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
Copper Contributor

I think it's terribly hard to work as it is now with Teams / Skype. I hear that new functionality comes in Teams, but do not know when. With Skype On-Prem, we always knew that when a CU or Service Pack was installed, we got the new functionality that was documented. This is like living in a guessing world.

Copper Contributor

@Anne Michels- On a positive note, our tenant now has the new Teams and Skype Admin Console.  On the downside, while we have the latest Teams build, I'm still not seeing the April features in my tenant.  I'm assuming there's still some background work?


We're a First Release/Targeted Release tenant, but I'm not seeing that cadence here with Teams.

Copper Contributor

We are also still waiting for the April updates. Is there an anticipated date when it will be fully deployed? We are very anxious for the Contact list feature and the admin center. We are hoping we can modify what is brought over from adfs. We do not want to display the username within Teams as that is confidential information for our students. Any idea if this will be a possibility?

Copper Contributor

Our business mainly uses Skype for video meetings only. We've never used it for chats. Now we have Microsoft Teams for project collaborations and would like to use the chat feature without it accessing Skype for Business. Will we be able to turn the Skype features off in future Teams updates? 

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Not applicable

How can I become a beta tester for Teams?

 


still not available for tenant

Brass Contributor

Any idea on when this might appear? it's almost 4 weeks since this post, and we are now in May. It's great that the new features exist, and posts like these get us excited about them, but without them appearing, we begin to lose the excitement.

Copper Contributor

Still waiting for updates to appear in our tenant! We are excited about the contact lists and since this post I have been checking everyday!

Iron Contributor

@Anne Michels Is there an estimated release date for the Teams "Out of Office" status? We really want this and would love to know when to expect it in our tenant. Thanks!

Microsoft

It appears that recently, the "Contacts" were imported from Skype for Business into Teams.
However, none of the external contacts are in Teams.
I do not see where and how I can manually enter the External Contacts.
Is there a way to manually import Skype for Business Contacts and Groups into Teams?
The Contacts are in random order within a group, with no way of sorting.
The Groups are in random order, with no way of sorting.
I see in the Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams Capabilities Roadmap, that Unified Presence and Federated Chat between Teams and Skype for Business was to deployed by 1Q CY2018.
We are not seeing the unified presence the ability to chat across platforms as of today.
Would someone be able to assist us with these concerns and challenges?
Thanks!

Copper Contributor

We are still waiting to have these features activated on our O365 account.

Can someone give a timeline on when they should be available?

Copper Contributor

I just received  1.1.00.10955 on PC and didnt' see any of these features -- when can we expect these to go live?

Iron Contributor

I am on the latest desktop version and yet to see unified presence or contacts option. Admin portal is here already. Anyone able to verify if they are seeing all the April updates? 

Copper Contributor

Unfortunately, same here.  Obviously, this is probably more of a back end change, but I'm a bit saddened to see how long it's taken to get out there.  This is the key thing for adoption.

Iron Contributor

Hello, what are the steps to get new Admin portal, we have 3 tenants and none of them have new portal.


Do we need to access via "Skype for Business Admin" only or there is a separate link

Bronze Contributor
Brass Contributor

@Scott Preston

 

Nothing here on our end. Have the new admin panel that was mentioned, but Skype and Teams still behaving independent from each other. 

Hopefully a guide or something will appear outlining if we need to migrate accounts or perform some back end functions. 

 

While our business has a hybrid of both, anyone who uses Teams wants to just use that and ditch Skype. 

Brass Contributor

I'm still anxiously waiting on the updated chat feature with presence and making a comment so I can see updates more regularly.

Copper Contributor

Same here Sameer, really need this too. Organised company-wide training off the back of this now people are asking me why are we still using skype :thumbs_down:

Microsoft

Hi all, apologies for the late answer as I was travelling and then on vacation. Several of the features mentioned in the blog post are still in the process of rolling out - which is why many of you are not seeing them yet. The process is rather complex and thus the rollout will continue over the next weeks. I'll share more details once available. I should have included that information in the blog post - apologies for that. Thanks for your patience!

