What’s new in Microsoft Teams – the Enterprise Connect feature round up
Published Mar 19 2019 07:00 AM 363K Views
Microsoft

This week marks the second anniversary of the worldwide launch of Microsoft Teams and it’s a good time to reflect on the past 2 years here at Microsoft. In 2017, we first introduced Microsoft Teams as the hub for teamwork in Office 365, to provide teams with a single place to collaborate across chat, meetings, files and 3rd party tools. In 2018, we unveiled and delivered the vision for intelligent communications in Teams, bringing meetings and calling into the service allowing us to enable these core workloads for the over 700 million information workers with Office 365. And now at Enterprise Connect we are sharing how Teams has expanded beyond information workers to support the over 2 billion Firstline employees in service and task-oriented roles, in addition to supplying industry vertical solutions for retail, education and healthcare customers.

 

We have an additional reason to celebrate as Microsoft was awarded Best Of Enterprise Connect 2019 for its new vision for Microsoft Teams focused on making communication and collaboration easier for the entire workforce, including Firstline workers. This is the second year in a row that Microsoft has been chosen for this award, which is presented to a company making significant technological advancements within the enterprise communications and collaboration industry. We also excited to share the Best Upgrade to an existing Product category with Amazon. We are humbled and thank our customers, partners, the industry and to Enterprise Connect for driving innovation.

 

Be sure to read Lori Wright’s Microsoft 365 blog to understand the top announcements from Enterprise Connect. Below you can find a comprehensive set of all other features coming to Teams in our special Enterprise Connect edition of the Teams Roundup.

 

CHAT AND CONVERSATIONS

Secure Private Channels – coming later this year – allow you to limit which team members can see the associated conversation and content within that channel. You can right-size channel participation and exposure without having to create discrete teams to limit visibility. This is one of our top requested features and we’re excited to be actively testing this internally and with select customers.

 

Information barriers – coming soon – avoid conflicts of interest within your organization by limiting which individuals can communicate and collaborate with each other in Microsoft Teams. This helps limits the disclosure of information by controlling communication between the holders of information and colleagues representing different interests, for example, in Firstline worker scenarios. This is particularly helpful for organizations that need to adhere to ethical walls requirements and other related industry standards and regulations. Teams also comes with other built in compliance capabilities, such as retention, eDiscovery and supervision, built in.

 

MEETINGS

The new Calendar App is rolling out in April 2019. The existing 'Meetings' app in Teams will be replaced by the Calendar app that retains all existing app functionality while introducing a range of new features. Three new types of calendar views will be available: Day, Work week and Week view (default). Users will have the ability to go back or forward in time to see any past or future meeting. Users will be able to perform key actions including Join, RSVP, Edit, and Cancel from the right click menu. Meetings on the calendar will light up to indicate when someone joins it online. User's current exchange setting for working hours and working days of the week will be respected. Lastly, users can schedule events without adding any attendees in the scheduling form. Non-Teams meetings can also be edited and updated from Teams directly.

 

Live Captions – coming soon as a public preview for English – make your Teams meetings more inclusive for attendees who are deaf or hard of hearing, have different levels of language proficiency, or are connecting from a loud location. Improve meeting effectiveness by allowing attendees to read speaker captions in real-time so they can more easily stay in sync and contribute to the discussion.

 

Customized backgrounds – coming soon – takes our intelligent background blur technology one step further, allowing participants to select a more professional background when working remotely, to appear behind them during a meeting or video call. This improves the effectiveness of remote meetings by encouraging the use of video while minimizing distractions.

 

 

 Work Week view in the new Calendar App.Work Week view in the new Calendar App.

 

Content Cameras and Intelligent Capture – coming soon - will soon support an additional camera forcontent capture, such as capturing information on analog whiteboards. Using any USB camera, Microsoft Teams Rooms leverages our new Intelligent Capture processing to capture, focus, resize, and enhance whiteboard images and text, so remote attendees can clearly see whiteboard brainstorming in real time, even when someone is standing in front of the whiteboard.

