What’s New in Microsoft Teams | January 2025
Happy new year, and welcome to 2025! I hope your year is off to an excellent start, and that you have lots of exciting things on the horizon. I know that this year will be a big one for Teams - it’s only January, and we’re already releasing a host of useful features that can save you time and help you communicate efficiently and effectively. For example, the ability to forward messages between channels helps you share important information with colleagues more easily (“Forward channel messages” in Chat and Collaboration), and giving meeting attendees the freedom to move between breakout rooms (“Meeting participants can move between breakout rooms” in Meetings, Webinars and Town Halls) can simplify event management and participation. Those are just two of the many features that we’re releasing to kick off 2025, so read on to see what else is new in these categories: Chat and Collaboration Meetings, Webinars, and Town Halls Workplace-Places and Rooms Teams Phone Teams Devices Teams Fundamentals Frontline Worker Solutions Chat and Collaboration Quick hyperlink insertion Seamlessly integrated hyperlinks enhance message readability and accessibility, ensuring that links are naturally woven into the text. This new feature streamlines the process of adding links, making it faster and more efficient. To use this capability, copy the link you want to insert, type your message in the compose box, highlight the text you want to hyperlink, and paste. Your hyperlink is now ready. Forwarding Loop components You can now forward chat messages containing Loop components, allowing for seamless sharing and real-time collaboration across different chats and channels. To forward a message with a Loop component, navigate to it, click on the ellipsis (three dots), and select ‘Forward’ from the menu. When the Loop components are shared, their permissions are maintained, ensuring that recipients have the appropriate access rights. This feature is available on desktop and mobile. Forward channel messages You can now forward messages between channels, allowing you to share important information with relevant team members with fewer clicks. To forward a channel message post, channel post reply, or chat message to another channel, 1:1 or group chat, select the message’s ellipsis menu and choose Forward. You can also add additional context to the message and @mention recipients for greater clarity and alignment. Meetings, Webinars, Town Halls, and Immersive Meeting participants can move between breakout rooms Now, meeting organizers can make the list of breakout rooms visible to all meeting participants and allow them to choose which room to join. Enabling this setting in breakout rooms allows participants to move freely from one room to another, simplifying breakout room coordination for meeting organizers and participants. New calendar experience in Microsoft Teams: Generally available now The calendar in Teams has been redesigned for reliability and familiarity—you can now enjoy the same calendar experience across Teams and Outlook, with integration of both Copilot and Places to help infuse intelligence into your time management. Copilot capabilities like draft an agenda and managed booking, and Places capabilities like recommended in-office days, Places finder, and Places card are all available in the new Teams calendar experience. In addition to Copilot and Places features, the new Teams calendar brings new capabilities to Teams like calendar sharing, month view, multi-day view, print support, filtering, support for multiple time zones, and more. You’ll find the ‘New calendar’ toggle at the top right of the calendar app in Teams. It only takes one click to upgrade to the new Teams calendar, and you can easily pick up and resume exactly where you left off in classic Teams calendar. Meeting organizers can turn off copying or forwarding of live captions, transcript, and recap for meetings We are expanding the existing ‘Turn off copying or forwarding of meeting chat’ control for meeting organizers to include live captions, transcription, and meeting recap. With this change, meeting organizers with Teams Premium licenses will see a control called ‘Turn off copying and forwarding of meeting chat, live captions, and transcript’ in the meeting options. When this control is enabled, meeting participants won’t be able to copy the meeting chat, live captions, live transcript, or any insights generated from intelligent meeting recap. Microsoft Purview support for town halls Microsoft Purview now supports eDiscovery for town halls in Teams, ensuring compliance by preserving and managing event data effectively. Effective data management helps in organizing and categorizing data, making it easier to search and retrieve specific information. This reduces the risk of data loss and ensures that sensitive information is protected and handled according to compliance standards. Audio support for screen sharing in Mesh events (Premium) Audio support for screen sharing has now been added in Microsoft Mesh. Presenters will now be able to choose whether they'd like to include system audio when starting a screen share in a Mesh event. This feature is available for presenters in Mesh with a Teams Premium license. Workplace: Places and Teams Rooms Workplace check-in with workplace presence Workplace presence facilitates in-person connections by allowing you to check in on the Places app and let colleagues know you’re in the office, confirm work plans, receive check-in reminders, and view which of your colleagues