What’s new in Microsoft Teams – November update
Published Nov 30 2017 10:23 AM 62.2K Views
Microsoft

Since we started to work on Microsoft Teams, our mission hasn’t changed – to create a hub for teamwork that provides people with a single place to communicate and collaborate with others so that teams can achieve more.

We’d like to thank each one of you who has provided feedback on Microsoft Teams through channels like UserVoice. Over the last year, we have received numerous pieces of feedback that have helped us identify gaps, fix bugs and evolve Teams to truly enable teams to be more productive and to meet the needs of all customers.

Based on your feedback, we continue to add new capabilities on a regular basis to further improve the service. Here’s a summary of the main updates that we introduced in October and November:


Manage Teams more effectively

Manage Microsoft Teams via PowerShell - IT Professionals always look for ways to automate tasks and make daily operations simpler. In November, we released a new PowerShell module for Microsoft Teams that enables you to leverage PowerShell to configure and manage Teams.
The first version of the Microsoft Teams module - version 0.9.0 –includes 23 PowerShell cmdlets that make the administration of Teams easier. You can use the cmdlets for example to automate the creation of teams and channels, to bulk edit users or to set options such as a picture, and member permissions. The PowerShell module for Teams is a big step in our efforts to enable you to manage Microsoft Teams more effectively. Learn more

 

Manage Microsoft Team with PowerShellManage Microsoft Team with PowerShell
Understand how your users are using Teams – We released two new usage reports in the Office 365 admin center that enable you to understand how your users are leveraging Teams to communicate and collaborate.

  • The Microsoft Teams user activity report gives you a view of the most common activities that your users perform in Microsoft Teams - including how many people engage in a chat in a channel, how many communicate via private chat message, and how many participate in calls or meetings. You can see this information both at the tenant level, as well as for each individual user.

Track usage of Microsoft TeamsTrack usage of Microsoft Teams

  • The Microsoft Teams app usage report provides you with information about how your users connect to Microsoft Teams, including mobile apps. The report helps admins understand what devices are popular in their organization and how many users work on the go.

To access the reports, go to your admin center homepage, click on Reports and on Usage. You will land on the usage reporting dashboard where you can select the respective report from the dropdown menu at the top of the page. Learn more

Store your Teams data locally in the UK – Security, compliance and trust is a huge priority for us. To help UK customers in industries like banking, government, public sector and healthcare address their legal, regulatory and compliance needs, Microsoft Teams now provides data residency in the UK. This means that new customers who have signed up for Teams after Nov 1st, 2017 automatically receive the benefit of having their data stored in country. Learn more

Support for conditional access on Macs – The macOS app for Microsoft Teams now supports device-based conditional access for Azure Active Directory and Intune. This enables IT admins to manage macOS devices with Intune and create policies to secure the data in Teams and prevent leakage on untrusted devices. Using conditional access policies, organizations can for example restrict access to Teams to devices that comply with the company's security policy or require multi-factor authentication. Learn more

 

Communicate more effectively with new chat functionality

Leave a group chat – Group chats in Teams are a great way to communicate with a group of people about topics that might not be relevant to all members of a team. When you’re part of a group chat, it sometimes happens that the conversation evolves into a direction that is less important to you. Or you might have been added to a group chat by mistake in the first place. To help you in these scenarios, we have added the ability for you to leave a group chat. To remove yourself from a group chat, click on the overflow menu next to the chat and select Leave. You will still be able to access the chat history up until the moment you left.


Leave a group chatLeave a group chat

Improved settings and notifications

Control who can post in the General channel – When you create a team, a General channel is created for you automatically. Many organizations use the General channel to share an overview of what the team wants to achieve and to share other high-level information like a welcome presentation.


Team owners now have more control over who can post in the General channel. You can choose between three settings – allow everybody to post, limit posting to team owners only, or allow all team members to post but remind them that their message will be seen by many people.
You can find this setting in the Settings area of each team which you can access by clicking Manage team next to the team’s name.

Control who can post in the General channelControl who can post in the General channel
Access all your personal settings in one place –
We've rebuilt the Settings menu to make it more streamlined for you to manage your preferences. Now, you can change your app theme, language, and notifications settings all in one place. To access your settings, click on your profile picture and select Settings.