 

Microsoft Whiteboard in Teams meetings (commercial preview) empowers meeting attendees from the same tenant to participate in the conversation regardless of the device you use or where you are. Whether joining from the meeting room or remotely, you can start a new board in the Teams meeting (currently supported on desktop and web – coming soon to mobile). The board is automatically shared with meeting attendees. Users can ink together in real-time on the board and even launch the native Whiteboard app to enable an even richer collaboration experience with features such as sticky notes, images, and gridlines. Ink Grab, enables you to add analog content from a physical whiteboard onto the Whiteboard canvas without having to recreate it from scratch. If you start an ad-hoc brainstorm session on the physical whiteboard, you can easily continue via the digital whiteboard and include remote collaborators in the conversation. Simply take a picture of the content and use Ink Grab to transform them into digital ink. To enable Whiteboard in a Teams meeting, please turn on the Whiteboard web preview here.

 

EC - Whiteboard.gif

 

Enhancements to the Chrome browser meeting experience (coming soon) are getting richer for Windows and Mac users. A year ago, we introduced frictionless meeting join in Chrome with no client needed. Coming soon, we will enhance that zero-footprint experience by adding 3 new capabilities: the ability to see participants video, application sharing, and full desktop sharing. This enables any meeting attendees to have face to face conversations and share content easily, with zero downloads needed.

 

Live Events in Microsoft 365 (now available) enables anyone to create live and on-demand events that deliver compelling communications to employees, customers and partners. Events use video and interactive discussion across Teams, Stream, or Yammer and can be as simple, or as sophisticated as needed, using webcams and screen sharing for informal presentations, or stream a studio-quality production for more formal events. Up to 10,000 attendees can participate in real-time from anywhere, on any device, or catch up later with powerful AI features that unlock the content of the event recording.

 

Meetings First (in preview) is a great addition for our Enterprise Voice customers who use Skype for Business Servers. It allows customers to protect their voice investments by continuing to use their servers for Calling and Chat while harnessing Microsoft Teams for cloud-based meetings. Your users will enjoy best in class, modern meetings while your company experiences improved performance using the Microsoft global cloud infrastructure.

 

New Meeting Devices are being created by our partners increasing choice for our shared customers. Microsoft welcomes the Yealink MVC500 and MVC800 to the expanding group of devices for meeting rooms. The announced Logitech Tap offers a low-profile sleek design and can be desk-based or wall-mounted. The new Poly Studio allows for plug and play video and audio experiences which will complement the meeting room. And bring your teams together with the Yealink VC200 video conferencing device which is designed to support huddle spaces.

 

Phones will see new devices as well including the Poly CCX 500 and Yealink T55A which enable calling experiences for personal spaces and common areas. Additionally, the new video phones Crestron Flex P250 and Yealink VP59 allow users to experience rich video and audio on a single desk phone. 

 

Peripherals are experiencing new innovations starting with speakerphones from Jabra Speak 710-Teams, Sennheiser SP30-Teams and Yealink CP900 all of which have dedicated Teams buttons. This integration allows you to take quick actions from your device when connected to your PC or mobile phone. 

 

Learn more about all these great products from our partners, AudioCodes, Crestron, HP, Jabra, Lenovo, Logitech, Plantronics/Polycom, Sennheiser and Yealink at Microsoft Teams Marketplace which now includes improved experiences for shopping by device and space

EC2019 devices image.jpg

 

CALLING

Direct Routing (available now) provides customers the ability to connect their voice trunks via certified Session Border Controllers (SBC) to Office 365. And we continue to enhance DR with key features. Media Bypass (available now) is being supported by many of our Session Border Controllers partners – this improves AV quality by enabling direct connections between callers in many scenarios. We also have added new certified SBC vendors – Oracle and TE-Systems.

 

We see the number of connections from certified Virtualized SBCs (available now from partners) growing in our data as well as feedback from partners that many customers are choosing to virtualize their SBCs on Azure. A “no hardware” approach can be your path to a cloud voice solution saving time and money for your deployment and operations. Be sure to check with your preferred partner if virtualization fits in with your plans to deploy Calling in Teams.

 

Dynamic e911, Location Based Routing, Music on Hold, and Busy on Busy are coming soon. These are additional features which voice administrators routinely request. We appreciate the feedback as it helps keep our teams prioritized for your needs. We invite you to keep an eye on our public roadmap – as we add them based on their timing.

 

Cloud Voicemail (CVM) has been supporting our cloud users for more than two years. We are now adding support for our Skype for Business Server customers as well as those using Lync Server 2013. Cloud processing of your voicemail will give users access to latest in technology with cloud reliability.