Brass Contributor

Thanks @Anne Michels for pointing out that as I too eagerly have awaited the features (not the least the presence interoperability!) - any more specific ETA? In example, when you say "weeks", is that different from time to time and what is the maximum? Would be really good to know. :) 

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Not applicable

They need to finish deploying the Admin center and back end bits before they push out the client updates that include presence and all that. So no one has gotten any of the new features other than the admin center randomly showing up. Once all tenants have admin center and whatever comes with that, I bet we get a release or see it light up everywhere after that. 

Deleted
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@Anne Michels

We are actively promoting the use of Teams within our company and have removed S4B Online licensing for our users. I have two questions:

 

  • Will the removal of the S4B license affect the unified presence?
  • Will the presence now be integrated with Outlook as it was with S4B? If not, is this in the works?

 

Thank you!

Copper Contributor

Good Morning,

 

Looks like we're definitely making progress.   I now see the following in the new Admin Center.

 

I've switched the default experience to Islands for our users, but have updated myself to Teams only. 

 

Unfortunately - I still don't have the full interop I'm expecting - seeing my Skype for Business Contact List (or ability to import) in Teams.

 

Is there a switch or something else that needs to happen behind the scenes?  

 

I apologize for using this method of communication - documentation is sparse when it comes to the technical aspects of this, unfortunately.

 

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He new features won’t hit till everyone has been upgraded to new admin center.  

Copper Contributor

When you say "Everyone" - are you referring to other tenants?   Why would that the be the defining factor to my tenant?

Brass Contributor

Well, it is already the middle of May and I still don't have the new admin center accessible from my admin portal (I can manually navigate to the site listed above).

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Not applicable

It doesn’t show on admin portal only under services settings under teams.  If you can hit the url then you have it. 

Brass Contributor

Thanks for that clarification. Hopefully they eventually replace the legacy SfB link under the Admin Centers.

Deleted
Not applicable

Hi, 

 

How to sync skype for business online user contacts to teams contacts manually?

How to find Skype for business on-prem or Skype for business users?

Copper Contributor

Our tenant (first release) has access to the new Admin Center but under "Coexistence mode" the only two options available are "Islands" and "Skype for Business only". Looks like the rollout is still in progress, but the inability to put some of our users into "Microsoft Teams only" mode is quite frustrating.

Iron Contributor

Not seeing unified presence or contacts or out of office.

Brass Contributor

@Anne Michels I still don't see these updates.  My teams updated on May 17th to version 1.1.00.13555 and I still don't have the Out of Office feature that was new on April 4th.  Any update on this?

Brass Contributor

I still cannot see the Contacts in Chat

Deleted
Not applicable

Because no production tenant can. They must have found a bug or something it’ll be here eventually.  

Copper Contributor

@Anne Michels Any idea on the progress of this? We have the new admin center, but nothing in the Teams client. Thanks! 

Brass Contributor

@Anne Michels Any update?

Deleted
Not applicable

Caught this post last night, seems some of these features might finally be getting pushed through. Should be a matter of time before we start seeing them. I did notice the Out of Office roadmap entry got changed to June, so maybe it's all coming this month now. 

 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Import-Skype-for-Business-contacts-into-Teams...

Iron Contributor

Even though I am mostly very positive about Teams and what it enables/will enable companies to do in terms of 'new ways of collaborating' there are still some serious objections to completely moving from S4B to Teams, especially if you use S4B also for PSTN calling/EnterpriseVoice.

 

Guest access is great and all but if I'm not mistaken, when I am in my Teams client with my company identity and I get invited as a guest to another Team in another tenant and I switch to that Team, I effectively switch identity and all my calling features break, making me unreachable and unable to use any calling features for as long as I am active in that other Team.

 

@Anne Michelsdo you know if the team behind Teams is actively looking for solutions for this or is this a case of 'works as designed' (I hope not :) ).

 
 
 
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Not applicable

@Steve Hernouthey already have said they are working on tenant switching etc. In the meantime there are a few work around with using the browser version for your guest access and keeping your client open for your main PSTN etc.

 

There is also a new tool called franz that uses the web clients but rolls them up into one called Franz, it's pretty slick and works well form what I have tested. It's a good alternative until Microsoft can update their client stack.

Iron Contributor

@Deleted  ,thanks for your feedback and great to hear they are working on tenant switching.