are nearby and who has planned to come in. Workplace presence at building level upon peripheral connection With work location in Teams now including buildings, make your presence known, coordinate with others, and take advantage of AI-assisted booking in the future. Once enabled and opted-in, your workplace presence can auto-update to a specific building when you connect to a peripheral at a bookable desk or BYOD room. Speaker recognition and attribution in BYOD rooms with Teams Premium or Copilot You can now take advantage of speaker recognition and transcript attribution, unleashing new AI capabilities in any meeting space, whether or not it has a Teams Rooms system deployed. This feature identifies and attributes people in live transcripts, utilizing a unique voice profile for each participant enabling intelligent recaps and maximum value from Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams meetings. Users can easily and securely enroll voices via Teams Settings. This feature requires a Teams Premium or Copilot license for the user hosting the meeting. Learn more. Auto-association of BYOD room devices in the Pro Management portal Manually associating peripherals to rooms may feel like an endless task if your organization has several bring your own device (BYOD) rooms. IT admins can streamline the process and get enhanced inventory visibility with this feature which utilizes meeting room invite data to intelligently associate peripherals to these spaces. Once associated, users can more easily connect and utilize shared peripherals in rooms. Learn more. Start or stop recording on Teams Rooms on Windows In Teams Rooms on Windows, you can now start or stop recording without needing to join on your companion device. The start/stop recording button is available on the console or touch boards through the More menu. This feature requires a Teams Rooms Pro license. Multiple camera view for Teams Rooms on Windows When attending remotely, you now have enhanced viewing options during meetings in a Teams Room on Windows which now supports displaying up to four single-stream cameras. With multiple camera views, you can follow all the action in the room and manually switch between different views as desired. This feature requires a Teams Rooms Pro license. Learn more. Custom name for Teams panels Admins can now use the Pro Management portal to assign custom names to licensed panels. This name will then display on the panel's home screen, replacing the global address book name shown in Outlook or Teams. This feature requires a Teams Rooms Pro or Teams Shared Devices license. Learn more. Usage reports for bookable desks in the Pro Management portal Where your people choose to work is crucial information for workspace planning and management. Get more insight into workspace usage when you can see which desk pools are used, and when. Usage, occupancy, and other key data points attributed to desk pools are visible in the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal. Learn more. Teams Phone Queues app available on Teams phone devices The Queues app experience for agents is now available on Teams phone devices. This experience will help agents manage customer interactions directly from their phone device. Agents will be able to opt in or opt out of queues and access call history, which includes details like customer names, phone numbers, call times, and actions taken during the call. This ensures agents have all the information they need at their fingertips, making it easier to provide personalized and effective customer service. Teams Calling Plan enablement wizard in the Microsoft 365 admin center Unlock a faster way to manage Teams Calling Plans with the new Calling Plan enablement wizard in the Microsoft 365 admin center. This tool streamlines the process of enabling Teams Calling Plan seats with phone numbers, saving valuable setup time. Admins will automatically see this enhanced experience once Teams Calling Plan licenses are assigned to the tenant. The wizard provides an intuitive, step-by-step guide to set up emergency addresses, acquire phone numbers, and assign them to users—all in one smooth workflow. Ready to simplify your Teams Calling Plan setup? Learn more Collaborative call delegation on Teams phone devices Teams phone device users can now share access to their phone line with a specific group of users, without a structured delegation system. This enables group members to receive, and initiate calls on behalf of others, enabling a simple and collaborative communication experience. Teams Devices Find certified for Teams devices for all types of spaces and uses at aka.ms/teamsdevices. Owl Labs Owl Bar The newly certified for Teams Owl Bar is an intelligent 4K front-of-room camera, microphone, and speaker device. It features a 30MP camera lens, four omnidirectional microphones, and an integrated speaker. The Owl Bar can work alone or pair with the Meeting Owl to focus on the speaker and switch cameras, ensuring remote participants always have the best view. Owl Labs’ Owl Intelligence System™ captures the best view of in-room speakers, making hybrid discussions effective and productive. Ideal for huddle and small meeting rooms. Learn more AudioCodes C430HD Native Microsoft Teams Common Area IP Phone The AudioCodes Microsoft Teams-native C430HD IP phone is an entry level/common area phone specially designed to deliver low-cost yet feature-rich unified communications in any shared space or phone booth. Equipped with a 4.3” color LCD screen, the C430HD supports Microsoft Teams out-of-the-box for