 

OFFICE 365

App Setup Policies are rolling out this month and provide new and more flexible ways for IT admins to manage how users can discover, use, and develop the 250+ integrations we have available in Microsoft Teams, as well as the integrations you build for your organization. App Setup Policies can customize Microsoft Teams to highlight the apps that are most important for your users. Choose the apps to pin and set the order that they appear in your left-hand rail. App setup policies let you showcase apps that users in your organization need, whether they were built by Microsoft, our partners, or your developers. These policies also manage how built-in features appear for your users. You can now manage access to apps for individual users through App permission policy. This policy lets you control who in your organization can interact with specific Microsoft and externally built apps. You can also limit access to apps built by your organization, letting you phase the app rollout. You can define org-wide settings to block certain apps outright for your tenant. 

Picture1.png

 

eDiscovery for Teams calling and meetings is now generally available for Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans that include core eDiscovery capabilities. Achieve requirements for data discovery as part of an investigation or litigation for Teams content with the same in-place search, conditions and export experience as you use for the rest of Office 365 content.

 

Legal hold for Teams content of on-premise Exchange users is coming soon for all organizations with Office 365 or Microsoft 365 E3 plans. Because Teams stores content for Exchange on-premise users in the cloud, the same process to manage and discover against Teams channels and chats can be used. Give your legal department a sigh of relief as they embrace the modern workplace. Not only do you have all the benefits of the chat-based workspace, but you have them in a compliant way.

 

Custodian management for Teams memberships is now in preview as part of the new Advanced eDiscovery update. Organizations with Office 365 E5, Advanced Compliance or Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance can use the new capabilities to manage custodians as part of an investigation or litigation. Quickly identify and place a legal hold on shared locations such as Teams - based on memberships of the individual related to the case.

 

Retention for Teams channels and chats is now available as part of the core Data Governance capabilities in Office 365 or Microsoft 365 E3. Use this capability to place a retention and/or deletion policy on Teams channels and chat messages to ensure requirements for retention are met, and to limit risk and exposure of keeping data for too long. Select the Teams and individuals for message retention within the compliance center for broad organization, groups, and/or specific users.

 

Supervision for Teams channels and chats is now generally available to help organizations meeting internal communications monitoring requirements to meet regulatory compliance or internal policies. Establish policies with intelligent conditions and identify Teams or users and the related channels and / or chat messages to be included in the supervision policy. Supervisors can then review content with the new built-in review experience to tag, escalate, and/or bulk resolve.

 

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is coming In April to allow organizations to use Microsoft Teams in virtual desktop environments. This will give customers and partners the ability to collaborate effectively with private chats, open channel conversations, and file sharing. Teams can be installed in each individual virtual machine in persistent and dedicated VDI environments. This solution will work in the major VDI environments for chat and collaboration. We are also currently collaborating with Citrix to enable calling and meetings features in Teams.

 

Data loss prevention (DLP) has been available for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business for a while, and now we’re extending DLP to Microsoft Teams – to enable the blocking of sensitive information contained in chat messages and channel conversations. This is based on the same policy engine used and proven in our other DLP services. For organizations that are using Microsoft Teams to accelerate their workforce collaboration and productivity, this provides a new way to ensure proper control and governance of important data – both for the purpose of achieving internal security objectives as well as meeting external compliance and privacy requirements.

 

The experience is simple for end-users and balances the need to enforce data protection policies while not inhibiting end-user productivity. When someone sends a message, either within a chat or a channel, the content of the message is inspected for sensitive information – as defined by your organization. If sensitive information is identified, then the message is revoked and no longer accessible by the recipient(s). Similar to how DLP operates in other Office 365 services, policy tips gives the sender additional information on the reason for the message being blocked, such as the presence of credit card information or social security numbers. IT admins have the flexibility to configure policy to allow end-users to override the blocked message or report the issue as a false positive, which can help the company fine-tune their DLP settings. Policy settings are configured in the Security & Compliance Center as DLP settings for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.

Messages containing sensitive information are blocked and revoked.Messages containing sensitive information are blocked and revoked.

APPS AND INTEGRATIONS

Core to the value of Microsoft Teams is the ability to integrate and extend the capabilities of all your solutions – whether or not Microsoft built them - into one single hub. Read on to learn about the latest integrations becoming available during the Enterprise Connect timeframe.

 

Control for Microsoft Teams by Smarsh extends the Microsoft DLP solution by enabling customers to enforce internal policies which improves compliance in their risk and security efforts. DLP policies can be implemented to monitor for violations across a variety of content types including conversations (chat, channels, emojis, GIFs, links, and bots), files, wiki and OneNote. Assets found to be in violation can be challenged, redacted, or deleted.

