From offering a free version to hosting live events, Microsoft Teams continues to evolve as the hub for teamwork in Office 365 to empower teams around the world to achieve more. If you have questions about Teams, join us for an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) web session where experts from the Teams engineering and marketing team can provide you with answers. The AMA will be on August 9th 9:00am to 10:00am PT. Visit Ask Me Anything (AMA) to sign up and continuing reading below to learn more about our newest capabilities.
Communicate more effectively
Get important notifications while in ‘Do not Disturb’ mode
Want to focus on a task but still enable certain people to reach you? Then set your status to ‘Do not disturb’ and still receive calls and 1:1 chats from certain people or phone numbers. To set it up, click your profile pic > Settings > Privacy and follow the prompts.
PowerPoint in meetings just got better
If you've got bandwidth constraints, you can now share just a PowerPoint file (this action uses less bandwidth than a video stream). Participants can navigate through the slides privately, read ahead or look back to review something they missed. Learn more here.
Answer Auto Attendant and Call Queue calls directly from Teams
Guess what? Microsoft Phone System Auto Attendant is now generally available, and Call Queues is in preview. These new capabilities allow you to receive and answer calls from Skype for Business Online’s Auto Attendant and Call Queues, directly from Teams. Read here to learn more.
Collaborate more efficiently
Now available: Free version of Microsoft Teams
A free version of Microsoft Teams is now available worldwide in 40 languages. This free version (for up to 300 people) includes unlimited chat messages and search, built-in audio and video calling for individuals, groups, and full team meetups and so much more. Read the full announcement here and be sure to check out the Microsoft Mechanics video to learn more.
Take private notes and get the whole picture with the new Wiki app
Now you can access your own private wiki and channel wiki pages in one place—the new Wiki app! Find it by selecting More apps on the left side of Teams, then Wiki. In the app, keep your own private notes on the Personal tab, see all the wiki pages you're a part of on the All tab, or get back to ones you've used recently on the Recent tab.
Access your personal wiki from anywhere in Teams
Check out the new wiki slash command. In the command box at the top of Teams, type /wiki, then press Enter and type your note. Press Enter again when you're finished, and the note will go right to the Personal tab in the Wiki app.
Customize your team with 3rd party integrations
Monthly Spotlight - New Apps in Teams: BitBucket, Jira, MailClark and more!
We are constantly adding new apps to our Teams experience and plan on highlighting a few of our apps that have been making major waves to further enable collaboration.
Bitbucket allows team members to collaborate on code written by developers. Start a conversation with the Bitbucket bot and create a new pull request or search of an existing one that you’ve already created. Learn more here.
Jira bot enables team members to plan, track and release software. Moreover, with Jira bot you can easily find issues, assign them to team members, make edits, log time against an issue and more. Learn more here.
Use Jira bot to track and troubleshoot software issues.
MailClark lets you collectively manage external messages (email, social media, live chat) all while in Teams. Learn more here.
Also, be sure to check out this video spotlighting Wrike for Teams and learn more about how you can collaborate on projects and tasks with your team.
Lastly, please note that we’ve had updates to Soapbox, Jell and Site24x7. Check out some of other new apps such as Droplr and please visit AppSource to learn more.
Work with confidence: new features for IT admins
New features for IT Admins
The Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center is continuing to evolve to meet the needs of admins. A few of the updates include:
- A fully integrated Call Analytics Dashboard to provide an overview of call and meeting quality
- Updates in user level policies and organization settings including managing policies for messaging, meeting, calling and guest access in the Admin Center and via PowerShell
- Easy access to the Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center
Read the full announcement here to learn more.
New data and reports for Teams
Usage analytics in Power BI for Microsoft 365 – now generally available – allows you to understand how your organization is using Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams. Usage analytics includes a Teams usage report and let’s you analyze how your employees utilizes various capabilities in Teams like chat, channels, and meetings. Read the full announcement here.
Now available: Microsoft Teams Online Courses for IT Pros
Our latest free course provides IT Pros with important information on how to plan for and enable Microsoft Teams for their users including enabling, configuring and best practices for using Teams. Read the full announcement here and visit this link to sign up for the course.
Microsoft Teams - Ask Me Anything
If you have questions about Teams, join us for an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) web session where experts from the Teams engineering and marketing team can provide you with answers. The AMA will take place on August 9th 9:00am to 10:00am PT in the Microsoft Teams AMA Group. Add the event to your calendar and view in your time zone here. Read the full announcement here.
New features available on Teams iOS & Android apps
Check out some of our newest capabilities on mobile.
Meetings: Share a PowerPoint file during a call or meeting and view meeting notes on your mobile device.
Calls: Forward incoming calls to your call group, transfer a call immediately, or consult with the recipient over chat first with incoming calls indicate if they’re from a call queue or an auto attendant.
Other improvements for mobile: share videos from your device's photo gallery in chat and channel messages and copy a channel's email address to forward emails directly to channels.
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.
—Keara James, product marketing manager Microsoft Teams