Ready, set, lift-off with video in Microsoft 365
Published Nov 02 2021 10:00 AM 28K Views
Microsoft

If you are creating or watching videos at work, you know that video is no longer just for employee training and corporate communications. Video is also being used for virtual events, to explain tools and processes, to capture and store meetings for those who can’t attend, to share knowledge, and to enhance documents, decks, and spreadsheets. Videos are powerful because they explain visually, tell a story, and create human connection. Microsoft Stream makes it easy to create enhanced videos and use them in the flow of your everyday work. 

 

 

Video is becoming central to productivity in the workplace, serving a similar role as documents and slide decks. Creating and securely sharing enhanced videos with Stream is as simple as opening the app and tapping the “Create” button. Microsoft Stream is leading the way with enhanced video as a productivity tool by integrating it into your apps across Microsoft 365. 

 

Today at Ignite, Chris Pratley and I shared several new features and capabilities for Stream (on SharePoint), along with deeper integrations with Microsoft 365. (See the Ignite presentation: Video and Microsoft Stream in Microsoft 365.) Let’s take a closer look at what's new and how Stream (on SharePoint) can empower you and your team. 

Search and discovery

Video content across Microsoft 365 is now easier than ever to find.

New Stream start page  

We’re creating a dedicated home for videos within Microsoft 365. If you go to stream.office.com, you can discover videos from across your organization in a single, comprehensive, and user-friendly experience. The new home for videos is personalized and shows your recommended, shared, and recent videos and meeting recordingseverything that is relevant to your work and interests.  

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The new Stream start page lets you quickly create a video or browse recommended, recent, shared, and favorited videos.

 

Videos in Microsoft 365 search

Stream videos are deeply integrated with Microsoft 365, which means that you can search for and find videos in Office, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365 search in Bing. Not only can you search for videos based on title and other metadata, you can also search based on what was said in the video. Your search term results will appear inside the transcript segment that featured them to provide context. To search for content in videos, go to Office, enter your term in the search bar, and then select file type “Video” to narrow your results to just videos.

 

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Videos in SharePoint show up in search results based on keywords and words that were spoken in the video.

 

Recommended videos

Stream (on SharePoint) leverages the power of Microsoft Graph to surface videos in a recommended viewing list tailored to you. Your recommended video files show up in your Office home feed and in the recommended files section when you open a new tab in Edge. Additionally, when you click on a coworker’s profile card, you’ll see the files and videos related to them. These are just a few ways Stream is personalizing your video feed in Microsoft 365.

Video creation and consumption

Let’s take a look at new video recording and viewing features in Stream (on SharePoint).

 

Screen recording

Videos are an excellent medium for knowledge transfer in the hybrid workplace. Instead of writing out a document to convey instructions or processes, you can show how to do it with an explanatory video or a screen recording. Conveying information visually is more engaging and often simpler to follow than text in a document.

 

Soon you’ll be able to record your screen, record from your webcam, or both at the same time right from the Stream start page in office.com. This feature will be available in the coming months.

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Recording a video from Stream is simple.

 

Updated video player

We all want our videos to play smoothly with high quality, no matter what network or device we’re using. We've been working hard to make that happen, and we’re happy to say that across Microsoft 365, videos are now faster to start up and play with less buffering than in the past. We’ve also added a visual table of contents to videos so that you can see the content at-a-glance and jump to relevant sections of a video. Additionally, we’ve added modern comments with @mention capabilities to draw someone’s attention to your feedback.

 

These playback enhancements give you more control and help save you time as you interact with videos across Microsoft 365.

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Stream videos offer transcripts, comments, table of contents, and playback speed controls.

 

Mobile video experiences

As promised, we're beginning to deliver improved video experiences on mobile across Microsoft 365.

 

On the Office mobile app for Android, you’ll now see Stream videos appear in your recent and recommended files, as well as in the media tab. When recording videos on the mobile app, you can now use effects such as overlays, text, and inking.

 

Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform (EXP) designed for the hybrid era. It brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights in the flow of work. Within Viva Learning and Viva Connections on the Teams mobile app, videos now play inline with Viva content.

 

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Stream videos are now accessible in the Viva Connections app.

 

Teams meeting recordings

Recording meetings in Teams is an excellent way to review what you may have missed in meetings and to help others who could not attend catch up. Over the past year, we've shifted to saving new Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint to provide better governance and sharing options. We’ve also rolled out several accompanying improvements. Our newest improvement is multi-speed playback for Teams meeting recordings to review and catch up quicker. We expect this feature to be live for all users worldwide by the end of November.

 

Additionally, Teams meeting recordings now deliver high-quality transcripts with speaker attribution for meetings that have Teams Live Transcription turned on, and the meeting recordings are indexed into easier-to-consume segments based on slide transitions. Playback is also enhanced on the Teams mobile app where you have faster startup and multi-speed playback.

 

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Teams meeting recordings now support multi-speed playback and deliver transcripts with speaker attribution.

New video distribution channels

Many of you have asked us to make it easier to produce customized video portals and corporate communication sites. To this end, we’re updating SharePoint web parts so that they offer better video integration with your modern SharePoint sites.

 

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Add Stream video to your modern SharePoint portals.

 

We have scenario-based help guides available now to walk you through adding hero videos on your modern sites. In the future, we'll make this even easier by providing enhanced video web parts such as galleries and carousels. We are working on site templates that feature videos beautifully, alongside articles and other content, and retain all the rich customization and branding capabilities of SharePoint.

 

Microsoft Viva Connections

Corporate communications teams can insert videos into Viva Connections for more engaging communications, and even schedule the posting so that video messages show up in all the Viva touchpoints at a certain point in time.

 

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Stream videos can now be included in Viva Connections.

 

Viva Connections is a great way to reach employees with a curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and resources in the apps and devices you use every day. 

Updated security and compliance

We've heard from many customers that compliance is just as important as innovative video experiences. Recordings and other videos often contain sensitive information that needs to be managed appropriately. We’re happy to say that all videos in OneDrive and SharePoint, including meeting recordings, have the same basic governance policies (eDiscovery, Legal Hold, Retention, DLP, etc.) as other document types in Microsoft 365.

Stream (Classic) migration tool preview

We are releasing a private preview of the new Stream migration tool that will help you move videos from Stream (Classic) to Stream (on SharePoint). The tool will maintain permissions, redirect links, and embed codes for any Stream (Classic) videos referenced in sites and documents. If you’d like to enroll in the preview visit: https://aka.ms/StreamMigrationPreviewSignup. Customers selected for the private preview will get access to the tool later this month. Note: This private preview is available only to subscribers who are outside of the European Union and China.

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The Stream migration tool will soon be available in private preview.

 

As we continue to deliver more video experiences in Microsoft 365 and formally release the migration tool in 2022, we will communicate timing around a retirement date for Stream (Classic).

 

What's Next?

We’re building Stream to empower you to communicate, connect, and learn. Our long-term goal is to make video a mainstream format that’s as easy to create, consume, and manage as text in documents. As we work towards this goal, we’ll be bringing video to the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day, and we’ll be improving performance, search, accessibility, and playback/recording controls.

 

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