By Owen Paulus, Partner Group Product Manager, Office Media Group
Today, we are excited to announce that Microsoft Stream (on SharePoint) has reached its general availability milestone and is now ready to use. Stream (on SharePoint) will soon be replacing Stream (Classic)1. Unlike Stream (Classic), which functioned as a standalone portal and single point of video discovery, Stream (on SharePoint) is deeply integrated with Microsoft 365. Now, video can be a part of your everyday work and school apps: you can search, discover, play, share, embed, and record videos directly in Microsoft Office. If you are using Stream (Classic), it’s time to start moving to Stream (on SharePoint) to put video in the flow of your everyday work. In fact, Stream (on SharePoint) is already serving more video with more reliability to our customers than Stream (Classic).
For more information on how this new approach to enterprise video benefits your organization in terms of management, governance, customization, and life cycle, see the Stream IT guide. This is an exciting step in our journey to make video as simple to create, use, and manage as your documents, and we’re thrilled to share what’s new and what’s coming soon in this blog. We're also including demo videos to help you visualize the new Stream features (these videos have no audio).
New with playback, transcripts, and recording
Let’s look at what you can do with the new innovations in Stream (on SharePoint).
Playback: You can now watch videos in your favorite work apps, including Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Microsoft Viva, SharePoint, and office.com. When you open a video, it will play in the Stream web app, which gives you enhanced playback that includes transcripts, captions, chapters, sharing, background noise suppression, and, coming soon, variable speed playback. Plus, you can add comments with @mentions similar to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The Stream web app also allows you to upload, download, share, get embed codes, move, or copy videos. Soon, you’ll be able to record from the web app too. Learn more.
Transcripts: We’ve improved captions and transcripts to make them more accessible and boost your team’s productivity. Stream (on SharePoint) can now transcribe videos spoken in 28 different languages and locales, and transcripts now scroll automatically alongside the video. If you want to further polish the transcript as the video owner, it’s a snap to edit directly in the transcript pane to correct any mistakes. You can also manually add additional language versions of the transcript, which are shown in the transcript pane or as subtitles for viewers to follow along in other languages. Learn more.
Recording: By the end of 2022, you’ll be able to record yourself, your screen, or both at the same time from the Stream start page on office.com or from the Stream web app. Creating explainer videos, product demos, or updates for your team is simple, and you can personalize your video with filters, backgrounds, text markup, and more. Once you’ve completed and published it, you can add more information to your video such as a title, transcript, captions, custom thumbnail, description, and chapters. And later next year when Clipchamp comes to Microsoft 365 for business, you will be able to edit your Stream recordings with an easy-to-use and secure video editor. Learn more.
Collaboration: Comments, now with @mentions, give you the same capability you’re used to in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to gather feedback and collaborate. Learn more.
Video analytics: Video analytics help you measure the engagement and effectiveness of your video content. Currently with Stream (on SharePoint), you can look at an aggregated trend of views and visitors over time or see which part of the video was viewed most. Additionally, you can view site analytics from OneDrive and SharePoint. Coming in early 2023, video analytics will be shown as an overlay during video playback and can be toggled on or off. Analytics are available to see on videos for which you have view or edit permissions.
Video across Microsoft 365
What do we mean when we say video is integrated in Microsoft 365?
Stream start page: Videos now play directly in many Microsoft 365 apps. But when you want to do more with video, you can go to the Stream start page in Office. Here you can search for videos, see meeting recordings, view recommended or shared videos, view the videos you have created, and record or upload a new video. Learn more.
Search: Currently with Microsoft Search, you can search the video content of your entire organization for keywords that might appear in the title, description, chapters, or transcript. Early next year, we are adding the capability to search within a video transcript while you are viewing the video. You can then scroll through the search results and click on a portion of the transcript to be taken to that respective spot in the video. This feature helps you quickly get to the portions of the video that might be most important to you.
Videos in Yammer and Viva Engage: When you paste a link to a video from Stream (on SharePoint) into Yammer or Viva Engage, a linked thumbnail appears and the video will play directly in line as part of the post or storyline. That means the videos are playable directly inside of Viva Engage app in Teams, and if you have notifications sent to email, videos in the posts play directly in Outlook as well. You can also create and share images and short videos directly as a Viva Engage storyline post, letting you make deeper connections with people across your organization.
Embed: You can now grab an iFrame embed code from a video in SharePoint or OneDrive and embed it into another site for people within your organization to view. Embedded videos require authentication to view and respect the permissions of the video file. Public embed codes are not supported. Learn more.
Video publishing: Stream (on SharePoint) gives you a number of publishing options. In addition to hosting videos on SharePoint pages, sites, and portals, you can also share videos in Yammer, Teams, Viva Connections, or via email in Outlook. In Microsoft Viva, videos, like news, get pulled into your feed or highlights.
