What’s new in Microsoft Teams – April update
Published Apr 05 2018 09:42 AM 134K Views
Microsoft

Based on your feedback, we continue to add new capabilities on a regular basis to make Microsoft Teams an even more powerful hub for teamwork. Here’s a summary of the main updates that have rolled out or have started to roll out in the last few weeks.

 

Communicate more effectively with new chat functionality

Skype for Business contacts are coming to Teams – We’re importing your contact list from Skype for Business Online to Teams. Now, all your contacts and groups that you created in Skype for Business will show up in Teams under your contact list. To access your contacts, simply click on “Chat” in the left navigation and then on “Contacts”. Here, you can also add new contacts or create new contact groups.

In this first step, only contacts from your organization will be imported. Federated contacts from outside your organization will be added at a later point.

 

Access your Skype for Business contacts in TeamsAccess your Skype for Business contacts in Teams

Unified Presence between Teams and Skype for Business –  Presence states for users (i.e. available, busy or in a call) will now be 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.  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. 

 

Out of office message – On vacation or travel? Your out of office status and message will now show up in Microsoft Teams when people hover over your people card. Your coworkers will also get a reminder that you’re out of office when they @ mention you or send you a private chat.

 

Out of Office messages in Microsoft TeamsOut of Office messages in Microsoft Teams

Skype for Business Interop with Persistent Chat – As companies upgrade from Skype for Business to Teams, we expect users in some companies to use both apps at the same time. To ensure continued productivity, we’ve added the ability for Teams users to communicate with other users who are using Skype for Business (both online or on-prem). Teams users can now also view the full interop chat history across their Microsoft Teams clients. 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. 

 

Chat between a Teams and a Skype for Business userChat between a Teams and a Skype for Business user

Improved notifications about calls – If you have a missed call or a new voicemail, you'll start seeing a notification in your Activity feed. When you click on a missed call notification, you’ll be taken to the call history tab from where you can easily call the person back. When you click on a new voicemail notification, you’ll be taken to the Voicemail tab, where you'll be able to listen to your message or review a transcript. Please note that you will only see these notifications if you have a calling plan.

 

Collaborate more effectively

 

Collaborate securely with anyone in Microsoft Teams with guest access – We’ve rolled out the ability to add anyone as a guest in Microsoft Teams. This means that anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook.com, Gmail.com or others, can participate as a guest in Teams with full access to team chats, meetings and files.

Previously, anyone with an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) account could be added as a guest, and now anyone with an email address can be added to a team. All guests in Teams are covered by the same compliance and auditing protection as the rest of Office 365, and can be managed securely within Azure AD.

Read the full announcement for all details

 

You can now add anybody with a consumer account as a guest in TeamsYou can now add anybody with a consumer account as a guest in Teams

Support for new languages

Teams is getting smarter. We now support Indonesian, Romanian, and Vietnamese!

 

More channels per team - You're now able to create up to 200 channels per team (this includes channels you've deleted). Go forth and make channels!

Work with confidence: new features for IT admins

 

New Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center including Messaging Policies - To enable admins to better manage the various aspects of the service, we have started to roll out a new Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center that provides you with a unified experience to manage both Teams and Skype for Business. The new admin center provides you with additional functionality including the ability to manage messaging policies on a user level. Read the full announcement for all details.  

 

Retention policies – As an admin, you can now use the Office 365 security and compliance center to set retention policies for Teams – helping your organizations to stay complaint with regulatory obligations around preservation of documents and records. With retention policies for conversations, chats, and channel messages, you can decide proactively whether to retain content, delete content, or both, and then retain or delete the content based on a time duration. You can apply a single Teams policy to the entire organization or just specific users or specific teams. and decide proactively whether to retain content or delete content – for the entire organization, specific locations or user or specific teams. Read the full announcement for all details.


Install Microsoft Teams using MSI – Admins can now use MSI files (32-bit and 64-bit) to remotely deploy Microsoft Teams so that users do not have to manually download the Teams app. This enables organizations to leverage System Center Configuration Manager, Group Policy, or any 3rd party distribution mechanisms for broad deployments of Microsoft Teams. Learn more

New features available on Teams iOS & Android apps

 

The features Skype for Business Interop with persistent chat, unified presence between Teams and Skype for Business as well as contact groups have started to roll out on mobile clients as well.

 

Guest access on mobile – Guest access and account switching is now available on iOS and Android, and on unmanaged and managed devices. For managed Android devices, make sure you’re on the latest versions of the Authenticator and Company Portal apps.

 

You can now easily switch between different tenants you’re a member off.You can now easily switch between different tenants you’re a member off.

Let us know what you think!

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 to make sure that Microsoft Teams meets your needs.

 

—Anne Michels, @Anne_Michels, Group Product Manager Microsoft Teams
— Christian Schacht
, senior product marketing manager Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business

139 Comments
Iron Contributor

The main problem for me since this was released is that messages between S4B and Teams has stopped working completely. If I turn off S4B and ask a colleague to send me a message Teams won't get it. We have tried changing the mode from legacy to islands and waiting 24h but that didn't help, all messages just end up in Outlook a while later.