 

MVISION for Microsoft Teams by McAfee provides a full set of security, governance and compliance capabilities that extends the Microsoft DLP solution for Teams. The platform covers access control, policy enforcement, collaboration control, activity monitoring, threat prevention, audit trails for investigations, and helps secure multiple access modes including browsers and native apps.

 

InformaCast Fusion from Singlewire Software enables Microsoft Teams users to send mass urgent or emergency notifications. Users can initiate an alert using their Teams bot. The bot responds with an adaptive card where users provide details about the situation taking place. Once confirmed, the bot sends alerts through Teams, mobile devices, digital signage and other connected devices. Following distribution, safety team members will receive a prompt to join a Microsoft Teams channel where they can collaborate and follow up on the situation.

 

We hope you get a chance to try the new features. 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.

66 Comments
Silver Contributor

Happy Birthday, Microsoft Teams! This is an epic post full of amazing enhancements and upcoming features, very impressive! 

Iron Contributor

great but still not Cisco Meeting Server integration?

This many announcements - kind of on the level of Inspire or Ignite! Really moving forward with what users want to see.

Iron Contributor

I am really liking this post. Many of the new features have been asked by my organization and I am thankful that I can now say that these features are coming soon or coming within 2019.

Brass Contributor

Great news, love to hear more details about the coming features and the "Secure Private Channel" 

 

Thank You!

Keep rolling Smiley Wink

 

Brass Contributor

@Paul Cannon Hi Paul - Chrome video support  has been a big blocker for us in replacing SfB.  Can you clarify whether the Chrome support will allow sharing/sending of video (and not just "seeing" participant video?)

 

Also, any estimated timeframes beyond Coming Soon would be appreciated.  Microsoft wrote that it was coming soon when Edge support was released over a year ago.

Deleted
Not applicable

Great updates. @Paul Cannon, since "Chat" means private/direct messaging in everyday usage (also the tab name on the left side of the app), I suggest changing the "Chat" section where you discuss private channels to "Conversations" or "Teams conversations". The nomenclature gets very confusing otherwise and this is a topic you don't want to be confusing on! :)

Brass Contributor

Legit

Iron Contributor

Will the Calendar app show your personal calendar, Teams/Office 365 Group calendar, or a combination of both?  Thanks.

Brass Contributor

Since creating a Microsoft Teams team results in creating an O365 Group (that further results in the creation of a SharePoint Online Team Site), how do these enhancements change the way the O365 Group works, as it relates to applying permissions to members of the Teams team?  I've understood that all members of a Teams team have the same permissions since they're essentially all members of the O365 Group.  If you can now control/restrict specific members of a Teams team from accessing certain functions or apps within the team, how is that accomplished?

 

Iron Contributor

@skish  I would think that the owner would be able to control rights at the channel level.

Brass Contributor

@Shaun JenningsI agree with your thinking, however since certain channels are just folders in the SharePoint Online Team Site, I wonder what permission would configure those per-channel access rights.  Again I understand that today all members of a Teams team have equal access to all channels and functionality because the single O365 Group they are members of is attached to the entire SharePoint Online Team Site associated to the Teams team.  There's a relationship diagram I came across a while back, which explained these relationships pretty well (but is in need of an update based on this birthday announcement). https://1drv.ms/f/s!AvMsNFdxAP_JvWfmgMnKrfejjco1

 

 

Iron Contributor

@skish  Office 365 Groups is a SharePoint site on the backend. You can change the SharePoint permissions and remove access from people to access. Since each channel is a new folder in the SharePoint shared documents, I'm sure that is where they are making that change.

 

I haven't gone out and tried to change permissions on each folder in the shared documents on the Office 365 Group site, so I don't know if you can manually do it now.

Brass Contributor

@Paul CannonWhere can one learn more about the technical (configuration/administrative) factors to consider as these improvements rollout, such as an updated version of the Office 365 Group Family tree from my earlier comment?  Thanks

Copper Contributor

When it will be finally possible to assign Direct Routing phone numbers to Auto Attendants and Call Queues? There is a lot of silence about this but in fact without that, Teams is no complete calling solution at all in most countries as Calling Plans / number porting is only possible in few countries. So if we want to use these features we need to forward this calls to the service numbers which leads to costs for these incoming calls. The workaround (modify the destination number on the SBC) does not work anymore too.

