New capabilities on Microsoft Teams phones | September 2020
Published Sep 30 2020 08:00 AM 27.9K Views

Teams Phones have some great new features shipped in the last release, which you can read about in this update! We are working to make sure that it is easier and more intuitive than ever to stay connected using the Teams Phone application. Our newest features allow for a newly designed home screen experience tailored to the user’s schedule, an automatic meeting acceptance feature streamlining the joining experience, and customizations for the user experience depending on the users preferences.


1. Home Screen with Meeting Reminders

We know that each day presents a host of notifications, alerts, and updates - we wanted to make this as simple and easy to use as possible by redesigning the home screen interface. Now, users can see reminders of your current and upcoming meetings, perform quick actions like joining a current meeting, play voicemail, or reply to missed calls directly from the home screen. A click deeper allows access to more detailed information about call history, calendar, and people.

Home screen with meeting remindersHome screen with meeting reminders

 

Additionally, for users who would like to restrict the content that shows up on their home screens, notifications can be disabled using the option under Settings. The home screen can be entirely disabled if the user would like to continue using the original interface, consisting of just the time, calls, address book, calendar and voicemail.

Home screen and notification settingsHome screen and notification settings

 

 

2. Customize Quick Access to Apps

We wanted to make sure that the tools most relative to users were easy to open, which is why we now have customization of quick access apps. Users can customize the default views on the phone by adjusting which icons appear in the bottom bar. For example: users who spend most of their time on calls can set the screen to show only the “Calls” and “Voicemail” apps and move the “People” and “Calendar” tabs to the “more options”. The Home icon will be available as long as the home screen is enabled in user settings. IT administrators can also provision this customization capability for all endpoints via the Teams global app setup policy.

More options to reorder appsMore options to reorder apps

 

 

3. Customize Default View for Calls
A single user interface does not work for all users. For example, users with devices that do not have physical keypad might prefer to have an always-on dial pad while others might prefer to have the Speed Dial as their default landing page. Users can now customize where they land when opening the calls app, whether that is Speed Dial, contacts, the dial pad or call history. You can modify this under Settings->Calls->Call views. The phone icon can be used to swap between the views.

Customize default view for callsCustomize default view for calls

 

 

4. Auto Accept Meeting Nudges with Video

Teams video phones will now provide the capability to auto accept incoming meeting join requests for scheduled meetings. This will allow a meeting participant to automatically enter a prescheduled meeting without needing to click the “accept” icon on any interface, leading to a hands free, seamless engagement. One application of this scenario could be in healthcare, where care teams can check in on patients’ bedside without the patient needing to activate a meeting.

 

To maintain privacy and security, auto accept settings are only enabled when:

  1. The Teams video phone is signed in with Meeting room accounts (Teams IP Phone Policy setting for Sign In Mode should be set to Meeting Sign In)
  2. The person enabling this feature on the Teams video phone has access to the phone’s admin password.
  3. The Teams video phone is already invited to the scheduled meeting.
  4. Participants within the same tenant can invite the Teams video phone into the meeting.

Auto accept settings and experienceAuto accept settings and experience

Note: The auto accept feature is currently enabled manually by Microsoft for tenants that request this feature. It will be available via policies soon. If you would like to enable this for your tenant, please reach out to your Microsoft support contact.

 

 

5. Teams Button Support

There is now a dedicated Teams button on several new phone models, where a user presses the Teams button to quickly launch the home screen mentioned above. This allows users convenient, easy access to a view of their notifications, voicemails, schedules, and contacts. If the Teams button is not configured to launch the home screen, then the button will automatically activate the Calling app by default.

 

 

6. Coming Soon: Better Together Experience for Meetings
The Teams phone and Teams Windows Desktop client will soon work “Better Together” in a new experience for calling and meetings. The devices can be coordinated such that when one device-either Phone or PC-is unlocked, the other automatically unlocks as well.