Going mobile
We’ve rebuilt the Stream app for iOS and Android to put all of your organization’s video and meeting recordings at your fingertips anywhere, anytime.
New Stream mobile app: When accessing Stream on your phone or tablet, you get a personalized home feed to see shared and recommended videos, meeting recordings, lectures, or collaboration updates. You can also mark important videos as favorites to easily find them again in your library. And to simplify the transition, you get seamless access to both Stream (Classic) and Stream (on SharePoint) video content.2
The rebuilt Stream mobile app began rolling out in October 2022. If you have the Stream app installed on your phone or tablet, it may have already updated to the newly rebuilt app. You can also manually update the app, download the Stream mobile app here for iOS and Android, or scan this QR code from your mobile device to download the app.
What’s new with video in Microsoft Teams
From rich meeting recordings to video messaging, Stream and Teams together help you create alignment and connection across hybrid and remote teams.
Teams meeting recap: Today, Teams announced intelligent recap, which, alongside meeting recap, helps you catch up on meetings you missed or ones you want to revisit. Meeting recap makes it easy for you to access all your meeting information, including files, recording, and transcript. And with intelligent recap, you'll see personalized insights on your Teams meeting recordings that help you discover the information that matters most to you. Here are three intelligent recap features that will help you make the most of your meeting recordings:
- Personalized timeline markers that only you can see. These markers show you where you joined or left the meeting or when your name was mentioned.
- Auto-generated chapters that let you jump to the precise moments that matter most.
- Intelligent search that displays personalized suggestions for keywords and speakers so you can quickly get to a specific point in the recording.
Lastly, when you need to follow up you can share the recording at specific timestamps or keep the conversation moving forward with comments.
Video clip: The recently announced video clip feature in Teams allows you to record a short video message and send it via chat. These short, rich video clips are perfect for when you want your tone and authenticity to come through, or when you want to explain something visually. The recipient of the video clip can easily reply with a chat or create one of their own. Video clip is now available in Teams for commercial and education users in web and desktop clients and will soon be available in mobile. Learn more.
Making the move to Stream (on SharePoint)
All your existing Stream (Classic) videos can be transferred to Stream (on SharePoint) to take advantage of its rich integration within Microsoft 365.
Migrate from Stream (Classic): To support your move to Stream (on SharePoint), we have created a migration tool that helps you to transfer audio and video to SharePoint while also bringing over critical metadata and permissions associated with your Stream content. Additionally, the migration tool can redirect existing links to your Stream (Classic) videos so that those links point to the same content in its new location.
The migration tool is now in public preview.3 To begin migrating content, see our migration support documentation.
We will announce a retirement date for Stream (Classic) in early 2023. After that announcement, organizations will have 12 months to migrate their videos into SharePoint. See the migration and retirement timelines for more information.
We recommend you begin planning your migration soon by taking these steps:
- Read the Stream (on SharePoint) adoption guide
- Review the migration strategies guide to decide how you’ll migrate your content
- Run the Stream (Classic) video report to get an inventory of videos and decide which to migrate
- Limit the number of new videos being added to Stream (Classic) and reduce your upcoming migration load, disable new uploads, and add a custom message to the top of Stream (Classic)
- Help your users begin using Stream (on SharePoint) by changing the Stream tile in the Microsoft 365 app launcher to go to Stream (on SharePoint)
Have questions about the migration process? Join our customer office hours to get the answers you need. Enroll now for the twice-a-month Stream customer office hours.
Managing video content in SharePoint: With your videos stored in SharePoint and OneDrive, you’ll benefit from the security, admin controls, and information governance in Microsoft 365. Just like with documents, you’ll get eDiscovery, legal hold, retention polices, data loss protection, compliance, permission controls, and sharing controls on your audio and video files.
Engaging with the Stream product team: We’d like to invite you to join our customer connections office hours. In this twice-monthly meeting we answer your questions, share our plans, learn more about your video needs, and get your feedback. To get on the meeting invite list, you can sign up here: https://aka.ms/StreamConnect
We welcome your feedback. Feel free to comment below or share and vote on ideas in the Stream feedback portal.
1 We expect to announce a retirement date for Stream (Classic) in early 2023, and we’ll keep the service running for a full year from the date of the retirement announcement. See our retirement timeline for more information.
2 The rebuilt Stream mobile app currently lacks certain features that may be critical to some users, such as video recording, uploading and offline downloads. As we continue to build out the mobile app, we expect to add these features in 2023 for Stream (on SharePoint) videos.
3 Public preview of the migration tool is currently available to all customers with the exception of GCC customers. However, some customers in the US, Canada, West Indies, & South/Central America may not have access to the tool yet.
Microsoft