 

I have to admit that even with the roadmap and twitter and some other sources, it's sometimes hard to keep track of everything that is changing in Office 365 :)

 

Thanks for the tip on Franz. Will have a look at that.

 

Kind regards

Copper Contributor

Just FYI for everyone who has been waiting for this, I can confirm this finally hit my tenant in the U.S. yesterday. I can also confirm that unified presence is working as part of the release of the Contacts and OOO features! 

Iron Contributor

Thanks, @Brent Carlson- I don't see the changes in my tenant just yet. How does the OOO work? Does it pull from Outlook/Exchange, or is it something that is a status option you choose within Teams? Inquiring minds want to know! :)

Copper Contributor

@Brent Carlson- how are you setup as a user?  Are you in islands mode or Teams only?

Brass Contributor

Same here! Got it last week and the feature is great! When it works...have started to be very unstable and especially SfB status is behaving weird. It has for instance started to pick up all my scheduled meetings and automatically set my status to "In a meeting" (have previously disabled that), it sometimes cannot change status at all and the unified presence is intermittent, sometimes it works sometime it doesn't.

Hope it stabilize soon...

Copper Contributor

How does everyone know when they get this? Do you have to update the teams app and it shows contacts?  Not sure how I can tell if our tenant got the update or not.

Copper Contributor

@Katrin WeixelIt pulls from Outlook/Exchange, when you click on a person's picture who is OOO you see their OOO message. The presence icon is also purple when OOO is set. There is not a OOO presence option in Teams itself.

 

@Scott BentleyWe are actually still using the "Legacy (Deprecated)" Interop settings.  I am planning to test both the Islands and Teams only features as well.

 

@Jacob AnderssonNice! I have two noticed some weird stability things, but when testing manually changing presence it works well. Best improvement I have seen is, as a Teams Only user, I used to frequently show as Offline to Skype for Business users, now I show online. I find as long as I managed m presence via the Teams app all works well. If I change presence in the Skype app there appears to be some delay, however not sure if its just a Teams UI cosmetic issue. I haven't tested In a meeting status yet but I will continue to test. I expect they are still working on some backend things to make this work better. Overall huge step forward thou!

 

@Justin HalbmannI could tell because I started to notice purple presence icons for OOO. Secondly, you will notice under Chat, a new "Recent and Contacts" tabs, the Contacts are imported from Skype for Business.

Brass Contributor

I also have the OOO feature now, but I've noticed it gets stuck in that status.  I manually turned on out of office yesterday, and turned it off this morning.  Hours later it was still showing OOO on Teams.  I restarted, signed out on other devices, etc, and it still wouldn't work.  Mobile was showing correct, but not desktop or web version of Teams.  The only way I could get it to turn off was to schedule 5 minutes of out of office, using the option that automatically turns off at a certain time, and it finally went away.

Copper Contributor

@Brent Carlson Did you have to update teams application though before you saw them?  Or just signed out and back in and it was there?

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Not applicable

My experience so far has been OOF is buggy. As Michael says, the OOF updates on some form of a Timer that isn't consistent and needs some work, but the fact it works at all makes me happy. You set your Out of Office message in Outlook to activate, but it takes up to 30 minutes it seems to change your status on and or off, once it's set you can't manually change the status, you have to deactivate OOF and wait for whatever changes it to happen in the background. 

 

Also to add to this, if you book Meetings in your calendar with "Show as: Out of Office" on the meeting you will show out of office status with no message just a status. 

 

The new contact groups could be better if the default of what you clicked saved, so when you click chat tab the Contact group view came up by default instead of recents. 

 

Seems they changed the way Out of office works when @mentioning, it used to say who wouldn't get the message cause they were OOF, seems to just show a number of people getting it, which is the number of people in the Team minus the OOF folks. 

 

You can hover over Channel mentions now to see how many favorite the channel, I wish they never removed this count from the Manage Teams > Channels view, not sure why the did? 

 

However, one huge improvement has been no more random "unknown Status" for other Teams users and presence delays. When you set a status it instantly now changes, and if you pick busy etc. will stay busy and not revert to available like before. 

 

Overall a huge step in a positive direction, but I'm sure the bugs will be worked out.. 

 

 

 

Also another note, to tell if you have it, you will get pushed version   1.1.00.14359  of the client as well. 

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