What's New in Microsoft Teams | June 2019
Published Jun 30 2019 06:00 PM 47.2K Views
Microsoft

It is officially the summertime in Seattle, and Microsoft Teams is celebrating by continuing to release a ton of exciting and important features for Microsoft Teams’ users and organizations.

 

To enable an easier installation process Microsoft Teams desktop app coming to existing installs of Office 365 ProPlus and Microsoft/Office 365 Business/Business Premium

 

Let’s talk about how we are improving the installation experience.

Since people working together on projects is important to pretty much every company, we are including Teams in the Monthly builds for existing installations. Starting July 9th, the Teams client will be added to existing installations on the Monthly Channel, and as a modern online service, Teams will continue to auto-update on a regular cadence. If Teams is already installed in a user’s machine, they are not impacted by this change.  This will be a gradual rollout over several weeks, so not all existing installations will immediately get Teams added when Office is updated.

 

Teams has been included in new Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus monthly installations with positive customer feedback, so we feel confident that our existing customers will love this change as well.

 

Since everyone in the organization needs to communicate and collaborate, it’s important to make Teams available to all of your users. If you have devices on multiple update channels, you can proactively add Teams to all your devices. We’ve published guidance to help you plan your rollout here.

 

While we believe that you and your users will love Microsoft Teams, we understand that you may want to deploy at your own pace. If you wish to exclude Teams from your installation or disable auto-start on user PCs, you are fully in control. Teams starts automatically by default. If you decide to change this behavior, you must do it before Teams is deployed. You can find guidance on deploying Teams as a part of Office 365 ProPlus here.

 

Avoid conflicts of interest with Information Barriers

 

This important new feature helps you avoid conflicts of interest within your organization. Information barriers allow you to limit which individuals can communicate with each other in Teams. Sometimes this is needed to limit the disclosure of information; which is particularly helpful for organizations who need to adhere to ethical walls requirements, and other related standards and regulations. This is also helpful in several other people management situations where you may need to limit interactions.

 

Introducing Announcements in Team channels to help you make your point

 

May I have your attention please!? Do you have an announcement that needs to stand out from all other posts in a channel? Maybe you are introducing a new team member, or celebrating the launch of a new product, or sharing an important new policy change; You can now post an “Announcement” complete with a headline and background image, to ensure that your post catches your readers’ eye.

 

announcement.png

 

Add up to 100 people to a Group Chat

 

Sometimes you need to kick off a big project chat with a large group, or organize an ad-hoc discussion with staff at an event, but it seems unnecessary to start a new team; perhaps you don’t all work together on a regular basis, or maybe you need a communication channel with a large number of people at an event. Group chats can now accommodate up to 100 users!

 

Manage the discovery of Private Teams in the way that works best for your organization

 

We have heard your feedback that sometimes, private teams should be discoverable, and sometimes membership requests should be more closely managed. Firstly, thank you for your feedback! Admins and team owners can now control whether they want to allow private teams to be discovered by Teams users. When a private team is discoverable, it shows up in search results and is included in suggestions in the team gallery alongside public teams. This makes it easy for people to search for and find the private teams that they need to join. Once they request to join a private team, a team owner can approve or deny. Learn more here.

private teams.png

 

Interop now available in Office 365 Government GCC

 

Interoperability between Skype for Business and Teams is now available for Office 365 Government GCC customers. Learn more about how to use this functionality here.

 

Microsoft Teams auto-updates will have default capabilities to significantly decrease network bandwidth use  

 

We are making improvements to the update process of the Teams desktop app to help you provide the latest capabilities to your users while significantly reducing the impact on your network bandwidth. These improvements are turned on by default for all users and there is no action required from admins. These changes will start rolling out on July 9th. 

 

New GitHub updates for Microsoft Teams

 

One of Teams’ most loved integrations has gotten even better! While the GitHub app in Teams already supports a tab experience, developers and IT professionals can now enjoy multiple new iterations of the integration via a new Messaging Extension, Bot, and personal app capabilities, making it easier to collaborate and leverage the integration.

Learn more here and the GitHub app can be found in your Teams App Store or here.

 

Azure Pipelines for Microsoft Teams to help you automate

 

In June we launched the Teams app for Azure pipelines. Azure pipelines allows you to automate customer builds and deployments, so you can spend less time with the nuts and bolts and more time being creative.

More detail can be found here and you can download the Azure Pipelines app from your Teams App Store or here.

 

Azure pipelines.jpg

Meeting Options give you more control over the design of your meetings

 

Meeting organizer can now control the lobby setting of any scheduled meeting!

Just click on “Meeting options” link from meeting join blob or from “Meetings” tab to open Meeting options page and save your new lobby settings. Settings are applied instantly! Learn more about changing participant settings here.