 

Updated personal settingsUpdated personal settings

Discover new tabs more easily – Whenever someone adds a new tab at the top of a channel you belong to, you'll see a New badge right next to the tab name. It'll disappear once you click into the tab or after the tab has been up and running for a week.

Caption: Easily discover new tabs

Further improvements. In addition, we have also increased the maximum team size to 2,500 members per team.

Understand the Roadmap for Skype for Business capabilities coming to Teams

Last month at Microsoft Ignite we introduced a new vision for intelligent communications, which includes Microsoft Teams becoming the primary client for communication and collaboration in Office 365. You can now access our planned roadmap for adding Microsoft Skype for Business capabilities to Teams, so that you can plan your onboarding. The roadmap provides you with details about what features are available and coming in the areas of messaging, meetings and calling.

roadmap final slow.gif

 Click to download a full PDF of the roadmap

To plan your transition to Teams as an existing Skype customer, please engage your account team, FastTrack, and partners for guidance and support along the journey. Access online guidance to get started on your Microsoft Teams Journey.

New bots, tabs and connectors

Teams is a single hub for teamwork and allows you to connect to the tools and services you use every day via tabs, connector and bots. Each month, we are adding more apps and services so that you can truly customize your Teams experience and get work done more efficiently. Here are some of the latest adds:

 

Social, Creative & Marketing:

Add the Adobe Creative Cloud tab to your team to find, view and share Adobe Creative Cloud Assets or search for new Adobe Stock images with the Creative Cloud bot.

 

Sociabble delivers top of the line enterprise social media solutions for employee advocacy, social selling, internal communication and employee engagement. Add Sociabble to your team to view and get updates from all of your enterprise social channels all in one place.

 

Productivity & Workflow:

Adobe Sign keeps document workflows moving fast by integrating e-signatures into your Teams workspace. You can sign documents, send them for legally binding e-signatures and approvals all in one place.

 

Bizzy uses Microsoft Flow to train your bot to do thousands of things. Using the Bizzy flow connector, you can create a flow for each use case you want your bot to handle.

 

Use Calendar bot, the Approved Contact bot for calendar comparison and scheduling.

 

Talla uses machine learning to surface relevant information in the right context and keeps constantly changing information up to date. In Microsoft Teams, Talla allows teams to create and share information to apply the automation, insights, and contextual awareness made possible by AI.

 

IT/Developer tools:

Add a GitHub tab to your channel showing issues and pull requests for any repository you work with. You also have the ability now to add a personal tab giving you an individualized view of issues and pull requests across all your repositories.

 

Add a Jira Cloud tab to your channel to display issues from any project in JIRA ServiceDesk, JIRA Core or JIRA Software.

 

Bitbucket Cloud is the Git solution for professional teams. Add a Bitbucket Cloud tab view pull requests for any repository you work with.

 

Site24x7 is an all-in-one monitoring solution that constantly tracks uptime performance of your websites, servers, applications and cloud infrastructure. Add the connector to your team to receive status notifications and root cause analysis. 

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, senior product marketing manager Microsoft Teams

 

 

 

 

44 Comments
Iron Contributor

Great update team!! Congrats and keep it up! :)

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Not applicable

Need Team usage added to the reports, or at least Teams message count int he "Groups" reports similar to the yammer/e-mail etc. counts associated with them now, kind of let down that wasn't a report option with the new usage reports. Like to see what Teams are most active and see their usage adoption grow, not just per user. Hopefully next release. 

Microsoft

Yay for leave a group chat! Seems small, but I love control on notifications. Would even like to mute group chats, all up.

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Agree @Tom Resing with the muting, desperately needed for the Chat thread you follow the channel for or get team mentioned in that get out of control as well.

 

Microsoft

We love to be in control, don't we @Deleted! :)

Brass Contributor

@Anne Michels what version teams are you running on your screen shots, we don't have all the settings available as you do on your screen shots or the "calls" setting

Copper Contributor

Still can't execute and outbound webhook (slash commands like slack). And when are the APIs going to be out of beta?