quick installation and streamlined provisioning. Learn more Fundamentals Block malicious users from your organization With this feature in Teams, you can prevent users in your organization from collaborating with specific people outside the organization. Admins can now set up a list of users that are blocked from collaborating with their organization. If a user is added to the block list, people in your organization will not be able to have 1:1 and group chats with these users. If chats already exist before a user is added to the block list, the blocked user will be removed from the chat. Brand impersonation phishing protection This feature helps IT admins identify if an external user is targeting their enterprise users by impersonating a brand commonly targeted by phishing attacks. It monitors initial contacts in chat with individual users, and notifies the user that the message may be spam or a phishing attempt. Frontline Worker Solutions App-Powered Tasks App-powered tasks, currently in public preview, offers your organization more control over what users see when they open their tasks within Teams. Instead of showing only the standard set of task fields, users now have an experience tailored to the task at hand. When the user selects an app-powered task, the destination app will open directly to that specific task information. This allows employees to view all tasks in one place, even when tasks are stored across multiple third-party systems, and offers task-specific guidance on completion from right within Teams. For more information, please read our public preview announcement or learn how to manage app-powered tasks.What’s New in Microsoft Teams | December 2024
The end of the calendar year is almost here, and Microsoft Ignite is now in the rear-view mirror. By the way, WOW, was it an exciting one! If you missed our last blog that listed everything for Teams that we announced at Ignite, here it is! There’s been a lot of buzz around features like the recently released “workplace presence”, that helps you connect with colleagues when you’re in the office. Although we announced so many powerful new features last month, there are still a few more coming! This will be a short blog, but we still have some updates that can make Teams an even more integral part of your workday. Read on for all the details, and I hope you have an excellent end to 2024! Meetings Take control during screensharing on web client This update enables meeting participants using the Teams web app to use the "take control" function to request control while another person is screen-sharing. Webinars and Town Halls Download Transcription and view RTMP-In 708 captions for Town hall and webinar Event organizers can now download transcripts for their town hall or webinar instances. This update also adds support for displaying RTMP-In 708 captions in transcription. RTMP-In 708 captions are a closed captioning standard that provides enhanced captioning capabilities, including improved compatibility with modern digital video formats Teams Rooms and Devices Whiteboard enhancements on Teams Rooms on Android You can use the whiteboard in a meeting, or when you’re collaborating offline with colleagues. When using the whiteboard outside of meetings, your content is retained even when a meeting begins. The whiteboard's contents are preserved and shared with remote participants instantly. You can also use the ‘Follow me’ function to guide participants as you navigate, and collaborative cursors let you see everyone working in real-time. Find certified for Teams devices for all types of spaces and uses at aka.ms/teamsdevices. Cisco Room Navigator The Cisco Room Navigator for panels is designed to be easy to deploy, scalable, and user-friendly in a modern workplace. It displays room availability, integrates with calendars, and allows for instant bookings. Featuring a 360° multicolor LED and a durable touch screen, it works seamlessly with the Microsoft Teams Panel app or other reservation systems. Learn more Yealink Room Panel E2 The Yealink Room Panel E2 is a compact touch screen designed for mounting outside meeting spaces. It displays meeting details and allows for on-the-spot reservations via Teams or Microsoft 365 calendar applications. With features like an RGB LED light bar, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ambient light and human presence sensors, as well as enhanced microphones and speakers, it meets the needs of modern workspaces. Learn more Maxhub XCore Kit Pro MAXHUB XCore Kit Pro is a Microsoft Teams Rooms conferencing solution intended for medium to large meeting rooms. It includes an 11.6-inch touch-screen control panel and a mini-PC with a 12th gen Intel Core i5 processor running Microsoft Teams Rooms. It supports 4K wired content sharing and dual-screen display capabilities, providing a comprehensive conferencing experience. Learn more Poly Studio X72 + TC10 The Poly Studio X72 all-in-one video bar is designed to optimize hybrid meetings, no matter the room size. With AI-enhanced video and audio technology, it offers the scalability and flexibility needed to join various cloud video calls effortlessly. The Poly TC10's 10-inch high-resolution touch display provides clear and accessible control options, making it easy to start and manage video calls. Learn more Poly Studio X72 Experience seamless hybrid meetings with the Poly Studio X72 video bar. Featuring advanced AI-enhanced video and audio technology, this versatile device ensures crystal-clear communication and effortless connectivity to virtually any cloud video