 

Meeting OptionsMeeting Options

Single toolbar for controls in meetings & calling help reduce clutter on your screen

 

Teams is always improving the users’ experience and reducing clutter in meetings and calls. The session controls will now be unified into one toolbar at the bottom of the screen. This will affect Windows, Mac, and web clients. There is no impact for mobile or Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) devices.

 

Video Support for ChromeVideo Support for Chrome

Video Support in Chrome Meetings

 

While joining Teams Meetings on the Chrome browser, you can now share your own video and receive video of others.

 

New Teams for Healthcare resources to help you enhance patient experiences

 

This past month, Microsoft Teams was at HIMSS Europe, where we demonstrated how clinicians and staff can use Teams to coordinate care and connect instantly on a secure platform. Recently, we’ve partnered with HIPAA One to help healthcare organizations understand how Teams enables HIPAA compliance. Check out the whitepaper and other new healthcare resources in this blog.

 

Exciting Teams for Education Updates for teachers students and parents

 

This month, we announced some big updates coming to Teams for Education that will make it simpler and more comprehensive than ever before, saving teachers time when creating new Teams, communicating with parents and students, and grading assignments.

 

visual graphic tiles.png

Visual graphic tiles that represent each one of your teams

 

new gradebook.png

New gradebook makes it easy to view the grades and average scores across every assignment in a given course

 

soon you will be.png 

Soon, you will be able to send weekly email updates to your students’ parents or guardians with their child’s progress. IT admins can get ready for this feature today by onboarding to the new Parent and Guardian sync from Microsoft School Data Sync.

Learn more about these updates here.

 

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 (we really do!) to make sure that Microsoft Teams meets your needs. 

 

— Marissa Salazar, Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft Teams 

 

 

 

33 Comments
Copper Contributor

Could you remote the "blur" edge when viewing and controlling other's desktop? We can't access to other's edge screen button when remote control through MSTeam

Iron Contributor

Discover of private teams is great! Hoping that public teams are shown in "join a Team" now as well. :)

Brass Contributor

private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, private channels, 

 

when???????????????

Brass Contributor

When Teams will be able to connect to free VSO account w/o Office 365 subscription? This was promised last year.

Brass Contributor

It would be real nice if the Announcement feature would allow you to select a header image from an organization asset library, so we could create a standard set of header images that everybody could use in their annoucements.

Copper Contributor

Hi there,

        I was just wondering if there had been any changes to the way conference calling works with Teams recently?

Our organisation has been deploying HP Elite Slice G2 systems running Teams Rooms, each assigned a Conferencing license. Previously, if we scheduled a Teams meeting as a standard user (no conferencing license) and included our Teams Rooms devices as participants, once we joined the meeting from these devices we could conference in a participant by entering their phone number under Add Participants. This no longer appears to work, and the ability to add phone participants now only works if the meeting is organised from one of the accounts with a Conferencing license (if the meeting is scheduled by a standard user and you select Add Participants from a conferencing-enabled Teams Rooms device, it will not detect the phone number you've entered as a valid entry or let you try to call it).

The accounts we are using on our Teams Rooms devices are each allocated a Meeting Room license (with conferencing), and a Domestic Calling Plan.

Silver Contributor

How come the What's New link in the client app does not bring me to this page? Keeping up with the changes continues to be much harder than it should be due to the fact that there are so many different places to look and none of them are complete.

 

We have this blog, the message center, the roadmap and the What's New page in the client and none of them tell me when a new App has been released into a tenant for use in Teams

Brass Contributor

Help please... Where do we find/acquire the new "cost-free Phone System Virtual User license. " for licensing resource accounts for Teams Auto-Attendants and Call-Queues?

Referred to in latest version of Teams documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-resource-accounts

When will the official announcement about this appear? would be super good if this was in sync with documentation change and licensing changes

What about the Calendar? It's scheduled on Q2CY2019 but still is in development phase.

Silver Contributor

@Sergei Baklan Meeting was renamed to Calendar for a while, but it changed back and now I'm seeing some new functionality in it, Work Week and Week views are visible. (I'm in the TAB program)

Silver Contributor

@Long Nguyễn Xuân you will get a better response by posting feature requests to the User Voice site at https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public

Copper Contributor
Copper Contributor

Will users be able to use Ctrl+F when viewing PDFs with Teams in the near future?

Copper Contributor

The information coming from MS regarding teams for Office 365 ProPlus has been very misleading. I have been receiving a bunch of notifications about Teams becoming available for PRoPlus users, yet, it actually is not. Extra licenses have to be purchased to use it, which is not mentioned anywhere.

This is very frustrating and feels like a ripoff and false advertising from Microsoft. It needs to be made much, much clearer that there is an additional cost to use this "included" feature. I now have a bunch of ticked off users who have software that pops up every time they boot thier PC, but they cannot use it. 

 

Yes, I can turn it off, but after so many notices about this great new feature, why is at a paid add-on. That makes it AdWare and quite scummy.