 

Microsoft

@Philippe Tschumi no announcements yet on the on-prem numbers assigned via DR but stay tuned.

@Joe McGowan personal calendar - we were getting a lot of feedback on the experience - let us know how it works for you.

@Calum Steen Too legit to Quit? :)

@Deleted good point, change made.

@Phil Lyle checking on that - good catch on the language used for Chrome feature. Catch my note below on "coming soon".

@Philipp_Kohn thank you - we are excited to bring such a often requested feature (private channels) out to our customers.

@Shaun Jennings - TY - yes, it was quite the discussion here at MS Marketing HQ :) - for good reasons we worry about long blogs getting read.

@Christopher Hoard thanks - very insightful. we think of EC now more then ever as our "Spring" moment and Ignite as a Fall Moment.

@Cian Allner - Teams says "thank you for the birthday wishes :) 

 

A couple of you have remarked on the phrase "Coming Soon" and I thought I might comment. While it does not solve your ask I hope understanding why we do something might at least make waiting a little better . Our official public roadmap is the primary truth for feature availability. And yet at a couple of "moments" during the year we stretch our usual conservative nature around date sharing and try to further inform. Its a bit risky of course - because we truly feel bad when we reference some form of a public date and then have to roll back on it.  For me its feels a little like forgetting that special gift my son asked for and realizing I cannot deliver for his birthday. 

 

Coming soon is a term to signal we cannot commit to specific timing but feel its sooner then later AND we are so excited about it we just have to share something. Private Channels has been asked for and we know its a big deal. Normally I write about voice but I will ask my colleagues to consider a blog on it when we get closer to the GA date with more details.

 

thanks everyone for your enthusiasm!

 

Copper Contributor

@Paul Cannon 

 

Paul, how do we get early access to "Secure Private Channels" . Is it possible to whitelist our tenant?
 
Michael

Iron Contributor

Great new Features - but we need more to make this world class

 

You say to add suggestions in the user voice, but that site is so poorly curated, it is impossible to find the feature requests that are already posted, and new suggestions are getting no attention.

 

So here it is:  Make the online meetings work like Zoom!!!  

- Allow more than 4 video feeds to be displayed during a meeting. Product is worthless without this just like Skype4B was with video limitations. And NO, making the active speaker suddenly show video doesn't work when you have people who never speak during a meeting, but you want their video to see them paying attention or their reactions or a thumbs up/down voting.

- Allow the ability to join a meeting with NO audio at all.  So if people in the same room join from their laptops so they can see a presentation or all be on video to because we don't have fancy monitors and cameras hanging off every wall of our office, you don't get the feedback problem until everyone mutes their devices.

- Allow the meeting window to "float" over your other windows when minimized so you can multi-task and still have meeting context of what is presented or who is talking on video. (Skype4B does this)

- Allow the ability to combine your Teams meeting instance with an instance of your dialed in phone session by hitting #xx#  (xx is your session id) on your dialed in line so your voice session is combined with your Teams & meeting session. (Yes you could call yourself back, but now Teams meeting is paying for the call instead of the user utilizing their free long distance.

- Have a pop up during meeting scheduling (like Zoom) to select what other phone numbers you want in the meeting invite to have embedded in the invite, for international and toll free options that aren't standard on your profile.  Why?  Because if you don't have internet and are accessing the meeting from your cell phone, you cant click the link to get alternate dial-in numbers.  (This is a common problem for international travelers who do not have international data plans!!!!)

- Have the meeting invite include a plain text dial string like +15551212,,12345678# instead of it being a hyper link. (Skype4B does this and does Zoom).  The hyperlink looks like garbage in a non-html calendar like the default cal app on Android and Iphones.

- Allow the video to be moved to different areas of the screen (top, bottom, side)  video at the bottom, makes people not have eye contact with their camera.  And being able to change the video views, size and location is highly desirable.

 

OK you get it... make it work as well as ZOOM!

Brass Contributor

Great post and agree with @Migs comment, can we please get beyond the 4 video feed limit.  This feels so stale compared to all the competing products out there.

 

Thanks.

Brass Contributor

 

..can I get a shared voicemail box for phone system without paying $50 a month for it?

