with volume control and USB connectivityThe EPOS IMPACT 100 MS Mono USB-C+A monaural corded headset with volume control and USB connectivity
Logitech Rally Board 65 + Tap for Teams Rooms on Android (wired)
Simplify the way you meet and collaborate. Introducing Rally Board 65 + Tap — the ultimate all-in-one video conferencing solution designed for meeting rooms and open spaces. The expansive 65” touchscreen of Rally Board enables a seamless and intuitive collaboration experience in any environment. Join meetings with just one touch with Tap, a touch controller for Microsoft Teams Rooms. Enjoy quick and easy setup, flexible installation options to place the camera above or below the screen for natural eye contact, and innovative AI-driven features.
The Logitech Rally Board 65 monitor and touch controller
Yealink MeetingBar A50 with Touch Panel CTP25
Yealink MeetingBar A50 is an all-in-one video collaboration bar for medium-to-large rooms. This product delivers cutting-edge audio and video communication capabilities, powered by advanced AI technology, ensuring crystal-clear sound and ultra-HD visuals. With intelligent full-duplex, IntelliFocus, and video fence, it redefines the video conferencing experience, bringing unparalleled clarity and efficiency to every meeting. A50 uses Qualcomm's latest generation chip QCM8550, supporting 48 Tops of industry-leading computing power. Also it uses simple plug-and-play with a CTP25 controller.
The Yealink MeetingBar A50 with Touch Panel
Logitech Entry Level MeetUp 2 for Teams Rooms on Windows
Upgrade your small rooms and BYOD spaces into certified Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows. This solution is preconfigured for easy and affordable deployments and includes Logitech MeetUp 2 for powerful audio and video with next-gen features; Logitech Tap with USB Kit touch controller for easy, one-touch join meetings; and Lenovo mini PC to power operations.
The Logitech Entry Level MeetUp 2 system with integrated camera/soundbar, controller and mini PC
Microsoft
