Ask Microsoft Anything 10/25/17: Microsoft Teams

[Laurie Pottmeyer]

On October 25th, 2017, the Microsoft Teams community hosted a one-hour "Ask Microsoft Anything" (AMA) event on the topic of Microsoft Teams. The live hour of Q&A provided members the opportunity to ask questions and voice feedback with the product team. If you can picture it, about 10 members of our PM Team, marketing team, and support teams gathered in a conference room in Bellevue, WA, others on the phone working remotely, all scurrying to answer your questions during this hour, real-time.  Our team loves hearing your questions and connecting with you, directly.  Below, we've summarized the AMA. For the full list of questions and answers, check out the AMA space.  We hope you will join us for our next AMA on the Teams Mac client. Stay tuned for details soon!

Resources

• Microsoft Teams UserVoice
• Microsoft Teams Product Feedback
• Microsoft Teams for Developers
• Teams on Air
• Microsoft Teams Roadmap

Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business

With the recent announcement of Skype for Business and Teams convergence, many questions in the AMA revolved around co-existence and moving from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams. One resource mentioned throughout the AMA is aka.ms/skypeandteams where many of these questions are answered.

Q: Do you have any advice on how to use Teams in a mostly Skype4B environment today with the least hassle?  Or should we stop using Teams for now and check back in 6 months when the unified presence is hopefully available? (thread)

A: We do plan to have unified presence across SfB and Teams available in Q1 2018, and we're actively working on some solutions to help mitigate some of the key problems around cross communicating between SfB and Teams. We are also working on a bunch of documentation on how best to handle interaction between Teams and SfB.

Q: Skype for Business Online vs. Microosft Teams (feature-by-feature) (source)

A1: Start with the roadmap to see what features are in SfBO that we plan to migrate over the next year or so. Use technet to see how we talk about SfBO and SfB by features.

Q: Can Teams users talk to Skype for Business Online users (and Skype users)? (source)
A: Yes - for chat Teams users can already talk to Skype for Business online and in Q4 2017 we will be rolling out Calling Interoperability between Skype for Business online and Teams (not Skype consumer and Teams though).

Q: Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business? (thread)

A: The plan to move from SfBO to Teams is based upon where the customer is in their journey. If you are primarily an IM customer - you should start now. Meetings customers should be actively using it and evaluating if the features available are there for them. Voice customers will be able to start testing shortly and enterprise PBX features should be landing by the end of Q2-CY18. Sorry, I do not think I will get bonus points for your bonus q - we are not talking about a transition or EOL date. We want customers to be actively exploring today.

When will we have...??

Other common questions we heard were around roadmap of the product and if specific features were being considered. Additionally, there were many great feature requests. Please be sure to visit our User Voice site where we track all new feature requests.  We track progress here as well so check-in from time to time to see the status of your request.  Below are some of the hot items you all asked about.

Q: When will we be able to use PS to create and manage Teams? (thread)

A: We are actually quite close to shipping a rich set of PowerShell cmdlets for team/channel provisioning, plus GraphAPI support (which the cmdlets are based on). Should be out in the next several weeks.

Q: Analytics of members in team usage and activity

Separate settings for members and leads/admin of team (source)

A1: O365 Analytics for Admins are coming later this quarter. We're also working on Team based analytics within the teams app. There are settings already just for owners. There aren't any specific settings for team members.

Q: When will we be able to share control in Teams like we do in SfB? (source)
A: Give/take control for screen sharing is coming later this quarter (next 2 months).

Q: When will PSTN calling via both Microsoft Phone System and otherwise be available in Teams? (source)
A: PSTN Calling in Microsoft Teams is planned to roll out this quarter (4Q of 2017). By phone system -- if you mean integration with hybrid/ existing phone systems, that is planned for the second quarter in 2018
A2: We expect basic Calling plan support this quarter. Advanced Phone System features on on the roadmap for end of Q2 2018

Q: Meeting recording & transcription. (source)
A: Recording with post-meeting transcription is coming by end of Q2 calendar year 2018 (e.g. by end of next June). Real-time transcription and translation is coming after that point.

Q: Can we expect private channels around the time of Private channels or you guys thinking way out probably towards end of next year etc. for this functionality? (source)
A: Private channels and shared channels are related architecturally and we are working on both at the same time, but I expect private channels to come out before shared channels. End of next year is way later than we are thinking for either.

Q: What is the plan for making Meet Now/video call available on other interfaces than Desktop version - WebApp, mobile/tablet app? Any dates? (source)
A: The 'Join' functionality is coming on the roadmap here. but nothing to share yet about 'Meet Now' on mobile.

Q: When it will be possible to login with MSA (Microsoft Account) on Teams ? (thread)
A: Guest access for MSA users (any non-AAD email address) is coming in the next couple months. That will enable those users to be invited to a team, and then use that account to login to Teams.

Q: Video Calling in the Browser (thread)
A: We have plans on the roadmap to add video calling support on browsers. When we add Guest with MSA support, they should be able to leverage this functionality as well.

Q: When will the new whiteboard application be integrated into Team meetings so that INK capability can become an integral part of the Team Meeting. (source)
A: Per the roadmap here. Whiteboard functionality is coming to Teams Q2 2018

Q: Granting External Users? (source)
A: We just announced external sharing for Microsoft Teams. Learn more here.

Q: When will there be APIs available to create a team through code? Will it be possible to create a new team and connect it to a already created group through API? Can we create all types of teams (education) through API? (source)
A: We're very close to shipping a set of PowerShell cmdlets and Graph APIs for creating/provisioning teams and channels. That will include adding a team to an existing group. Support for the education team types are on the roadmap, but not in the first drop of cmdlets. There are some available today in Beta: (Click Show Samples and See Microsoft Teams (beta))