Brass Contributor
I am really impressed with Microsoft , what they have been able to deliver in such short period of 2 years. I believe there are areas where they are leading the pack ( When compared to Slack or Webex teams ) , however there are still some areas for improvement. I have been in cisco Collab domain from last several years but i can say MS teams is game changer . I really like the way it brings my workspace together and i don't have to go outside of the tool . 1) Proximity join should be available for Cisco Webex/VCS/CUCM based room Devices as well, this will be game changer. Cisco is leading provider In on premise and cloud video conferencing markets. 2) Teams should allow on premise PBX integration as well for enterprise customer's , this will be like Hybrid calling model. Even though you have direct routing but moving to this model is not viable for large enterprises . I feel large enterprises still have on prem calling infrastructure . 3) Video tiles have been bumped to 9 but should be around 20-25 at least for each . Other providers like Webex and Zoom have even more per meeting. 4) Add more reactions besides like to the chats 5) I believe guest user concept can be made more simple, right now it is not native and you have to manually add in the guest account etc. Webex teams this is native , so i can chat with anyone who has Webex teams , unless federation is turned off on global level or per domain.
Copper Contributor

@Paul Cannon , hello, you say "Enhancements to the Chrome browser meeting experience (coming soon) are getting richer for Windows and Mac users."

This will not work in Chrome on Linux (Ubuntu for us) ? 

We are highly waiting "the ability to see participants video, application sharing, and full desktop sharing." for linux...

 

Laurent

Iron Contributor

Looking forward to the secure private channels, lets hope it's not too late in the year been waiting too long for this.

Copper Contributor

Great post! Really impressed with Microsoft Teams! :)

Copper Contributor

@Paul Cannon - I'm glad to hear that Teams will finally have a calendar function. One of the main issues we are facing is the use of Shared Calendars by groups. Example - a SharePoint or Outlook calendar that is used to coordinate multiple peoples schedule. When will this be available in Teams?  Thanks!

Copper Contributor

Glad to see big feature updates coming in 2019!

 

  • Can we rename/hide the General channel yet?

Trust me, I've voted for the feature. I've taken the feature survey. I've reached out where I can and am now just patiently waiting.

 

I'm not joking when I say that's my biggest Teams complaint and biggest hurdle for adoption by our small organization because of easily-confused end users. We need to be able to rename the "General" to "<CompanyName>" or be hidden so we can have our own company-wide announcements channel on our main Team that isn't called something as general as "General".

Copper Contributor

@Paul Cannon Hi there, here we are a small organization using O365, and currently we are using Pidgin for chat, the only thing that is stopping us to migrate 100% into Microsoft Teams is the lack of an automatized way to put our every worker members in one tab on contact list. What i mean is as an IT manager i want to pre allocate all organization members in a tab on Chat group/Contact list, so it then puts every new workers the new and old ones in and out the organizational chat group automatically.
Right now is too much to ask for every user to personalize their own contact list with every worker we have here, seeing as the current solution Pidgin already automatizes this process and Microsoft Teams dont.

As English is not my main language i really hope you could understand my complaining, and i really appreciate all the effort Microsoft is putting on Teams, great work!

Copper Contributor

@skishwe have faked the private channel feature, at least for Files.  In our Teams design for the channels that require this our team creates a SharePoint group, gives that Edit rights, removes the Team members, and we teach Team owners to maintain membership of the SP group.  We've also created restricted access Channel files the same way.  For example, sub-teams within a school or department have Edit access for the sub-team members and View access for Team members.  It's not that difficult to teach the owners how to maintain these.  The fact that the Conversations and Notes are still Edit access for Team members is confusing for people though...

 

That said, Private Channels will be the gift we have been waiting for!

Copper Contributor

@Paul Cannon Hi there, here we are a small organization using O365, and currently we are using other solution for chat, the only thing that is stopping us to migrate 100% into Microsoft Teams is the lack of an automatized way to put our every worker members in one tab on contact list. What i mean is as an IT manager i want to pre allocate all organization members in a tab on Chat group/Contact list, so it then puts every new workers the new and old ones in and out the organizational chat group automatically.
Right now is too much to ask for every user to personalize their own contact list with every worker we have here, seeing as our current solution already automatizes this process and Microsoft Teams dont.

As English is not my main language i really hope you could understand my complaining, and i really appreciate all the effort Microsoft is putting on Teams, great work!

Brass Contributor

Great post with many nice announcements! I am getting my company ready for the SfB->Teams change any week now!