call. Discover the scalability and flexibility that make the Poly Studio X72 the perfect addition to your meeting room setup. Learn more Poly Studio G62 The Poly Studio G62 conferencing system features easy setup, seamless integration, and customization options. It includes powerful collaboration tools, advanced audiovisual options, and a flexible setup. This system allows you to tailor large conference rooms to your specific needs. By connecting Poly peripherals and controllers, the Poly Studio G62 video conferencing system offers a modular solution designed for streamlined versatility. Learn more Poly Studio V72 The Poly Studio V72 Bar is designed to offer reliable, high-quality audiovisuals for your meeting room. Customize your PC-based or BYOD conference room setup effortlessly with this adaptable USB video bar. Integrate Poly peripherals with the Poly Studio V72 bar for consistent audiovisual performance that enhances your meetings. Learn moreWhat’s New in Microsoft Teams | October 2024
This month, we have even more updates to share that are bringing intelligence, convenience, and productivity together in Teams. A few that I’m most excited for you to try are: the highly anticipated ‘Queues App’ that makes handling and monitoring customer calls easier for call center agents and leads, ‘Voting, Filtering, Sorting and Archiving in Teams Q&A’ for Town Halls and Webinars, that allows attendees to upvote questions they find most compelling, and ‘Expanded cross-platform meetings via SIP join’ that give you the ability to use Microsoft Teams to join meetings from other services like Google Meet, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Amazon Chime, RingCentral, and others.What’s New in Microsoft Teams | September 2024
It’s September, and the seasons are starting to change. Here in the northern hemisphere the temperature is getting cooler, but new Teams features are still bringing the heat! This month, we’re sharing new features that are making Teams even smarter and easier to use. For example, have you ever missed an action item from a meeting because the ask was in the chat? You won’t anymore, because now when you ask Copilot to recap all the questions from a Teams meeting, it can source responses from both the meeting transcript and chat. And, with ‘Automatically set work location on bookable desks’ and ‘ultrasound proximity join’, it’s never been easier to let your colleagues know you’re in the office, then find and connect to the right physical meeting room.What’s New in Microsoft Teams | August 2024
August is here, and so are some new features and enhancements that make Microsoft Teams even more powerful and easier to use! In July, we shared ways you can customize how you express yourself in chat, new options for personalizing your gallery views, and more. There were some great new features to explore, and we have plenty more to share this month.What’s New in Microsoft Teams | July 2024
Welcome to July’s update on Microsoft Teams, where we share some of the new features and improvements that are making collaboration easier and more enjoyable. This month, we have exciting enhancements for your meetings, chats, and communications that will help you personalize your experience, stay organized, and express yourself better. For example, you can now use custom emojis and reactions to express yourself and reflect your team’s culture. You can also enjoy a more engaging and inclusive meeting experience with the new meeting gallery, which places all participants in equal-sized tiles and can automatically highlight certain participants to enhance the meeting experience. And for Teams Rooms on Windows, you can benefit from speaker attribution enhancements, enabling Copilot and meeting recaps to understand who said what in recaps and insights. These are just some of the highlights that I'm most excited about, but there's much more to explore in this update.What’s New in Microsoft Teams | June 2024
In June, we introduced exciting enhancements to Microsoft Teams. I regularly use Copilot compose to help make my draft messages clearer and in the tone that I’m aiming for. Additionally, the new meeting organizer controls let me manage access to meeting transcripts, recordings, AI-generated recaps, and Copilot. Even simple updates make a big difference in my daily work, like the ability to mute and unmute myself from the Windows taskbar.What’s New in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Ignite 2023
Welcome to the November 2023 Special Edition of What’s New in Teams! We are publishing this month’s edition early to cover the announcements at the Microsoft Ignite conference, in addition to our typical What’s New in Teams features. Click here to see all the great sessions planned.What’s New in Microsoft Teams | October 2023
Welcome to our October 2023 update on What's New in Microsoft Teams. This month, we are excited to showcase 35 new features and enhancements that will help you collaborate more effectively, streamline your workflow, and stay connected with your team. From the new Microsoft Teams app to improvements in meetings, webinars, and town halls, there's something for everyone. Read on to learn more about the latest updates and how they can benefit you and your organization.What's New in Microsoft Teams | Enterprise Connect 2024 Edition
In this special edition of “What's New in Microsoft Teams”, we will cover the exciting new features and improvements that we announced at Enterprise Connect 2024. In addition, you will find the new features, devices and apps that have been released this month.