 

Regarding the contact list itself, here are my suggested improvements

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Contact-list-is-finnaly-here-but-it-can-be-im...

Microsoft

Just tested for unified messaging and it still only a one-to-one platform
The Unified presence seems to be a bit off with timing, especially with OoO
None of the external contacts are in Teams.
I do not see where and how I can manually enter the External Contacts.
Contacts are in random order within a group, with no way of sorting.

Deleted
Not applicable

Federation isn’t dine yet that’s why you ca not see external contacts.  That should have probabaly been done before moving contact lists cause now your going to not have those when they do add that support. 

Copper Contributor

@Justin HalbmannI did not have to update, simply signing out and signing in triggered the UI refresh. I think if I had waited, it eventually would have done it on its own (either via refresh or silent update).

 

@DeletedThanks for clarifying how the OOO works, hopefully they will make some timing/trigger improvements. I have also seen those huge presence improvements, before this Skype users could very rarely actually IM me into Teams because presence would usually be messed up and I would be unavailable or offline...this appears to work flawlessly so far.

 

@ngathI haven't seen those same issues you describe, not sure what might be different. I do agree with a lot of those suggestions! Upvoted :)

Copper Contributor

So my account is working properly with Skype conversations going to teams and persistent, other users though are not.  I have setup other users accounts with teamsupgradepolicy Islandswith Notify and DisallowOverrideCallingTeamsChatTeams, its not matching what I see on my end though.  Anyone else have this experience?

Brass Contributor

@Justin Halbmann We don't have that yet. Under Teams Upgrade, we only have the Coexistence mode option, and that's it. I hope this means we'll get this soon. 

Brass Contributor

Federation and external contacts missing seems like it should have been a pre-req. 

 

Also, file transfer from Skype users seems to still default to Skype instead of inter-op through Teams.

 

Group chats initiated from Skype also don't pop up in Teams. I got it via my Skype mobile client, because my Skype desktop client was told to direct all to Teams, which it didn't do for the group/meeting chat.

Iron Contributor

Just curious if the Out of Office presence function will ever function like Skype?

When my Out of Office is on, in Skype I can still show Available, Busy, etc.

However, in Teams - I can't seem to override the Out of Office status, or indicate a parallel Away/Available/Busy status (overlaying my Out of Office indicator).

Deleted
Not applicable

Can't answer for the Team, but right now you cannot, not sure if there are plans to change it, but uservoice feedback or feedback in general on here is welcome.

 

It's more a habit change that I'm getting people to do here at the office using "Tentative" status for their self block items. If your Out of Office then you should really be Out of Office so not sure why people even use that option anymore specially with the way most places have remote employee's these days. If you don't want to be out of office, don't use out of office meeting block or don't set your auto response that your out. It would be nice if you could override the option thou temporarily, then switch it back to Out of Office. My guess these changes will come, this is first iteration and although has a few quirks it's light years better than what we as Teams users have been dealing with the past year+ with presence.

Copper Contributor

Is there anyway to organize or move group at certian position in Chat/Contacts if i have 100 groups and i want to move some group at top postion.In microsoft Lync it is working?

 

Chat.png

Iron Contributor
Copper Contributor

"The main problem for me since this was released is that messages between S4B and Teams has stopped working completely. If I turn off S4B and ask a colleague to send me a message Teams won't get it. We have tried changing the mode from legacy to islands and waiting 24h but that didn't help, all messages just end up in Outlook a while later."

 

Me too, really disappointed in this update. I got external training in for our users as was expecting it to be all singing and dancing by now. #awkward

Iron Contributor
@Adam you can change to teams only mode with powershell, that solves the problem (or is at least a workaround) but you can't use S4B at all then.
Copper Contributor

@Anne Michels  We are just starting to use TEAMS.  Is the out of office update already available?  How do we set it up? I see the "away" option but am unsure of how to set an out of office as mentions above

 

Iron Contributor

@Oshalo27 This has been working in my tenant for awhile now. It isn't an option you set in Teams. Teams pulls the out of office status directly from Exchange. So if you have your calendar blocked as "out of office" that will be your status others see in Teams. Even cooler- if you have "automatic replies" turned on for your out of office message in Exchange, people will actually see that message when they hover over your picture in Teams. That popup that shows a person's name photo and details? It will include their "out of office" typed message, pulled right from Exchange. You can test this in your own Teams environment by searching for someone you know is currently out of the office and has their calendar properly marked as such. :) Hope this helps! 

Copper Contributor

@Katrin Weixel  Thank you so much!  I don't think our organization uses exchange?  We just use Office 365, teams and Skype.  If someone has an out of office in their outlook, will that work?  I am sorry if my questions is silly, this is all new to me.

 

Iron Contributor

@Oshalo27 If you use Outlook calendars at work, then your company probably uses Exchange. :) Check and see if you know of someone who is currently out of the office (marked as such on their calendar). See what their status looks like in Teams. 