 

While in a meeting using better together mode on a PC, the call will automatically be routed to the connected device, in this case a Teams phone. The connected device will be shown in device settings in the pre-join screen.

better together.png

Once the user has joined the meeting, the call control for same meeting can be accessed from either the connected phone or Teams Windows client.

bettertogether2.png

This feature could free up the PC screen to be used for other purposes such as co-authoring, taking notes, or engaging in other forms of collaboration while simultaneously engaging in a meeting or call.


We hope that you will enjoy these updates and if you are interested in seeing some of them in action, please watch this session from Microsoft Ignite 2020 where we showcase some of the features in this blog, available here. Additionally, learn more about the devices and stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest in hardware at https://aka.ms/Teamsdevices.

 

 

11 Comments
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Nice updates!

Great updates to Microsoft Teams phones :stareyes: 

Copper Contributor

Looks good - better usability!

Copper Contributor

Better together is huge. Looking forward to seeing the execution of this feature for Teams. 

Brass Contributor

So does Better Together require a Bluetooth connection? I think I've read that it was planned to work via BT. 

Not all Teams phone have BT built-in, and not all workstation PCs either - hence my asking.

Copper Contributor

Great to hear that Better Together functionality will finally be a reality in Teams.  It's been a must for our Skype for Business users.

Copper Contributor

Great updates to Microsoft Teams phones  
do you Plan this for the TEAMs Client an Windows, Mac, iOS ....

Brass Contributor

So does Better Together require a Bluetooth connection? I think I've read that it was planned to work via BT. 

Not all Teams phone have BT built-in, and not all workstation PCs either - hence my asking.


@Vasily_Trudaev  Totally agree with you. We have a lot T55A already which don't have built in BT. Only PC port which means BToE usage.

@Microsoft_Teams_team  We've really counting on Better Together not only for BT but for Phones with PC port as right now Calling experience via Teams Phone together with PC will trigger annoying problems for end-users:

1) If you would like to make screen sharing session from your PC in parallel with the P2P call with Phone user. Current call will simply put on hold on recipient's side if he accepts screen sharing or nothing will happen at all for him (no alert).

Also if you're talking via the Phone with PC user and you want to share screen from your PC client >> it will also not work because when your colleague accepts the Sharing session your current call will be put on hold and it will be impossible to resume.

The only workaround here is to schedule meetings and join both from the phone and PC which is annoying.

2) That feature with "You've in <Meeting name> on another device. Want to join on this one?" is also not working sometimes when you join the meeting from the Phone phone. You have to restart PC client to make it work...
If you join from PC >> nothing will appear on the Phone at all.
3) For meeting as I've said you have to join both from PC and the Phone. + point 2

 

So as I've said, Better Together is really needed thing especially for i.e. Yealink T58 or Polycom CCX500 / 600 but please make is also for i.e. Yealink T55A with PC Port / BToE!

It's not only one customer request. I believe many Phones users are counting on it because there are not so many alternatives which you can use + it's again money investment. We can't buy new phones each half-year/year for the same users.

 

Thank you

Copper Contributor

@Microsoft_Teams_team I have to agree with @Ruslan_Bakharev on the obvious features that are missing for Teams phones. To explain the problem we have and are patiently waiting for an update to address it.

 

Someone calls me on teams and I answer on my shiny Poly CCX 600 handset, during the call content needs to be shared. As is stands today, unless we are missing something that is already there, you have to end the call on the Poly phone and then make another call from your computer to share the content. Needless to say this makes the Poly phone somewhat of a desk sculpture as it rarely gets used.

 

Looks from the update above you may have fixed this issue for Meetings, but at least for our business that is less of a problem. It's the ad-hoc calls that are the problem.

 

Many thanks,

Royce

 

Copper Contributor

This looks great to me. We are literally just launching our Microsoft Teams Phone System proposition - Forever Teams. I am currently in the process of choosing a phone vendor, and at the moment I am leaning towards Yealink. However we do have a longstanding relationship with Poly(com). Does anyone have any experience comparing the two?

Copper Contributor

Can you add an option to change the default ringtone for phone calls?  Something other than the teams ringtone. A custom ringtone would be nice.

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