Brass Contributor

I'd like to hear more about the VDI solution. How is this going to be accomplished? Will this also solve the issues with traditional session based RDS deployments?

 

The big issue has been that Teams installs to every users profile under AppData. Which is a storage issue, pre-installation issue, and security issue. As I've said repeatedly, untill the Teams desktop client can be installed per machine to the program files folder, updated via windows update, and treated like a true enterprise application, it will limit it's usage in the market. Either that is resolved or the web experience gets good enough for the desktop app to be useless.

Brass Contributor

Wow. Collaboration to the next level. VDI option looks like a legacy type better to be at cloud.

Copper Contributor

Great stuff! It’s wonderful to see that the UserVoice is heard in many of these powerful enhancements. Teams is amazing and continues to improve. Exciting!

Copper Contributor

I agree with @Jason Gould the current installation in AppData is a nightmare that is preventing us from adopting Teams. Past changes to the installer (MSI/downloadable executable) have failed to deliver. One can only hope VDI ready means usable. There is a small glimmer of hope here.


Iron Contributor

@Robert135  Wouldn't using an Office 365 Group as the basis for the Team work for preloading everyone?

 

Just create a dynamic Office 365 Group with everyone in it and then create a Team off of said group.

Copper Contributor

Hi Microsoft representatives. Have you considered how Executive or Personal Assistents could utilize and manage their superior Calendars in Teams?

Steel Contributor

@Paul Cannon - Could I get more information regarding the VDI Support? Do the updates target making sure USB Devices and Cameras work with Teams in a pass-through scenario running on a VDI? Or more making sure the media portions are not double hopping through the VDI to ensure a shorter route to Teams media services? How about utilizing the full Teams client in a non-persistent desktop environment (not installing to app data folders)?

 

Thanks

@Migs 
"Allow more than 4 video feeds to be displayed during a meeting"
- 3x3 Video is coming and was showcased in our keynote as well, get a sneak peak here: https://aka.ms/EC2019
3x3.JPG


"Allow the ability to join a meeting with NO audio at all"
-
Feel free to join a meeting without audio and video, we even inform users and make recommendations when multiple people are already in the meeting as well we give you the option to join the meeting without audio -  Even better when you join a meeting via proximity on a Microsoft Teams Room we automatically join without audio and video, check out my former blog about Teams Rooms to learn more about proximity join at  aka.ms/MicrosoftTeamsRooms
muted.JPG

Iron Contributor

@Christian Schacht 

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my rant.  I just joined a meeting and see there is a new option below the meeting join window that says "Other join options" and allows of "Audio Off".  This is GREAT to have the option now!!! Not in a very obvious space (should be in the box above it), so not sure how that got through UX Design, but at least we can try to train to it with our Tips and Tricks emails.  So how about have the option to Call me back right there too!!  Why is call me back hidden underneath the "i" icon which most people in our internal training sessions assume means "information" and don't remember that the cal me feature is hidden there.  Put it right up front at the start of a meeting.  (I see from your screen shot there is a phone option there that I don't have, and you are on a dog food version since your left icons say Calendar and mine still says meeting... so maybe this is coming?)

 

P.S.  Why doesn't the Teams group have release notes for these new features.  These things like Audio Off just show up and we have to try and find them to know what is changing and what is enhancing.  That Audio Off is very new.. No one on our Teams deployment project has ever seen that before until you mentioned it and I went looking for it today

audio off.png

 

 

I did hear the announcement that video was going to 9 feeds and 3x3.  That doesn't excite me, it actually disappoints me, because it means someone has decided the 9 video feeds is good enough (IT ISN'T!!!) And it also means that higher numbers of video feeds is probably not coming in the near future.  My users who know and love Zoom are not going to accept this solution. The video feed limitation is the #1 issue impacting our ability to adopt TEAMS as our single collaboration and meeting solution.  And I am not alone.. I see this issue in every Teams forum I am in where people complain about the Video feed limitations compared to the competition. Does Teams have some codex limitation where more than 9 just can't be supported?  Please tell me there is hope for higher than 9 video feeds in the near future!!!

 

I live and work right in Seattle, I am at Microsoft Lincoln center all the time.  If there is someone from Zoom who wants to come to our downtown Seattle office and see how companies actually collaborate when they don't have the resources to buy Teams rooms for every meeting space, contact me and we can setup an end user experience engagement. (A typical meeting at our company.  6 people in the same room all joined video, 2 people remote and two on a phone. 11 video feeds in Zoom ((lots more than 11 supported)))

BradyBunch.png

 

Brass Contributor

@Paul Cannon Please can you advise if new Teams Calender is already in preview ?