Copper Contributor

@Katrin Weixel didn't work.  :( 

 

Iron Contributor

@Oshalo27 Oh, that's too bad. :( You may need to reach out to Microsoft directly about your tenant setup. Not sure what all is required for this to work. I just know we have had it for many months and it is always pulling the status and message directly from Outlook/Exchange. There is no "out of office" status to actually select from within Teams. It's automatic. 

Copper Contributor

@Katrin Weixel sorry to ask again.  To clarify, it is the calendar out of office option, not the automatic reply?  
Iron Contributor

@Oshalo27 If your calendar is blocked with "out of office" your Teams status will also be "out of office."

In addition to this, if you also have an automatic reply set up in your email, that message will be displayed in your info in Teams when someone hovers over your photo/status. The latter is just an extra bonus. The whole status part comes from your calendar setup.

If the Exchange server is onprem then the status will not update. as Katrin has said it should work based on either out of office or automatic replies. It will also change when busy on your calendar to busy status etc. 

 

You can tell if you are on-prem exchange pretty easy by seeing if you have the "Meetings" tab on the left rail under Teams. If you are missing this then you probably are on-prem which won't read exchange calendar data for presence in Teams. 

Copper Contributor

Thank you both!  It finally worked when I set my out of office through outlook.  I had to do both, the out of office autoreply and setting the calendar as out of office.  My staff uses Office 365 and it  did not work for folks using outlook through Office 365.  We do have "Meetings" on the top left rail.  I think we will get there, at least for those that use outlook without Office 365.

Keep in mind when you set the automatic replies and out of office, it takes upwards of like 15 minutes to change your status. It's not an instant change. Only one is necessary, you probably set one, then didn't wait long enough set the other then noticed the change in Teams, but it's because of the timer is why :). 

Copper Contributor

Ahhhh, I am inpatient.  Let's hope you are correct!  So should it work for folks that are only utilizing outlook through Office 365?

The client is irrelevant as long as it connects to their Exchange Online mailbox, which using the Web Outlook should be so it should work, just set automatic replies and give it 15 minutes or so and it should update. 

Copper Contributor

It worked!  I just had to be patient! Thanks again! 

Steel Contributor

@Anne Michels I’m wondering about Contacts import from SfB to Teams. I went TeamsOnly for my account months ago and no contacts was imported. Suddenly a few weeks ago, all my 100+ contacts from SfB was imported automatically, both internal and federated (!). New feature? Who gets it because we see some users getting their contacts imported and some not. Any way to initiate/force import?

Copper Contributor

Hi, 

 

Member of my team has OOO message set up in Outlook but Teams doesn't reflect this. It shows only that person is offline. Is that option works? 

 

Copper Contributor

@Anne Michels 

"Install Microsoft Teams using MSI – Admins can now use MSI files (32-bit and 64-bit) to remotely deploy Microsoft Teams so that users do not have to manually download the Teams app. This enables organizations to leverage System Center Configuration Manager, Group Policy, or any 3rd party distribution mechanisms for broad deployments of Microsoft Teams. Learn more"

 

This is not an enterprise installer and needs to be addressed ASAP! 

 

"The Teams MSI will place an installer in Program Files. Whenever a user signs into a new Windows User Profile, the installer will be launched and a copy of the Teams application will be installed in that user's appdata folder" > I can't believe this got approved internally within Microsoft as an acceptable approach! Shocking.


Great article here: https://james-rankin.com/articles/microsoft-teams-on-citrix-xenapp/ by James Ranking detailing whats wrong with it (not just for Citrix environments either)

Rant over.... Other features are nice and welcome though ;)

Brass Contributor

@Daniel Bolton

 

I talked to a friend that used to work for MS and Teams is supposed to be added to the Click-to-Run deployment of Office 365 this summer (2019). This should address installation issues.

Brass Contributor

@John Loreas of 1902, which was released yesterday, it's now installed by default for Monthly Channel.

 

More info here

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/DeployOffice/teams-install

 

Iron Contributor

My Tenant  still shows little old version 16.0.11328.20144 (1808), is it getting pushed Tenant by Tenant

Brass Contributor

@Maheshwar TayalOpen one of your Office applications and go to File, Account. Under the version you should see what channel you are in. If you are in deferred then you will not have the latest builds. If you are in the monthly channel and that far back, your auto updates aren't working. 

Copper Contributor

@John Lore > thx for the info... Sadly we're some time away from moving off Office Pro. I suspect the bundling of Teams in with Office could be the same "lipstick on a pig" as the MSI installer is today though.

Copper Contributor

FYI, it looks like the intergated Teams installer that is part of Pro Plus is simply just a bundling of the already existing Teams Machine Wide installer MSI into the Click to run installer.

Microsoft

Hello,

I am curious if anyone has found a way to email a Contact List in Teams. Just like you could in Skype(right click a group you created and choose send email) which in turn would send every contact you had in that group an email. I am looking for the same functionality in Teams.

 

Thank you

Jon

Iron Contributor

Very Good point

even this can be used to export/save  all existing Teams Contacts

We are migrating from 1 domain to another and could not find a option to export all contacts from Teams and there is no response from Microsoft

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