What’s New in Microsoft Teams | July 2019
Published Jul 31 2019 08:00 AM 44.5K Views
Microsoft

Microsoft Teams continues to gain momentum and popularity, with more than 13 million people using Teams on a daily basis. We on the product team couldn’t be happier to continually bring our users exciting features to make their jobs easier. After all, helping to drive workplace collaboration and build inclusive team culture is our job!

 

What’s New: Chat & Collaboration

Use priority notifications to make sure your most critical messages are addressed

Imagine a critical, time-sensitive situation at work—from needing a hospital patient’s medical history, to needing a quick price check on an item in the warehouse. With priority notifications you can send someone an urgent message on their mobile and desktop devices. This means that the recipient will be notified of the message every two minutes for up to 20 minutes, so you are more likely to get the response you need, quickly.

 

For a limited time, unlimited priority notifications in Microsoft Teams will be made available for all customers. This promotion will run from July 2019 to December 31, 2019. During this time, all Teams users will be able to send unlimited priority notifications. Find more information about licensing here, and more information about managing users’ messaging policies here.

Priority notification experience on a mobile device.Priority notification experience on a mobile device.

 

Get someone’s attention with @-less mentions

Hey you! Sometimes we need to call out our teammates by name, to alert them to important information, to ask them a question, or to give them recognition. Now you can simply start typing a person’s name (starting with a capital letter) and select the right contact form the list of suggestions to tag them by name. They will receive a notification, which they can click to go directly to the point in the conversation where they were mentioned.

atlessmentions3.gif

Keep conversations focused with channel moderation

Channel moderation gives team owners and members who have been added as moderators, exclusive rights to create new posts in the channel and control whether team members can reply. This is a great resource for when you need to ensure that conversations in a certain channel stay focused and on topic. Learn more here.

Channel moderation admin experience.Channel moderation admin experience.

 

What’s New: Meetings, Calling, & Live events

Use live captions to give subtitles to your Microsoft Teams live events and meetings

When hosting a meeting or event in Microsoft Teams, it is important to consider how all your audience members or participants will be consuming it. Now in preview, live captions & subtitles allow attendees to read speaker captions in real-time—helping to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of meetings (private preview) and live events (public preview). This is a game changing feature for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, have different levels of language proficiency, or are connecting from a loud location.

 

Captions and subtitles in live events supports more than 50 languages, so participants can easily select the one that optimizes their experience. Today in private preview, meetings support live captions in English, with more languages coming soon!

Learn more here.

Live event live caption language selection.Live event live caption language selection.

Discover usage trends with live events usage reports

Easy access to data and reporting makes it much easier to optimize for future events. Now, admins can easily identify trends across the organization including usage information, event status, views, and who in your organization schedules, presents and produces live events. Learn more here.

Live event usage report.Live event usage report.

Updates to Microsoft Teams Rooms to make your meetings experiences even better

In the month of July, the Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) app update 4.0.105.0 was rolled out via the Windows store. This app update included various client and service features for Microsoft Teams Rooms devices. This included a rebrand of the app from “Skype Room System V2” to “Microsoft Teams Room”, UI updates that make the Microsoft Teams Room app experience more similar to using your desktop and mobile clients, updated themes and imagery to the front of room displays, the addition of meeting controls on the MTR device, and the ability to rate call quality on the MTR device.

 

There was also the highly anticipated update that allows the use of Microsoft Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams Rooms. This means that when your room has a touch enabled device, you can have real-time whiteboarding sessions with remote participants!

 

Learn more about the Microsoft Whiteboard and the rest of the Microsoft Teams Rooms updates here.

Microsoft Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams Rooms.Microsoft Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams Rooms.

Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021

We have announced that Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021 , and after that date the service will no longer be accessible. Please note that the Skype Consumer service and Skype for Business Server will both be unaffected by this announcement. Since launching Microsoft Teams in 2017 we have added to and refined the service as to be able to confidently recommend it as an upgrade to all Skype for Business Online customers. Customers who have already made the move tell us that Teams not only has helped them improve collaboration generally, it has also provided a rare opportunity to rethink the way work gets done in their organization. Learn more about the Skype for Business Online retirement plan and what we are doing to help customers migrate here.

 

What’s New: Teams Admins

Prepare your network with Network Planner (Preview)

We know that admins want to ensure that their network is ready to deliver the best Teams experience to their users. The Network Planner, found in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, calculates your network requirements for deploying Teams and cloud voice across your organization’s physical locations. You only need to provide your network details and Teams usage. This feature launched in preview on July 1st. Learn more here.