 

For reference:    https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advertising

 

What license do you have that doesn't include Teams? Pretty much every basic package that I'm aware of has it, especially those that include office? 

Copper Contributor

We have ProPlus, GCC. We have been receiving many, many messages about this great new feature, but when we tried it, it failed. So we called support, who transferred us to licensing/billing, who said we had to purchase additional licenses to use Teams. 

What is at least as bad, is that these notifications say that Teams will be installed for everyone and will auto-run by default. Yet if licenses are not purchased, they will not be usable, which is the definition of Adware and Nagware. 

Copper Contributor

Desperately need contacts in Teams Phones (the actual phones - firmware upgrade).

Also fix the licensing requirements on resource accounts.

Thank you!

Copper Contributor

Hi David, When Microsoft decides how to handle contacts in "Teams" then they will release the API to phone manufacturers to implement. I'm pretty sure you're hoping Microsoft duplicates how they are handled in SFB...Believe me when I tell you that I get this question asked of me everyday being an Endpoint Supplier.

Copper Contributor

I can't seem to find the cost free Phone system virtual license. Perhaps I'm also mistaken, but I see the guidance provided still asks for a calling plan license to be applied to resource accounts. 

 

I thought it was going to continue on as a cost free model there.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-resource-accounts

Copper Contributor

Hi Andy, it is my understanding that Microsoft was offering FREE TRIAL licenses for a period of time to allow folks to experience Phone System (Silly Name)… However, I was always told that there was a cost beyond the trial and there would never be a cost free model. So far, the phone manufacturers are not charging anything additional for their licensing to purchase a Teams enabled phone. I do not expect that to change with AudioCodes and Yealink who are already in the game, the verdict is still out when Poly introduces their 2 Teams phones.  Hopefully, this was of some clarity for you. 

Copper Contributor

Thanks TestWan.

 

If you look closely at 2. in the attached link, you’ll see the part about the no cost licensing model for auto-attendants and call-queues.

 

That was the part I had questioned.

 

https://www.xylos.com/en/corporate/blog/auto-attendant-call-queue-update

Copper Contributor

Andy, The way that I read the link about Auto-Attendant and Call Queues are that if you had one established already, it would be migrated at no additional licensing costs. 

 

For new application instances, you’ll need to create a Resource Account. This Resource Account will need to be licensed, after which you will be able to associate it with an application instance.
Only Resource Accounts that require a phone number assignment will have to be licensed.

 

Pardon my ignorance but I still don't see where Microsoft states that Phone System is free... :(

 

Ted Estwan

Copper Contributor

Ted,

 

My apologies if I have confused you. We have quite a few sites on MS Voice. I'm fully aware that those licenses are not free. 

 

AAs and CQs used to be free with a service number attached, then with an update in May you had to apply PSTN licenses to AAs and CQs that had a DID number. 

 

Those AAs and CQs were going to transition into a no cost licensing model, not MS voice licenses for users.

Copper Contributor

It looks like the link posted by @Andy Pederson and @KeepingITreal (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-resource-accounts) has been updated to include instructions on obtaining the no-cost licenses for resource accounts needed for Auto Attendants and Call Queues.

 

 

2. Obtain a Phone System Virtual User license or a regular Phone System license.

To get the virtual license, from the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Billing > Purchase services > Add-on subscriptions and scroll to the end - you will see "Phone System - Virtual User" license. Select Buy now. There is a zero cost, but you still need to follow these steps to acquire the license.

 

Brass Contributor

How to initiate an "Announcement" ? I don't see the option in my client... Any documentation available?

Copper Contributor

Julian,  If you mean "paging", that is a function of the phone itself. What type of endpoint are you using?

Brass Contributor

I meant this part ... 

"Introducing Announcements in Team channels to help you make your point ...May I have your attention please!? Do you have an announcement that needs to..."

Not "Paging"

Copper Contributor

I have tried various ways (UI and PowerShell) to enable search discovery of private teams, but it seems that it isn't available on our tenant yet. Are there any updates on this being rolled out?

I dont think this is rollen out except from mobile where you can set this option! Unsure whether its actually enforced when set also! 

Copper Contributor

Can someone please tell me while the blog above says Private and Discoverable teams can be searched from July, why this feature is not available? I am unable to search for teams marked as Private and Discoverable. I have also noticed the Teams Client installed on my laptop does not have this feature while the Android Teams app installed on my phone has it. Why is there a difference in the two apps? did Microsoft roll back the feature to search discoverable teams after roll out? This is very important feature for us to allow users to raise request to join large teams. 

 

Copper Contributor

When PRIVATE CHANNELS will be launch??? We are waiting for months......

@CrisBernich  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=50588

 

Slated for This month, but road map isn't always accurate for release dates. It's coming as soon as it passes quality checks I'm sure. 

Silver Contributor

@CrisBernich the implementation of this feature is super complicated, there are a tremendous number of integration points that must be considered.

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