Copper Contributor

@Shaun Jennings
Hello! But that's not what I meant, what I want is that it's possible to automatically allocate all contacts to the users CONTACTS list, I would like some sort of management of contact list of all workers who use 365 / Teams. In that way we would have each worker with updated contact lists of all other workers in our company.

Iron Contributor

@Robert135 

Good Morning! You are talking about an individual's personal Contact list? Not the Global Address List? 

 

For instance, I have an Office 365 Group with all Office 365 Users within it. I can create that as a Team and everyone becomes a member of that team. I do not know of a way of taking someone's personal contact list and creating a group based off that. I might still be misunderstanding what you are looking for in this matter. Sorry.

Copper Contributor

@Shaun Jennings
Good Morning,
Yes, that is right, i am talking about individual's personal contact list. See, currently the way Teams works i would have to ask every user to add every other user and keep their personal contact list updated. I wish i could manage and create some kind of enterprise contact list group on the users personal contact lists, i know that currently there is no such feature but it would be really handy. Currently our chat solution do this work so imagine if we migrate to Microsoft Teams and users would then have to manually manage all enterprise users on their personal contact list as with every new and old organizational member.

Copper Contributor

Great to see continued investment.

 

Areas that teams needs to be improved on:

 

1. ability to show team conversations as single threaded rather than conversation nested.  It makes the team chat difficult to use as you cant see continual conversations.  

2. Multiple layers of sidebar navigation (much like TFS) is cumbersome.  "go to the X team, Y channel, then to the files tab, then into the Z folder...."  If the teams were a separate navigation option from the channels...tabs on the top??  this is so confusing that many members of a team will only navigate data using the sharepoint view, then miss all notifications and benefits of the team itself.  

3. Our team doesnt use teams much for meetings as it is bandwidth hog and drops often for international work, as compared to zoom or GTM or webex.

Copper Contributor

@Paul CannonThank you for these blog post it really looks like the Microsoft teams has been enhanced with many new features and functionalities.

However could you please throw some light on the below functionalities of Teams and let us know you thoughts about the same. Please note the local compliance requirements are the biggest barrier in global adoption. could you please also inform about the compliance status of the below Calling features in India: 
Dynamic e911

Location Based Routing

Music on Hold

Busy on Busy

Cloud Voicemail (CVM)

Copper Contributor

@Migs 

 

This is why Microsoft partnered with Blue Jeans, Pexip, and Polycom to deliver those use cases around a video experience. Teams itself was built as an "Agile" product for collaboration on that small/medium teams level. It wasn't built to deliver an experience you get from a Telepresence solution. Because of that, they have adopted a CVI solution to help fill in those use cases in executive/boardroom experiences. If customers are really looking to have an experience that is built around a brady bunch or Hollywood squares setup, the CVI solution can offer that. With that being said, there are still limitations around one touch to join from a codec or standards based endpoint. We understand that customers are going to have a bunch of standards based endpoints that they are looking to get an ROI on. Let me know if you have any questions!

Steel Contributor

I enabled the Whiteboard Preview in my tenant and booked a meeting with 3 participants but still no Microsoft Whiteboard after a few hours. @Paul Cannon , is it rolled out to everyone if you enable it or are you still rolling it out gradually?

Brass Contributor

I know they said "coming later this year" for Private Channels, but I have a client that is in pilot stages and needs a more specific ETA.  Q2 Q3? Q4?  Anyone?

Microsoft

Hi @Jonas Back - Whiteboard in Teams meeting is rolled out across the Teams Windows 10 app, iOS and Android app, and web experience. To clarify, when you say, no Microsoft Whiteboard, do you mean the icon does not show up in the Share Tray in the Teams meeting?

Steel Contributor

@Chanda WongI just realized that I just tried the Teams app installed on Windows 10 (version 1.2.00.4664 and was last updated 3/29/19) and there I don't see Microsoft Whiteboard in the Share Tray in the meeting. But if I use the web based version (https://teams.microsoft.com), Microsoft Whiteboard is available:

2019-04-01 07_52_40-Desktop 2016 - Desktop Viewer.png

 

Will this come to the installed Teams app soon aswell?

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