 

What’s New: Teams for Firstline Workers

Clock in and out of work with time clock in Teams Shifts

The new time clock feature in the Teams Shifts module allows workers to clock in and out of their work shifts and breaks right from their Teams mobile app. Managers have the option to geo-fence a location to ensure team members are at the designated worksite when clocking in or out.

time clock smaller.gif

 

What’s New: Government GCC High and Department of Defense (DOD)

All these features are coming to the following US Government environments: GCC High and DOD

 

Work seamlessly with people outside of your organization with external access

Seamlessly communicate with people outside your organization with Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams external access allows users from other domains to participate in your chats and calls, including those who are still using Skype for Business Online or Skype for Business on-prem. This is rolling out now for Government GCC High and DOD, and will be completed by the end of August 2019. Learn more here.

 

Broadcast video and meeting content to large online audiences with live events

Live events in Microsoft Teams (both Teams and external app produced) became available in GCC on July 26th. Microsoft Teams live events are an extension of Teams meetings that enable you to schedule and produce events that stream to large online audiences. Learn more about live events here.

 

See people’s availability whether they are using Teams or Skype for Business with unified presence

Presence status for users (i.e. available, busy or in a call) is now aggregated between Teams and Skype for Business. This ensures that a user has a single presence state regardless of the app and the device they use. So, if you turn your status to “busy” on Teams, Skype users will also see your “busy” status. For this functionality, the underlying Skype for Business account that is connected to the Teams user needs to be hosted in Skype for Business online. This is rolling out now for Government GCC High Learn more here.

 

Teams users can now chat 1:1 with Skype for Business users

Interoperability (1:1 Teams – Skype for Business chat) is now available in the Government GCC High and DOD environments. A user that has been upgraded to Teams-Only mode can continue to communicate via chat with other users in the organization who are still using Skype for Business by using the interoperability capabilities between Teams and Skype for Business. This helps users stay productive while the organization transitions from Skype for Business to Teams. Learn more here.

 

Try the new features and provide feedback using the feedback link in the lower left corner of Microsoft Teams. If you have suggestions on how to make Teams better, please submit your idea via User Voice or vote for existing ideas to help us prioritize the requests. We read every piece of feedback that we receive (we really do!) to make sure that Microsoft Teams meets your needs. 

 

— Marissa Salazar, Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft Teams 

34 Comments
Silver Contributor

Hi Marissa,

 

In regards to Priority Notification licensing it is unclear if Microsoft plans to offer an add-on licence for E1 / F1 customers from January 2020. Firstly I dislike the enabling of the feature for a free period. Is there a clear method to disable the feature from the outset. The use case for Priority Notifications works well for First Line workers who may be primarily F1 customers. This is, as it stands, a clear upsell to E3 or E5 licenses. The notion of a limit of five messages is pretty meaningless to a user in the real world.

 

Microsoft has the right, obviously, to monetise what it chooses but there is a need to do this transparently. Thank you,

Silver Contributor

Name auto completion happens only if you click in that popup? Otherwise (and even if it only happens on click) this could be annoying when just mentioning someone's name but not wanting to send a message to that person.

Steel Contributor

@-less mentions not even on in my tenant. Typing names does nothing. 

Silver Contributor

Well, half of the news on this post are already mentioned before in other posts and the other half is still in development/rollout and so on. Sometimes it feels like MS is scrambling to get some news, to keep users excited, etc. But this only annoys those who is watching the news and sees all the repeats.

Brass Contributor

MS Teams was updated today but I see no differences to the previous version.  

Microsoft

@wroot - Yes the person is only tagged if you actually click on the pop up of their name, as to avoid people being tagged by accident. We have found that this feature is great for users who don't know how to use @-mentions or forget to tag someone. 


And thank you for the feedback. This monthly What's New in Microsoft Teams blog post is meant to summarize all of the new features that have come to Teams in the past month, therefore there will be some overlap with features that had been discussed elsewhere. But hopefully this can serve as a running summary of what has changed, is rolling out, or put into preview each month. 

Microsoft

@John Wynne - Thank you for the feedback! We have passed this feedback on to the planning team. 

Silver Contributor

I understand why you want to do roundup posts. But for me personally this creates fatigue and i i prefer short posts rather than long lists of dozens of features, especially when some are done, some are not yet.

Steel Contributor

I don't mind, and actually like "what's coming" but this post is titled "What’s New in Microsoft Teams | July 2019" and unless it is arriving in the next 7 hours, much of the above belongs in the "What’s New in Microsoft Teams | August 2019" post. 

Copper Contributor
I like the @- less mentions as we have many non-technical users, the problem is it doesn't work for names that are 4 characters or less. It requires 5 characters to be entered before the pop-up box appears. Can this be fixed? Many users have 3 or 4 letter names. Thanks.
Brass Contributor

Keep up the innovation and refinements Teams team
Priority notification would be even better if you could grant feature on a group or per user basis and not just global

Silver Contributor

Nick, i guess they had to limit this, otherwise popup would be jumping up too often even not writing someone's name.