Copper Contributor

Some great new features. My organisation has given us a lot of feedback about the UI not using space effectively resulting in a lack of information density and a lot of scrolling. Can you please make use of space better to help our users adopt this product more readily. 

Brass Contributor

 

How does one "Hide a chat?"

If it is available on the most up to date client, i can't find it. 

 

Perhaps share a version number when a change is announced? 

Or if it differs from cloud to desktop client, indicate that?

 

 

 

Brass Contributor

great job! Well done:grinning_face:

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Not applicable

Great job! Looking forward to try the new features and settings. :thumbs_up:

Brass Contributor

When Teams is on in Windows 10, Polish diacritical marks 'ś' and 'ą' don't work. It's combination of Alt+s and Alt+a, shortcuts failure...? When you switch off Teams everything is back to normal.

Copper Contributor

When are @ mentions going to work in connectors?

Brass Contributor
Hi, While it probably is a great update, you BROKE certain Polish characters, we cannot in Poland type Right ALT+s = ś and Right ALT+a = ą when Teams app is running. We cannot use these characters everywhere in the system, not only in Teams, please FIX IT. Kind regards, Krzysztof
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Thank you for the update ! :)

 

Why is there only a hide button in Teams, i want to able to delete it completely. Will this be in future release?

As a user, I'm truly disappointed at the UX this software has to offer. I apologise for the rant in advance, but I feel this is needed to improve development priorities.

 

The main user stories I have as a teacher on Teams are:

- Logging into Teams using a Single Sign On 

- Monitoring participation of students

- Interacting with students using chatrooms

- Sharing resources to general chatrooms

- Sending assignments that can be responded using any device

- Embedding Office 365 documents and Wikis into tabs for collaborative editing

 

Instead, what I spend most of my time doing on teams is:

- Waiting for the SSO login screen to grant me access after a successful login (takes about 30 seconds)

- Evangelizing Teams to students who prefer using other means to communicate (Teams feels slow and dull for them, generating a barrier). My students prefer other chatrooms to Teams due to the waiting times. This happened to a point they begged me to switch to Slack, Discord, and even Email.

- Waiting for embedded Office 365 documents to load (takes about 1 minute every time I open an embedded tab)

- Waiting for a Wiki to update, which is excruciatingly slow (takes about 10 seconds per update).

- Struggling to monitor user interaction on Teams by scrolling on chatrooms and counting. 

 

 

Suggestions:

- Perhaps you should do a jobs to be done analysis to find out what people is actually using teams for, including their offline tasks that lead them to use the tool. You may get better insights. Usage statistics can be misleading, so please ask people to share their past experiences (good and bad). This forum might be a good vehicle for that.

- Slack is perhaps not the best tool for collaborative Education, so please try to improve UX to help teachers and student groups make progress, by removing the barriers to entry mentioned above.

- Thankyou for the hard work.

 

Sidenote:

- Please make sure to launch a feature beyond desktop whenever possible. Sending assignments to students won't be useful unless mobile devices are compatible.

Copper Contributor

Please please, a modern compact design. 

Copper Contributor

That sounds great, but when will it be available in the government cloud?

Steel Contributor

Love the updates, bravo! Would like to see the PowerShell module updated to add commands for admins to control favorite/follow status to channels. For example: I would be able to create a new channel called "Announcements" then use PowerShell ensure that all members of that team receive notifications for every new post. Currently only users can manage their favorite/follow status on channels.

Steel Contributor

@Jonathan Hall (or @Jonathan Hall?) Government customers will be receiving Teams, Flow, Planner, and PowerApps early-to-mid next year. https://enterprise.microsoft.com/en-us/articles/industries/government/meeting-the-mission-with-the-m...

Steel Contributor

Why has the Release Notes section of T-bot been abandoned? Last update was Oct 11. In my opinion, this was a bad location for this, no user would ever know to go to Messages > T-bot to find the changelog. Would prefer to see it moved to About > Version where the drop down banner provided a link to the real changelog: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Release-notes-for-Microsoft-Teams-d7092a6d-c896-424c-b362-a... (which also unfortunately lags behind the release cadence by several weeks). Admins need timely changelogs so they can efficiently communicate changes in the app to their users!

