Send a message from the command box
You can now send a chat message directly from the command box without leaving the page you’re on. Simply type the @ symbol and someone's name into the command box at the top of your screen and type your message to start a chat conversation. Thus, you can send a message without switching context.
Send a chat from a contact card
Another easy way to relay a message is to hover over someone's profile picture to send a quick chat right from their contact card. This makes it simple to switch from an open channel conversation to a private chat with someone.
Dial out of (or into) a group call
Add someone from outside of your organization into a group call in Teams by dialing their number. You've also got the option of distributing a dial-in phone number so anyone outside of your organization can join. Remember, this feature is only available in group calls right now.
Get a reminder that your team is expiring
You can now renew your team (and the underlying Office 365 group) directly from Teams. If your team is set to expire within the next 30 days, you will see a notification. You can then extend the life of your team by visiting ‘Settings’. Here, you can also proactively renew your team before the 30-day notice, (which can be especially helpful if you are leaving for a long vacation for example). (Please note that this feature is only available to AAD premium members and a notification will only show if your IT admin has set an expiration date for teams in your organization). For more details, visit this link.
Auto-favorite important channels
Whenever a team owner creates a new team or channel, they can now auto-favorite important channels for the rest of the team. By doing so, the channel will automatically show up in every team member's favorites making it easy for them to discover and access the new channel. (Team members can of course unfavorite the channel if they want to).
New views in Microsoft Planner tab
Planner has made some updates to integrate more seamlessly into Teams. With Schedule view, you can get an overview of upcoming tasks and drag and drop them to set dates.
In the Charts view you can stay up to date on the status of your plans.
Lastly, with the Filter and Group by options, you can now group tasks by buckets such as “Assigned To”, “Progress”, “Due Date” and “Labels”.
Read the full blog post announcement here to learn more.
Add SharePoint pages, news articles and lists as unique tabs within channels
You can now use the SharePoint tab to place important pages, news articles and lists as individual tabs in a channel. This allows you to access and fully interact with the dynamic, data-driven pages and news articles and surface them right in the context of your work in Teams. You can fully interact with the content – including filtering and views for lists.
Bring all your SharePoint team news into discussions – After publishing your news articles, you want to keep everyone up-to-date and automatically spark discussions directly in Teams. To enable that, you can now use the SharePoint news connector to have each SharePoint team site news article generate a new discussion thread within a Microsoft Teams channel. To get started, click on “…” right next to a channel, choose “Connectors” and then search for “SharePoint News”.
Read the full announcement blog post from the SharePoint team to learn more.
Announcing the new Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center
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. This new experience provides you with a unified experience to manage both Teams and Skype for Business and will also incorporate Call Analytics and the Call Quality Dashboard.
In addition to giving you one place to manage all aspects of the service, the portal provides administrators with additional functionality, including new end-to-end insights and the ability to manage Teams settings on a user level.
Read the full announcement blog post to learn more.
Enhanced Meetings capabilities
There are a couple new features that will enhance your meetings experience. Request a call to your phone from Teams to connect to a meeting and dial into a meeting when you only have a cellular connection.
Do more with Calling
Now, easily turn a 1:1 call into a group call, transfer a 1:1 call to someone else, or forward calls.
Create teams from mobile in Teams EDU
Teachers and students can now create, edit and delete teams on mobile.
Important update on Windows phone apps for Microsoft Teams
The Windows Phone app for Skype for Business is being retired. After this change takes effect, new users will no longer be able to download the app from the Microsoft Store, and the app will no longer be supported. We will continue to invest in Skype for Business mobile apps for iOS and Android and also in desktop apps for Windows and Mac.
Read the full announcement to learn more.
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
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