Steel Contributor

I understand the 4 or less issue, but it is pretty common. If you go to this list, 13.2% of the names there are 4 characters or less, and that is just the US (Thank you Power Query). We have a number of people in our office not from the US and their foreign names are also often 2-4 chars. So not sure if I'll even be showing people how to use this or use it myself. I'll need to @ people or I'll get a lot more failures than I'd like. I'm just thinking of the people on my wall, including me. There are 6 of us. 4 of us have first names 4 chars or less. That is definitely anecdotal, but enough that I cannot use this feature for the other 3 of them.

Silver Contributor

I wonder how quick popup is. I wouldn't want for a popup with name Ed to jump on me every time i start to type 'editing' :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes: but if there is a slight pause before the lookup enough for a regular person to type a few more chars, then maybe it is ok. I'm sure MS had some reasons behind the decision. Maybe eve some focus groups or private testing with partners.

Steel Contributor

I guess I'd want it to retroactively pop up. So if I typed "Hey Ed did you...." it would highlight Ed with the name to tag it if there was an Ed in the tenant. Something similar to the red underline for misspelled words. But if you typed "I'm editing something...." then nothing would happen.

 

But if I have to remember to do @ for short names and maybe not for long names, I'll just do it for all names, as I do today.

Brass Contributor

record a personal phone greeting

"Hello this is Gary and I am either on the phone or away from my phone. Please leave a message at the tone and I will contact you as soon as I am able"

 

When will this feature be added to TEAMS?

 

Thanks, Gary

Copper Contributor

When can we use Channel Moderation!?  I'm checking daily!

Brass Contributor

Teams in it's current iteration is a complete crap shoot compared to S4BO. Why this product is even out of development let alone already being considered as a replacement to Skype for Busienss Online is a clear indication that Microsoft has given up on delivering a solid, vetted our software and services in place of crowd sourcing development to in-production paying customers. My company and the customers we service are very disapointed in the way Microsoft has decided to handle this transition. Microsoft Teams is NOT ready. Stop cramming it down our throats.

Steel Contributor

I like the priority notifications idea and the licensing model is fair. We can always test 5 free messages and decide if we like them and if we need more.

I can't find any more information on how to use this feature though. Link in Teams admin centre messaging policy is not working (Learn more -> https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/invalidpath) and there is nothing about it on Docs except licensing.

Silver Contributor

Not sure about the documentation, but to use it just start a chat with some contact (not post a message in the channel) and you should see the button. Don't remember exactly, i think it is shown as a red bell or something.

Steel Contributor

@wroot  Thanks, I can see it now after restarting the app. It's also working on the web version now. I wasn't patient enough.

 

 Capture.JPG

Brass Contributor

Does anyone have @- less mentions yet? Not seeing it in our tenant using the app v1.2.00.21068 or the web client. The roadmap says it's still in development. 

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?featureid=52966 

Steel Contributor

We did. It works by just popping up the recommend names as if you had typed @. Just typing Robert will not @ robert. You have to type Robert then select his name same as if you type @ robert. 

 

but it is gone today, so evidently they are still tweaking it. I didn't have time to test it to see if you could tag someone in a team they weren't in, or if it worked in group chats vs conversations.

Brass Contributor

Streamline TEAMS Voicemail access.

 

Activity feed shows voicemail received. Selecting (clicking) that notification should open record.

 

clipboard_image_0.png

Iron Contributor

@Marissa Salazar, why is the new Channel Moderation options available for all channels EXCEPT the General channel? This is probably the channel that needs moderation the most! Can you at least let us know if the plan is to bring the new moderation experience to the General channel? *hopefully soon*

Steel Contributor

@Steven Tolboe you are supposed to enable this setting instead.

 

Allow only team owners to post to the General channel

Reduce channel noise by having only team owners post to the General channel. Go to the team and click ˙˙˙ More options > Manage Team. On the Settings tab, click Member permissions > select Only owners can post messages.

Silver Contributor

That's not the same as moderation. What if you want to use General channel for announcements? Inconsistency is synonymous with MS.

Steel Contributor

You create a channel called Announcements.

 

This is all spelled out in their whole company/organization teams guidance.  I will be the first to gripe about certain features but this one isn't it. 

Silver Contributor

Can you delete General channel?

Steel Contributor
No. You cannot delete it, and you cannot even rename it.
Silver Contributor

So, if you want/need to have all channels moderated, you can't achieve that.

Copper Contributor

@Marissa Salazar 

Is there any update on the release version which will include HDX optimization for Microsoft Teams for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops.

As mentioned in this article from Citrix? https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2019/05/21/citrix-hdx-optimization-for-microsoft-teams/

 

Thanks

Copper Contributor

It says here that automatic captions for meetings are in private review - when will it be available more widely?  We would really like to try this for better accessibility for our video conferences.

Steel Contributor

@Chris_Albery-Jones Good question.  The Education blog posted a few months ago indicating the feature would be available in time for back to school.  That came and went. 

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