Microsoft

Hi @Paul Youngberg, thanks for your feedback. I've provided it to our engineering team. We'll continue to update the release notes. You should see release notes for 10/18 and 11/15 as well.

Microsoft

Hi @Tallis Lockos, 'hide a chat' ended up not making it in the release last week. But it's coming very soon! 

Microsoft

Thanks everybody for your feedback. This will help us to continue to make Teams better. We're working on many new features that will be coming soon - as some of you noticed, my screenshots do already include some of them ;-).
Keep an eye on this blog, we're planning to post a "What's new in Microsoft Teams" blog post on a monthly basis from now on.

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.

Copper Contributor

We are still waiting for two fixes:

1) cannot create channel with the same name as previously deleted

2) cannot rename channels. Channel "General" looks like strange in localized teams apps 

 

bug_local.png

Copper Contributor

The problem with polish diacritical signs (Alt+Ctrl+A and Alt+Ctrl+S) has currently stoppped the adoption of MS Teams in our company. Interception of system-wide keyboard shortcuts is not usually a good idea... Please correct this!

Microsoft

@Rafał Fagas, could I please ask you to open a support case for this? We're looking into this but having you open a support case, our team can then directly look at what is going on in your tenant. Thanks!

Copper Contributor

Did this update change the image caching strategy? I have a program that posts images to Teams, and the images are no longer refreshing. They use the same URL, but the image changes. I've checked to see if the images are indeed getting updated in my storage, and they are, but they aren't updating in the image cards that I send to Teams.

Microsoft

@Larry Eby, could you please open a support case for us to look into this?

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Should requesting Teams usage reporting per Team something that would go on uservoice or is that considered going in another uservoice besides Teams, like under groups reporting? Or is this something that is already on the backlog that your aware of? I really think per team reporting is a must have to see what Teams are active, and what aren't so you can follow up with why they aren't being used actively etc. Per user is nice, but the Point of Teams is report on the Team health! 

Microsoft

Yes, please submit any Teams related requests on the Teams user voice. The reports are on the backlog but this will help us prioritize, understand your scenarios etc.

Copper Contributor

Hi, I'm wondering what the resolution is on providing an option to disable animated GIF autoplay ( https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/18622084-option-to-disable-ani... ). The suggestion was closed without any followup. Thanks.

Copper Contributor

@Anne Michels do you ever plan on adding a reminder Not? Something that can remind team members certain things using any date / time frequency? For example , remind Bob every Wednesday at 1pm to submit the spreadsheet ?

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Not applicable

Isn't that what Outlook calendar is for? ......

Copper Contributor

No this is a bot that can remind of anything. Not remind Steve to order lunch in ten minutes. Ever try slack bot? It's essential

Microsoft

Hi @Raymond Kishk, please add your suggestion to User Voice for our engineering team to consider this for future releases: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public

Copper Contributor

Hi, would really love to see a focus on reporting of Teams. It would be beneficial to have a way to monitor postings, response times ect. Thanks.



 

Copper Contributor

It looks like the "Meetings Tab > Agenda" view changed from a full day (showing gaps in the day) to a compressed/stacked view (not showing gaps in the day)... I searched settings and have been right-clicking all over the place... Is there any way to bring the gaps back?

Microsoft

@Michael Vire, please provide your feedback using the feedback functionality directly in the Teams app

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FYI: Compare with integration and AI capabilities of Slack and G Suite:  Frontiers by Slack 2017 - Intelligence at Work: How Google Leverages AI and Machine Learning  https://youtu.be/tuSnggvvhHw

Copper Contributor

Any chance some of these features from the November update are gonna hit soon? Would love to get the Outlook integration with Teams.

Microsoft

Hi @Edward Ansbro, all of the features listed in the blog post above are already available. Outlook Integration is still in development.

Thanks,

Anne

Copper Contributor


Thanks Anne. Is there a beta/insider version that's out available in the wild?

 

Hi @Edward Ansbro - Check out www.skypepreview.com where we'll soon have preview opportunities for Teams.

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